movie reviews – Page 3 – Unhealed Wound

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes–Singing in the Right Key

Written by Diana Paul on March 1, 2026. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes–Singing in the Right Key

Based on the 2020 novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, this prequel to “The Hunger Games” (2012) and the fifth installment in “The Hunger Games” film series won the 2024 People’s Choice Action Movie of the Year. Set more than sixty years before The Hunger Games trilogy, the fictional...

Sinners–Get Out of Limbo

Written by Diana Paul on February 8, 2026. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on Sinners–Get Out of Limbo

Sinners, directed and written by Ryan Coogler (most famously known for “Black Panther”), opens in a church consisting of mostly Black congregants in the Mississippi Delta. The year is 1932. Sammie (Miles Caton), a twenty-something young man in sharecropper overalls with brutal gashes on his left cheek, walks up to the front carrying...

City of Shadows–Throw Some Shade

Written by Diana Paul on February 2, 2026. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on City of Shadows–Throw Some Shade

Based on a Spanish novel by Aro Sáinz de la Maza, we see a man hanging off a balcony of a UNESCO World Heritage site, Casa Milá (Pedrera). His body has been set on fire. The murder victim is the CEO of a giant construction company and has profited from government contracts for housing and civic development. Barcelona, City of Shadows...

Ordeal by Innocence (2018)–Who is Blameless?

Written by Diana Paul on January 25, 2026. Posted in movie reviews.

Ordeal by Innocence opens in the luxurious library at Sunny Point, the estate of wealthy heiress Rachel Argyll (Anna Chancellor). On Christmas Day she is found face down in a pool of blood. Almost immediately their ne’er-do-well son Jack is charged with the murder, found guilty, and imprisoned. Evidence pointed to Jack’s...

My Top 25 Movies and Series of 2025

Written by Diana Paul on January 4, 2026. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews.

I have twenty-five films and series to recommend. These are dramas I watched in 2025, but many were produced much earlier. Some are less well-known and under-the-radar. Here are the reviews I wrote this past year with the criteria that they were available for streaming free. Of the 44 reviews I posted this year, these...

Wake Up Dead Man–A Holier-Than-Thou Mystery

Written by Diana Paul on December 29, 2025. Posted in movie reviews.

Wake Up Dead Man takes place in Chimney Rock, a small town in upstate New York, where a newly ordained Catholic priest named Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) has been assigned to work under Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). An aging, hateful right-wing cleric, Wicks has nothing but contempt for gay...