Tag: Kate Winslet

“The Dressmaker”–Quirky Down-Under Drama

Written by Diana Paul on January 17, 2022. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 2 Comments on “The Dressmaker”–Quirky Down-Under Drama

Based upon Rosalie Ham’s novel by the same name, The Dressmaker (2015) gives us an opening scene in which 10-year-old Tilly Dunnage is being bullied by classmate Stewart Pettyman, the mayor’s son, and a group of boys in Dungatar, a town in the Australian outback. With little investigation she is sent...

“Blackbird” (2019)–The Final Flight

Written by Diana Paul on November 15, 2021. Posted in movie reviews.

In this timely and sensitive film, three generations get together for Christmas dinner–instead of Thanksgiving, even though it actually is Thanksgiving. As often happens in real-life family gatherings as well as in Blackbird, there will be dysfunction, a farrago scattered within warm laughter about shared memories and...

“Mare of Easttown”–Living with the Unacceptable

Written by Diana Paul on July 12, 2021. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 5 Comments on “Mare of Easttown”–Living with the Unacceptable

Mare of Easttown, a seven-episode HBOMax mini-series, we watch a mother, Mare Sheehan (the remarkable Kate Winslet) attempting to come to terms with her unexpressed and unresolved grief over the death of her young adult son, Kevin. She is also a detective living in Easttown, a working-class suburb of Philadelphia, who is...

“Ammonite”–Two Women Shedding Their Shell

Written by Diana Paul on May 3, 2021. Posted in movie reviews. 2 Comments on “Ammonite”–Two Women Shedding Their Shell

This highly original biopic of a little-known woman scientist highlights the obscurity in which women of renown nevertheless hid in plain sight. Ammonite, set in the coastal village of Lyme Regis, in 1840s England, chronicles the intense relationship between the acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter and paleontologist...

“Contagion”–Infects Us All

Written by Diana Paul on May 4, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on “Contagion”–Infects Us All

Contagion With the tagline: “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anyone”, this B-rated movie “Contagion” (2011), directed by Stephen Soderbergh, is eerily prescient nine years later. A pandemic–“a novel virus”– is about to create havoc, beginning with the opening scene where Beth...

“Mildred Pierce”–Definitely NOT “Mommy Dearest”

Written by diana on July 21, 2011. Posted in movie reviews. 2 Comments on “Mildred Pierce”–Definitely NOT “Mommy Dearest”

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” King Lear bemoans in the famous Shakespearean scene. And so does Mildred Pierce as the mother who must suffer the unbearable pain of loving her decidedly unlovable elder daughter Veda. “Mildred Pierce”, the five-part HBO miniseries based on a...