Tag: HBOMax

A Different Man–Beauty in the Eyes of the Beholder

Written by Diana Paul on October 13, 2025. Posted in movie reviews.

In A Different Man (written and directed by Aaron Schimberg) a struggling actor, Edward (Sebastian Stan) has a genetic disorder, neurofibromatosis, that has given him disfiguring tumors all over his face and body. Moreover, the tumors will eventually lead to blindness and death. Hardly the ideal look for someone who desires to...

Continue reading

Civil War–Battleground States

Written by Diana Paul on October 21, 2024. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 2 Comments on Civil War–Battleground States

In the 2024 film Civil War a van of war correspondents travels undercover from New York City to Washington DC to bear witness to the civil war between a dictator/president (Nick Offerman of “Parks and Recreations” fame) and violent secessionists. There is no explanation of why there is a civil war, who is fighting...

Continue reading

The Sympathizer–Displaced Sympathies

Written by Diana Paul on July 22, 2024. Posted in Television reviews.

Based upon the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer opens in April 1975, during the fall of Saigon. This American War– or Vietnam War, depending upon perspective,– unflinchingly depicts the ignominious and callous withdrawal of American troops and their Vietnamese aids on...

Continue reading

“The Staircase”—Entryway into Murder?

Written by Diana Paul on July 11, 2022. Posted in Television reviews.

The Staircase (HBO Max released May 2022), loosely based on the 2004 French documentary by the same name, (see my October 2017 review of the Netflix documentary mini-series) dramatizes the death of wife Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette), and the subsequent indictment and conviction for her murder by her husband, the novelist...

Continue reading

“The Batman” (2022)–Another Dark Knight

Written by Diana Paul on April 26, 2022. Posted in movie reviews.

In this newest movie in the Batman series, simply called The Batman, we see a completely different Batman from the classic Christopher Nolan trilogy starring Christian Bale. In “The Batman,” director Matt Reeves has redefined Batman and his alterego Bruce Wayne. In this newest of interpretations, a very young...

Continue reading

The Eyes of Tammy Faye–A New Perspective

Written by Diana Paul on April 12, 2022. Posted in movie reviews.

In the biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, we see Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain in her Academy Award winning role) and her husband Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) as pioneers of televangelism,”sermons on the screen”. Opening in the 1950’s with two young, fervent small-town Christians believing in the...

Continue reading