Tag: Netflix

Zero Day–Weaponizing Cyberspace

Written by Diana Paul on March 24, 2025. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Zero Day–Weaponizing Cyberspace

In this Netflix mini-series starring Robert DeNiro, a national security cyber-crisis challenges the US government and its citizenry to face unseen cyber terrorists. Are they domestic or Russian? Zero Day explores both possibilities. A “zero-day” vulnerability is a flaw in software or hardware that is unknown to the vendor or developers, meaning there’s no patch or fix available to address it. There are “zero days” to fix the weaponizing of cyberspace because the hackers have already exploited all possible solutions. Enter George Mullen (Robert...

The Piano Lesson–A Cacophony

Written by Diana Paul on March 3, 2025. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on The Piano Lesson–A Cacophony

Adapted from August Wilson’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Piano Lesson (2024) opens with Mississippi slaver Robert Sutter (David Atkinson) trading two enslaved brothers for a piano to give to his wife at the onset of the Civil War. Fast forward to 1911 and brother Charles (Stephan James) steals the piano from enslaver Sutter’s grandson James and dies as a result. Now 1936, set in Philadelphia, another Charles,– Uncle Charles– and his brother, Uncle Doaker (Samuel Jackson) tolerate their niece and nephew–Boy Willie (John David Washington) and his sister Bernie...

One Hundred Years of Solitude–An Alternative Universe?

Written by Diana Paul on February 25, 2025. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. No Comments on One Hundred Years of Solitude–An Alternative Universe?

One Hundred Years Of Solitude (1967) by the Colombian Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a masterpiece of magical realism, telling the story of seven generations of the Buendía family. Sprawling over a century, the tragic circumstances in a utopian conceived town–Macondo–are revealed, where isolation as a community at first protects them from conflict and greed. But the Buendía family cannot escape its fate: the curse of generations of love, betrayal, and forbidden sex. In the opening scene (to be bookended at the end of the eight-episode Netflix series)...

Black Doves–”Slow Horses” meets “The Americans”?

Written by Diana Paul on December 30, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. 2 Comments on Black Doves–”Slow Horses” meets “The Americans”?

The six-episode Netflix mini-series Black Doves is being promoted as a Christmas holiday spy thriller, full of such fun scenes as explosions, intense gun-fight street battles and stylish upper-class British banter to mix up with the tinsel and ornaments. Helen Webb (Keira Knightley of “Pirates of the Carribean”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Bend It Like Beckham”) is an unlikely agent in a highly secretive espionage group called the Black Doves. Selling intel to whomever is willing to pay for it, Black Doves has no allegiance to the British. Married to the Defense Minister,...

Paranoid–Someone’s After Me

Written by Diana Paul on December 9, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Paranoid–Someone’s After Me

Paranoid, a British police procedural crime series (2016) set in the small town of Woodmere, opens with a brutal murder of a general practitioner pushing her young son on a swing in a public park. The woman is murdered in public by an unknown man in a black hoodie. Who could be the murderer? And what can the witnesses sitting in the park provide as clues to a possible suspect? Mysterious notes sent by a “Ghost Detective” contribute valuable evidence for identifying and tracking down the murderer. Three detectives–Nina Suresh (Indira Varma...

Colors of Evil: Red—Blood and Rage

Written by Diana Paul on August 18, 2024. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on Colors of Evil: Red—Blood and Rage

The Netflix film Colors of Evil: Red (2024) is adapted from a novel by Polish author Małgorzata Oliwia Sobczak. This Polish police procedural opens with the body of a young woman, brutally murdered and mutilated, washing onto the beach, surrounded by police and the forensic doctor. The circumstances of her death indicate Monica was the victim of a psychopath, a sadistic serial killer with horrific, heinous sexual proclivities. Rookie prosecutor Leopold Bilski (Jakub Gierszal), perhaps the last honest cop in town, is determined to do the right thing, emulating his father...