Unhealed Wound – Page 3 – Passion for Art, Movies, and Culture

I Came By (2023)Don’t Look

Written by Diana Paul on July 8, 2024. Posted in movie reviews.

A dark psychological thriller, I Came By portrays two young working-class graffiti artists who wish to taunt the most privileged and wealthiest by tagging I Came By inside their mansions while they sleep. Toby (George McKay) and Jay (Percelle Ascott) view themselves as activists, not losers, fighting for social justice and a more equitable pay structure. The highly respected authority of the affluent, they hope, will be questioned and unraveled by their bold trespassing into the purportedly secure, safe, and protected abodes of the elite. One night, while breaking into...

Shōgun (2024)–Game of Thrones meets Last Kingdom

Written by Diana Paul on July 1, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

In this ten-episode Hulu mini-series, Shōgun, based upon James Clavell’s titular 1975 novel, we are introduced to the feudal society of Japan in the year 1600. When conflicts between ruling aristocratic clans have made the emperor impotent in maintaining control, chaos and coups threaten the very existence of peace and harmony among wealthy and powerful overlords. “Shōgun” means “commander-in-chief”, but more accurately, signifies the true power behind the throne. Becoming shogun is the end-game for a number of powerful warlords (daimyō –comparable to the noble class...

Tokyo Vice (season 2)–American in Translation

Written by Diana Paul on June 20, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

Based on an American reporter’s experience as a twenty-something neophyte journalist in Tokyo, Jake Adelstein, (Ansel Elgort from “Baby Driver”) is a cocky American. Living in Tokyo during college, Jake becomes fluent in Japanese, both spoken and written, in order to become a reporter for a major Japanese newspaper. He is the first non-Japanese to have such a position. In season 2 (see June 17, 2022 review of season 1) Jake continues his investigation of the Yakuza who control the police and the government. Again we see the unlikely partnership between the politically impractical...

Ripley (2024)–The One Who Got Away?

Written by Diana Paul on June 9, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

Based upon Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 classic, The Talented Mr. Ripley, this neo-noir remake reinterprets good and evil, survival and triumph, guilt and psychopathology. Tom Ripley is a young intelligent grifter residing in squalor in the 1960s, sharing a filthy bathroom with sewage backing up into the drain. Feeling destined for the best that money can buy, Ripley is determined to set out to live that life, leaving his small-time operation as a con-man in Brooklyn. We know little of his backstory except he was an orphan having been abandoned after the death of an...

Prisoner–Trapped with No Escape

Written by Diana Paul on May 28, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

In this six-episode Danish prison drama (2024), Prisoner, the action pops in the opening scene. Miriam (Sofie Gråbøl) is a veteran prison guard with some compassion for the inmates, perhaps the only one with human feelings for the incarcerated. Until Sammi (Youssef Wayne Hvidtfeldt), of Danish-Arab ethnicity: a new recruit who desires to support prisoners for the good of society at large. Henrik (David Dencik) is also a veteran prisoner guard, one who has manipulated the prison system for his own self-interest, taking a percentage of the drugs that sedate...

Lawman: Bass Reeves–A Truthful Western

Written by Diana Paul on May 19, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

This true untold story about the first Black US Marshall highlights Lawman Bass Reeves responsibilities for law enforcement in the Oklahoma Territories including Native lands. One of the most legendary lawmen in the Old West, Lawman: Bass Reeves (David Oyelowo) opens with Reeves heroically fighting in the Confederate army alongside his Texas slave owner on the eve of Reconstruction. Despite brutal circumstances and the lawlessness of racists and prairie vigilantes, Reeves struggles to be a man with integrity in the face of immoral institutions. Crisis after...