Year: 2020

“Just Mercy” (2020)–“It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”

Written by Diana Paul on December 28, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment

A powerful true story about the 1989 founding of Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), based upon Bryan Stevenson’s 2014 bestseller of the same name, Just Mercy. EJI, located in Montgomery, Alabama –and situated near the Museum of Peace and Justice (a Stevenson project focusing on the US history of lynching and slavery)– is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States. EIJ challenges racial and economic injustice, protects basic human rights for the most vulnerable...

“Run”–Walking Is Not An Option

Written by Diana Paul on December 21, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment

Run is an intense and suspenseful thriller starring the master at horror and diabolical characters: Sarah Paulson. Portraying Diane, the mother of Chloe, a disabled seventeen-year-old girl (newcomer Kiera Allen, who is also wheelchair-bound in real life), has chosen to raise her daughter at home, in a rural town outside Seattle. Mother and daughter seem to be very close. They begin each day settled into a cozy routine of daily lessons in physics or American lit, relaxing meals around the kitchen table, an occasional movie in town. But...

“The Undoing”–Deeds Undone

Written by Diana Paul on December 14, 2020. Posted in Television reviews. 4 Comments

This HBO original mini-series, The Undoing, is a police procedural based upon the novel You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz. We observe the daily life of a highly successful New York therapist, Grace Fraser (Nicole Kidman), a specialist in marriage counseling, as well her husband, Jonathan (Hugh Grant), a successful pediatric oncologist. Their teenage son Henry attends an elite private school which receives generous donations from Grace’s father (Donald Sutherland). At a school fundraiser Grace...

“Retribution”–Karma is a Beast

Written by Diana Paul on December 7, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. Leave a Comment

Retribution ( a 2016 BBC production originally titled “One of Us”) opens with a horrific double murder, which will tear apart the lives of two families, the Douglases and the Elliots. They are friends who live side-by-side in the isolated Scotland Highlands hamlet of Braeston. The atmospherically remote Scottish scenery is reminiscent of Nordic noir landscapes. Events soon take an even more brutal turn when a badly injured man arrives at the Douglas family’s doorstep after his car careens off the road – a man who they...

“Richard Jewell”–A Hidden Gem

Written by Diana Paul on November 30, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment

In Richard Jewell, a 2019 Clint Eastwood docudrama, Richard Jewell (played by relative unknown Paul Walter Hauser) , is first adored as a hero for thwarting the bombing of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. But “alternative facts” and frenzied media coverage turn against him. His daily life is turned upside down when he is considered the principal suspect in the bombing by FBI and local police. Jewell is almost a caricature of the lonely white male, living with his mother (Kathy Bates, in an Academy Awards-nominated performance). Deeply proud of his...

“The Comey Rule”–Inner Conflict

Written by Diana Paul on November 23, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. Leave a Comment

In this two-part Hulu and Showtime series, FBI Director James Comey (Jeff Daniels) begins a collision course against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (Brendan Gleeson). Based on Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty”, the first part of The Comey Rule follows the investigation into Hillary’s email and its impact on the 2016 election. Part Two follows the aftermath of the election on Comey’s career and on his family, together with his investigation into Russia, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane”. This is not...