Year: 2020

“High Seas”–“Death on the Nile” meets “Murder on the Orient Express”

Written by Diana Paul on August 24, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 3 Comments on “High Seas”–“Death on the Nile” meets “Murder on the Orient Express”

In this Spanish melodrama (Spanish: Alta Mar) , two sisters discover some very disturbing family secrets aboard a ship sailing from Spain to Brazil just after World War II. Agatha Christie’s style of mystery plotting, overlaid with the Spanish love of melodrama and telenovela, makes High Seas an unusual series. Following the death of their father, sisters Eva and Carolina Villanueva travel on the luxury ocean liner, Bárbara de Braganza. The sisters, over the course of three seasons, become committed to investigating mysterious...

“Humans”–“Dark Mirror” Meets “Ex Machina”

Written by diana on August 17, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment on “Humans”–“Dark Mirror” Meets “Ex Machina”

The Amazon Prime sci-fi series, Humans (three seasons), takes place in the not- too-distant future where the affluent purchase “synths”, artificially intelligent human-looking robots that can perform a multitude of tasks from housecleaning, surveillance, and sex-toy services. A suburban family buys Anita (the exquisitely beautiful Gemma Chan of “Crazy Rich Asians”) to help with the burdens of a professional couple. The father, Joe (Tom Goodman-Hill), is a manager in a factory who is replaced by synths. His wife, Laura (Katherine Parkinson of Pirate Radio and Doc...

“The Alienist: Angel of Darkness” (Season Two)–Stranger Things Happen

Written by Diana Paul on August 11, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment on “The Alienist: Angel of Darkness” (Season Two)–Stranger Things Happen

In this relatively seamless sequel to “The Alienist”, based on Caleb Carr’s second psychological thriller, season two is a retelling of Carr’s Angel of Darkness. But this is much more than a sequel. (For my review of season one, see my April 29, 2018 review: “The Alienist”–Something Wicked This Way Comes). The year is 1897, a scant three years before the dawn of the 20th century, in the Gilded Age. In New York City, a serial killer is kidnapping and murdering babies. Angel of Darkness opens with a grisly...

Dark Waters–Still an Abyss

Written by Diana Paul on August 3, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 4 Comments on Dark Waters–Still an Abyss

Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller directed by Todd Haynes (“Carol” and “Far from Heaven”). The movie dramatizes the whistleblowing story of a cover-up of toxic waste. We see close up the corporate corruption involving Dupont’s manufacturing of Teflon. The hero is Robert Bilott, (played by Mark Ruffalo of “I Know This Much is True”) an Ohio lawyer who spends more than eighteen years proving that DuPont was responsible for poisoning the town of Parkersburg, West Virginia with...

“Lila & Eve”–Loss Without Justice

Written by Diana Paul on July 27, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 3 Comments on “Lila & Eve”–Loss Without Justice

Lila & Eve, a 2015 sleeper female vigilante thriller , stars Viola Davis (“How to Get Away With Murder”) as Lila and Jennifer Lopez (“Hustlers”) as Eve, The opening scene shows Lila’s 18-year-old son, Stephon (Aml Ameen), in a pool of blood from a drive-by shooting. A grief-fueled fragile mother is determined to fix her life: to bring the murderers of her son to justice so she can move on in nurturing her fourteen-year- old son. Unsure how to go on with the effort of living, partly numbed by anti-anxiety drugs, Lila joins a support group for moms...

“I’ll Be Gone In the Dark”–Don’t Watch This Alone at Night

Written by Diana Paul on July 22, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment on “I’ll Be Gone In the Dark”–Don’t Watch This Alone at Night

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, a six-part HBO documentary series based on Michelle McNamara’s book, explores the author and her obsessive investigation into the dark world of the “The Golden State Killer” who terrorized California in the 1970s and 80s. It is mostly due to McNamara’s investigative reporting that this cold case was kept alive and solved. Incredibly, that didn’t happen until late 2018 when the perpetrator was identified, charged and convicted of 50 rapes and 12 murders out of more than 100 known...