Author: Diana Paul

Living–A Life Worth Remembering

Written by Diana Paul on July 31, 2023. Posted in Unhealed Wound.

Inspired by the Japanese cinematic masterpiece “Ikiru” (“to live”) by Akira Kurosawa, Living is set in a post-war 1950s London office, the Department of Public Works, responsible for issuing building permits. In a stultifying, paper-shuffling bureaucratic agency, septuagenarian Williams (Bill Nighy in his 2023 Academy Award...

Trial by Fire–A Personal Ordeal

Written by Diana Paul on July 26, 2023. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews.

Trial by Fire, based on the memoir written by Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy, explores the lack of legal accountability and justice following the Uphaar fire in a Delhi movie theater in 1997. Fifty-nine people were killed, mostly families treating themselves to an afternoon at the movies. The...

Chloe–A Fatal Attraction

Written by Diana Paul on July 17, 2023. Posted in movie reviews.

Chloe is a 2009 erotic sleeper of a remake of the 2003 French thriller, “Nathalie,” and directed by Atom Egoyan. A middle-aged affluent couple, Catherine (Julianne Moore) and David (Liam Neeson), seem, on first appearance, to be a happily married professional couple. Catherine is a caring and devoted gynecologist and David is a...

The Last Thing He Told Me—Things Unsaid

Written by Diana Paul on July 9, 2023. Posted in Television reviews.

Based on the popular novel by Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me is an Apple+ mini-series in eight episodes. It tells the story of Hannah, a newly married second wife (Jennifer Garner) and her teenage stepdaughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice), who go in search of the suddenly gone-missing husband and...

The Whale–- Moby Dick Revisited

Written by Diana Paul on June 26, 2023. Posted in movie reviews.

The Whale is an adaptation of Sam Hunter’s play, directed by Darren Aronofsky (“Requiem for a Dream”, “Black Swan”, and “mother!”). The opening scene zooms in on a middle-aged, morbidly obese professor, Charlie (the Academy-Award winning role for Brendan Fraser) sitting in front of a computer in his...

A Man Called Otto–A Warm Kiss for the Soul

Written by Diana Paul on June 11, 2023. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on A Man Called Otto–A Warm Kiss for the Soul

In this Netflix movie we see a retelling of the bestselling Frederick Backman novel, A Man Called Ove, set in Pittsburgh instead of Sweden and with cultural shifts in narrative. Themes of aging, loneliness and depression from the loss of one’s soulmate, isolation and feelings of irrelevance from forced retirement all play front and center...