Tag: Amazon Prime

Saltburn–Class Wounds

Written by Diana Paul on April 1, 2024. Posted in movie reviews.

Saltburn is a 2023 highly original indie psychological thriller written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell (creator of “A Promising Young Woman”, see my March 25,2021 review). A brilliant middle-class Oxford student with few friends (except for one rather sadistic roommate), Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan from “Banshees of Inisherin”) has little appeal with women, but outsized ambitions to be popular with his fellow aristocratic students. A coming-of-age film this is not! Supernaturally handsome Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), befriends Oliver after Oliver...

Mr. and Mrs. Smith–Trust Issues

Written by Diana Paul on March 26, 2024. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews.

The mini-series, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which premiered in February of this year on Amazon Prime, is much more than a remake of the popular 2005 movie starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. While still anchored in a main plot of espionage hijinks, now the drama has been embedded within a rom-com infused by the chemistry between its charming leads, Donald Glover (John Smith) and Maya Erskine (Jane Smith). As two lonely, unemployed millennials, they independently agree to become secret agents for a mysterious organization requiring them to go undercover as a married...

The Burial–Reaching Beyond the Grave

Written by Diana Paul on October 30, 2023. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on The Burial–Reaching Beyond the Grave

The wealthy almost always have an impact on the financial decisions of the poor and on limiting their options to make informed choices. Combine that with the shameful racist history in the US and we have the new Amazon Prime release: The Burial. Based upon a true story, the opening scene features small business proprietor, Jeremiah O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones), celebrating his seventy-fifth birthday. Surrounded by his loving wife and many adult children and grandchildren, all is not well for Jeremiah. His Biloxi, Mississippi funeral home business of eight branches...

Women Talking–In the Name of Religion

Written by Diana Paul on September 25, 2023. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on Women Talking–In the Name of Religion

Directed by Sarah Polley, based on the titular novel by Miriam Toews, Women Talking is inspired by a true story of horrific mass rapes in a small Mennonite community. Intentionally ambiguous with regard to time and place, the religious colony in Women Talking is cut off from the modern world: any place in America full of barns, overalls and horse-drawn-carts will do. Women Talking explores the wide-ranging challenges and obstacles faced by women when their bodies and dignity have been ravaged. Co-produced by Frances McDormand (“Macbeth”....

Death on the Nile–No Lifesaver Needed

Written by Diana Paul on September 18, 2023. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on Death on the Nile–No Lifesaver Needed

Death on the Nile, a 2022 remake of Agatha Christie’s 1937 classic novel, is directed by and stars Kenneth Branagh. Cinematic adaptations from books, especially from beloved authors like Agatha Christie are only for the intrepid. And Branagh is on a path to making a series of Christie screen adaptations, starting with his first film, “Murder on the Orient Express (2017).” In the opening scene the young Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, devises a brilliant strategy to defeat the German forces in the trenches of World War One. Seriously wounded, his face scarred, his fiancée...

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart– Planting Seeds of Power

Written by Diana Paul on September 10, 2023. Posted in Television reviews. 1 Comment on The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart– Planting Seeds of Power

This seven-episode mini-series, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, is based upon Holly Ringland’s novel of the same name. Little Alice Hart (Alyla Brown), a nine-year old girl, suffers a very violent set of family circumstances living in the outback of Australia. Her father is abusive , especially when Alice wants to feel somewhat safe around him. Always guarded, the mother she adores is almost an angel for the child’s living hell. When her parents die in a horrific fire, Alice finds her life changing dramatically when she is sent to live with her grandmother, June Hart (Sigourney...