Amazon Original Series – Unhealed Wound

“Goliath” Season 4 (Finale)–Addiction

Written by Diana Paul on October 5, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 2 Comments

In this final season of Goliath we again see the still down-and-out “lemon lawyer” Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton) take on a giant corporation. This time it is an opioid mega-corporation, Zax Pharmaceuticals, and its billionaire CEO, George Zax (J.K. Simmons). In a fierce and lurid courtroom battle in San Francisco (eerily conjuring the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma in recent headlines), will McBride prevail? Season 4 opens with a flashback to Billy McBride, narrowly escaping death by gunshot. Billy’s mental...

“Underground Railroad”–Tracking US History

Written by Diana Paul on July 5, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment

Based upon the Pulitzer-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Underground Railroad, is produced and directed by Barry Jenkins (“Moonlighting”). This gripping portrayal is an allegorical account of slavery and the role it has played in American history from colonial times. The Underground Railroad, in the mid-1800s, was actually a network of safe houses and routes from the southern US up into Canada– with other routes to Mexico (which had abolished slavery decades earlier). The book and film re-imagine these escape routes and safe havens as an actual train...

“Tell Me Your Secrets”–Tell Me Your Lies

Written by Diana Paul on June 27, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment

In this Amazon Prime mini-series of ten episodes, Tell Me Your Secrets has three plots: 1) The main plot involves a woman named Karen Miller (Lily Rabe), who was arrested seven years ago as a presumed accomplice to her boyfriend, Kit (Xavier Samuel) for the brutal murders of nine women. She claims not to remember anything, due to trauma. 2) Mary Barlow (Amy Brenneman), a wealthy woman who has established a foundation to help find missing children, believes her own daughter, Theresa, was kidnapped by Karen Miller and Kit and is still alive. 3) John...

“Blow the Man Down”–Maine Down Under

Written by Diana Paul on April 19, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment

Premiering at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, Blow the Man Down is a film debut by writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy. It opens in Easter Cove, a small parochial fishing village along the coast of Maine, in a somewhat clichéd but contemporary riff on “Murder She Wrote”. We see a history of covering up secrets by the small town’s residents. And we listen to a chorus of fishermen sing “blow the man down” –referring to the shoving of a man to the bottom of a boat, either accidentally or on purpose. ...

Hanna–“Handmaid’s Tale” meets “Jack Ryan”

Written by diana on April 8, 2019. Posted in Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment

Hanna, starring Esme Creed-Miles On the surface Hanna (Amazon original series) might appear to be another conventional espionage thriller/dystopia about discovery of identity and revenge against those who hid the truth. However, this reinterpretation of the 2011 action movie starring Saoirse Ronan, is also a dark sci-fi treatise on fascism and violence in society. In this new release we follow an isolated teen (newcomer Esme Creed-Miles) with almost super-human powers. She learns both survival and assassin skills from her ex-government operative father (Joel Kinnamon),...

“Jack Ryan”– New Version of “Homeland”

Written by diana on September 28, 2018. Posted in Television reviews. Leave a Comment

This new undertaking (by Amazon Prime) of Tom Clancy’s blockbuster Jack Ryan series pays off big-time. John Krasinski as a boyish Jack Ryan adds unexpected dimension to this eight-episode series focused on a terrorist plot in Syria. If this is your genre, you will inevitably make a comparison with Clancy’s books and the older cinematic depictions of Jack Ryan. However, standing on its own, the new Jack Ryan series is riveting, albeit with some graphic violence and cultural stereotyping. Reluctantly drafted into being a CIA operative instead of a number-crunching budget...

Tag: Amazon Original Series