Year: 2023

Black Cake–Crumbs from the Past or Just Desserts?

Written by Diana Paul on December 24, 2023. Posted in Television reviews.

In this haunting story of a young girl’s treacherous journey from Jamaica to England and then to California, we see the erasing of her past in order to survive. Black Cake is a Hulu eight-episode miniseries based on the titular best-selling novel by the Jamaican American author, Charmaine Wilkerson. Opening in the late 1960’s with...

May-December–Mirror, MIrror on the Wall

Written by Diana Paul on December 18, 2023. Posted in movie reviews.

Loosely based on the tabloid-heavy coverage of a scandalous sexual affair by a 36-year-old teacher, Mary Kay Leourneau, perpetrated on her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, Todd Haynes’ May December continues the story over twenty years later. The couple, Joe (Charles Melton) and Gracie (Julianne Moore) are a picture-perfect...

Queen Charlotte–A Royal Prequel

Written by Diana Paul on December 11, 2023. Posted in Television reviews.

Some may dislike misconstruing the history of great female leaders–or any history, for that matter, for the sake of entertainment. Queen Charlotte, the newly created Netflix series by Shonda Rhimes, is a rollicking reimagining of the Regency period of King George III and Queen Charlotte. It follows from the three-seasons’ blockbuster...

Lessons in Chemistry–A Delicious Dose

Written by Diana Paul on December 6, 2023. Posted in Television reviews.

Based upon Bonnie Garmus’s bestselling blockbuster of the same name, the AppleTV+ mini-series Lessons in Chemistry opens in 1961, at the cusp of the feminist and civil rights revolutions. Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson, Academy Award-winning actress of “Room”), a highly educated and talented chemist, has taken a job as a low-level...

The Long Song–An Aria of Grief and Strength

Written by Diana Paul on November 27, 2023. Posted in Television reviews. 1 Comment on The Long Song–An Aria of Grief and Strength

Based on the largest slave uprising in Jamaican history, leading to the abolition movement in Europe, the three-episode The Long Song is adapted from the late Jamaican-British author Andrea Levy’s acclaimed 2010 historical novel. The author has fictionalized the uprising through the story of a young girl, July. “The life of a white...

All the Light We Cannot See–Love is Blind

Written by Diana Paul on November 21, 2023. Posted in Television reviews. 1 Comment on All the Light We Cannot See–Love is Blind

All the Light We Cannot See opens with a devoted, widowed father, Daniel LeBlanc (Mark Ruffalo), teaching his young blind daughter, Marie (Aria Mia Loberti), the intricacies of artifacts in the museum where he works as a locksmith. Based upon the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr, this four-part Netflix...