movie reviews – Unhealed Wound

Wicked– Behind the Curtain?

Written by Diana Paul on May 13, 2025. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on Wicked– Behind the Curtain?

In this highly original prequel of 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 is the renowned governor of Oz, has no love for Elphaba, only for her younger sister Nessarose, who has suffered a tragic childhood catastrophe. Elphaba is highly analytical, studious, and courageously...

Descendant–The Last Slave Ship

Written by Diana Paul on March 16, 2025. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on Descendant–The Last Slave Ship

Descendant is a National Geographic-produced documentary about their mission to discover the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to bring African people to the US. The Clotilda arrived in Mobile Bay, Alabama in 1859 carrying 110 men, women, and children as cargo. The Clotilda was illegally transporting these people. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807 was flaunted and the slave trade continued even after the Civil War ended. Hoping to remain under the radar, the owners of the Clotilda set the ship afire to destroy evidence and avoid possible criminal...

A Real Pain–Heartache

Written by Diana Paul on March 9, 2025. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on A Real Pain–Heartache

Somehow imagine a comedic road-trip between two polar-opposite young cousins–David and Benji– to Auschwitz. That is A Real Pain, starring Jesse Eisenberg (“Social Network”) and Kieran Culkin (of “Succession”). The two cousins are given an all-expenses paid trip to Poland by their now deceased grandmother to honor her survival from Auschwitz and to remember the unthinkable. David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin) are not as close as they once were growing up together in New York. Both are fond of their grandmother and grieving for her. David is now gainfully employed, has...

The Piano Lesson–A Cacophony

Written by Diana Paul on March 3, 2025. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on The Piano Lesson–A Cacophony

Adapted from August Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Piano Lesson (2024) opens with Mississippi slaver Robert Sutter (David Atkinson) trading two enslaved brothers for a piano to give to his wife at the onset of the Civil War. Fast forward to 1911 and brother Charles (Stephan James) steals the piano from enslaver Sutter’s grandson James and dies as a result. Now 1936, set in Philadelphia, another Charles,– Uncle Charles– and his brother, Uncle Doaker (Samuel Jackson) tolerate their niece and nephew–Boy Willie (John David Washington) and his sister Bernie...

One Hundred Years of Solitude–An Alternative Universe?

Written by Diana Paul on February 25, 2025. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. No Comments on One Hundred Years of Solitude–An Alternative Universe?

One Hundred Years Of Solitude (1967) by the Colombian Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a masterpiece of magical realism, telling the story of seven generations of the Buendía family. Sprawling over a century, the tragic circumstances in a utopian conceived town–Macondo–are revealed, where isolation as a community at first protects them from conflict and greed. But the Buendía family cannot escape its fate: the curse of generations of love, betrayal, and forbidden sex. In the opening scene (to be bookended at the end of the eight-episode Netflix series)...

Emilia Pérez–A Gender Bender

Written by Diana Paul on February 10, 2025. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on Emilia Pérez–A Gender Bender

Emilia Perez was Inspired by both Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute and by the opera libretto written by French director Jacques Audiard. The movie also won the 2024 Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and multiple Golden Globes for a musical drama. Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón of Mexican telenovela fame) is a former Mexican cartel leader. Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, who fakes Manitas’s death in order to become her true self as a woman. Rita Mora Castro (Zoe Saldaña) primarily defends drug lords, those guilty of domestic violence, and murderers. Drug lord...