Author: Diana Paul

The Handmaid’s Tale (final season)–An Acknowledgement or Acceptance?

Written by Diana Paul on June 2, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

Keeping things fresh in the sixth and final season of Handmaid’s Tale, this award-winning drama moves the story ever closer to authoritarianism embedded in a hellscape of a misogynistic dystopia. Gilead is attempting to remake itself, presumably for public relations more than anything else. Smoothing the edges of its own...

A Complete Unknown–Like a Rolling Stone

Written by Diana Paul on May 28, 2025. Posted in movie reviews.

This biopic of the iconic singer, Bob Dylan, immerses the viewer in the musical genius, turbulence of the sixties, and the drama of personal relationships of one of the most influential artists of our time. A Complete Unknown is poetry in motion. A spellbinding time capsule that rewinds life in the early days of Bob Dylan and the...

Towards Zero–Where is Agatha?

Written by Diana Paul on May 19, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

This three-part BritBox series, Towards Zero is set in 1930s England, based upon the 1944 Agatha Christie’s eponymous novel. It opens with Lady Tressilian’s lawyer, Frederick Treves (Clarke Peters), giving a warning, a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of events to come: “Every murder has its moment of origin, its point...

Wicked– Behind the Curtain?

Written by Diana Paul on May 13, 2025. Posted in movie reviews.

In this highly original prequel to The Wizard of Oz, (based upon Gregory Maguire’s novel, Wicked), we have the portrayal of Elphaba’s childhood, in order to understand her later incarnation as the Wicked Witch of the West. Wicked opens with the family drama engulfing Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo). Her harsh father, who...

The Gardener–Root Rot??

Written by Diana Paul on April 28, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

In this six-episode Spanish psychological thriller (now #3 on Netflix), we see two mother-son pairs who are cold-blooded killers. The Gardener (Spanish: El Jardinero) showcases a quiet studious young gardener, Elmer, who lives with his mother, China, owner of a nursery. He has frontal lobe damage from a car accident. Avoiding a...

Jewel in the Palace–Shining Through

Written by Diana Paul on April 15, 2025. Posted in Television reviews.

Based on a true story about the first woman physician in Korea, Jewel in the Palace (2003) takes the viewer on a 54-episode journey. Part melodrama, part court-intrigue, part-Shakespearean. An orphaned little girl, Jang Geum, born of aristocratic parents who were betrayed at eighteenth century court, finds herself homeless and...