Month: April 2024

What Happened to Monday?–A Weekly Menace

Written by Diana Paul on April 29, 2024. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound.

The year is 2073,. Overpopulation and limited resources, especially food and fuel, have created a mandatory one-child policy called “The Child Allocation Act”. What Happened to Monday explores what such a world would look like with an autocrat as leader and mandatory enforcement with surveillance required for all citizens. In the opening scene Terrence Settman (Willem Dafoe) is grieving watching his daughter die in giving birth to septuplets: seven identical baby girls (all of them portrayed by Noomi Rapace best known for “Girl with the Dragon...

Arctic Circle–Shivering with Fear

Written by Diana Paul on April 22, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

Set in the Lapland region of Finland, the Finnish-German three-season thriller, Arctic Circle, Nina Kautsalo (Iina Kuustonen), is determined to solve three multiple murder cases, one in each season. Nina is a single mom with a Down syndrome daughter, Venla, who is cared for by her devoted grandmother. Nina, in turn, is supported by an understanding director and her police colleagues. Besides the inevitable struggles to balance work and family, she also has to deal with Venla’s yearning to know her estranged father and also with Marita (Pihla Vittala of “Deadwind”), Nina’s...

Woman in the Wall–Imprisonment in the Magdalene Laundries

Written by Diana Paul on April 14, 2024. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews, Unhealed Wound.

Set up as a six-episode thriller, Woman in the Wall is based on the horrific exploitation of teenage girls and young women in “the homes for unwed mothers” in Ireland. The scandal of the Magdalene Laundries has damaged the Catholic Church for over a century and a half. This fictionalized account focuses on Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson of “The Affair”, “Luther”, “Saving Mr. Banks”, “Dark Materials” among many others) and her determination to find her now thirty-year old daughter who was taken from her at the Magdalene Laundries....

The Abyss–Going Down a Rabbit Hole

Written by Diana Paul on April 8, 2024. Posted in movie reviews.

The Abyss, while a fictional narrative, is nonetheless based upon a real town, Kiruna, Sweden and the mine located beneath it. First and foremost, The Abyss (2023) is a disaster film about one woman superhero’s mental and physical strength in saving the lives of her friends and her teenage son. Frigga (Tuva Novotny) is in charge of safety in the mine, and has learned the skills of her father who died there. Her two teenage children, Simon and Mica) are rather clueless about how important their mother is to the safety of Kiruna. Her ex-husband (David Franzén), and...

Saltburn–Class Wounds

Written by Diana Paul on April 1, 2024. Posted in movie reviews.

Saltburn is a 2023 highly original indie psychological thriller written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell (creator of “A Promising Young Woman”, see my March 25,2021 review). A brilliant middle-class Oxford student with few friends (except for one rather sadistic roommate), Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan from “Banshees of Inisherin”) has little appeal with women, but outsized ambitions to be popular with his fellow aristocratic students. A coming-of-age film this is not! Supernaturally handsome Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), befriends Oliver after Oliver...