Unhealed Wound – Page 2 – Unhealed Wound

Holdovers–No Home for the Holidays

Written by Diana Paul on August 4, 2024. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound.

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is a film in the style of “Dead Poets Society”. Set in a New England prep school, Barton Preparatory, sometime in the 1970s, the predominantly white students dominate what the school administration can do. A curmudgeonly, lonely instructor, Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), draws the short end of the straw and is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go: “the holdovers”. Although his self-constructed reputation has been to prepare the coddled, spoiled miscreants for a...

Two Sides of the Abyss–Cat and Mouse

Written by Diana Paul on July 29, 2024. Posted in Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on Two Sides of the Abyss–Cat and Mouse

A disturbing German psychological crime thriller, Two Sides of the Abyss (2023) opens with an obsessive, grieving police officer, Luise Berg (Anne Ratte-Polle), determined to re-incarcerate the murderer of her teenage daughter. Berg is outraged that Dennis Opitz (Anton Dreger) has been released early from prison. His psychiatric evaluation suggests he is completely rehabilitated. Berg believes otherwise and is obsessively driven to achieve justice. Other murders occur shortly after Dennis Opitz’s release, including a brutal murder in a...

What Happened to Monday?–A Weekly Menace

Written by Diana Paul on April 29, 2024. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on What Happened to Monday?–A Weekly Menace

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...

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. No Comments on Woman in the Wall–Imprisonment in the Magdalene Laundries

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...

Year of the Dragon 2024–February 10, 2024, through Jan. 28, 2025

Written by Diana Paul on February 5, 2024. Posted in Unhealed Wound. No Comments on Year of the Dragon 2024–February 10, 2024, through Jan. 28, 2025

Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! Good luck from dragon fire breathed into your lives with excitement and creativity! 2024 is the Year of the Wood Dragon. It is particularly a favorable time for change, growth, and progress. The combination of the dragon’s dynamic energy and the grounding and stabilizing influence of the wood element will inspire imagination, leadership, and the creation of new ideas. In general, the dragon is a harbinger of great fortune, yet unpredictable, regardless of what type of Dragon year we are in. Its mystery is...

My Top 12 Movies and Series for 2023

Written by diana on January 14, 2024. Posted in Unhealed Wound. 2 Comments on My Top 12 Movies and Series for 2023

While we are all going into our fourth year of Covid, many of us craved new content to watch, and felt like there weren’t as many good movies and series to choose from. Certainly, the screenwriters’ strike contributed to the dearth of content. Well, this year I still have twelve to recommend. Some are less well-known and under-the-radar. Also, there seemed to be more selections from DEI producers and writers, for a welcomed change! Here are the reviews I wrote this past year with the criteria that they were available online. Of the 48 reviews I...