HBO – Unhealed Wound

“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” (2019)

Written by Diana Paul on November 7, 2021. Posted in movie reviews. 2 Comments

This 2019 HBO documentary, directed and produced by Alex Gibney (of “Enron: The Smartest Men in the Room” and “Taxi to the Dark Side”) opens in 2014 with Theranos, a startup in blood-testing technology. The Inventor is filmed at Theranos’s spectacular Silicon Valley chic headquarters in Palo Alto. Its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, is hailed as the youngest self-made female billionaire by Fortune magazine. With a multi-billion-dollar valuation, and a recent $400 million investment from many Trump supporters (the Waltons,...

“The Undoing”–Deeds Undone

Written by Diana Paul on December 14, 2020. Posted in Television reviews. 4 Comments

This HBO original mini-series, The Undoing, is a police procedural based upon the novel You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz. We observe the daily life of a highly successful New York therapist, Grace Fraser (Nicole Kidman), a specialist in marriage counseling, as well her husband, Jonathan (Hugh Grant), a successful pediatric oncologist. Their teenage son Henry attends an elite private school which receives generous donations from Grace’s father (Donald Sutherland). At a school fundraiser Grace...

My Top 19 Movies and TV Series for 2017

Written by diana on January 18, 2018. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 8 Comments

Here are the reviews I wrote this year with the criteria that they were available online or were at local movie theaters, although not necessarily widely distributed. Of the 45 reviews, here are my favorites. It was much more difficult than in past years, since this year was absolutely stunning as was 2016. Both television and cinema have continued to produce phenomenal story-telling. The following list is not ranked, only grouped by genre. I could not limit my choices to only 10. INDIES and FOREIGN CINEMA 1) “Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri”: A BOLO for Justice”...

The Wizard of Lies–Decades of Untruth

Written by diana on June 12, 2017. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments

This HBO TV drama (which premiered on May 20, 2017) chronicles the infamous Wall Street meltdown of financier Bernie Madoff's $64 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, perhaps the largest financial fraud in US history.

“The Night Of”—A Tale of Darkness

Written by diana on August 14, 2016. Posted in Television reviews. 5 Comments

“The Night Of” HBO series In the mini-series “The Night Of,” currently on HBO, the opening scene showcases a mysterious and beautiful young woman who dies and someone goes to trial. Will justice prevail? “The Night Of” combines elements of the popular podcast “Serial”’ and the TV series“Oz”. “The Night Of” depicts the horrific conditions endured by Naz Khan on Ryker’s Island, reminding the viewer of “Oz”. And half-truths and damning evidence suggest the Serial podcast about a young Pakistani American teenager, Adnan Syed. Did he or didn’t he—that is the question in both....

Tag: HBO

“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” (2019)

“The Undoing”–Deeds Undone

My Top 19 Movies and TV Series for 2017

The Wizard of Lies–Decades of Untruth

“The Night Of”—A Tale of Darkness

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