Tag: Netflix

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, Wallace...

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 of...

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...

I Came By (2023)–Don’t Look

Written by Diana Paul on July 8, 2024. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on I Came By (2023)–Don’t Look

A dark psychological thriller, I Came By portrays two young working-class graffiti artists who wish to taunt the most privileged and wealthiest by tagging I Came By inside their mansions while they sleep. Toby (George McKay) and Jay (Percelle Ascott) view themselves as activists, not losers, fighting for social justice and a more equitable pay structure. The highly respected authority of the affluent, they hope, will be questioned and unraveled by their bold trespassing into the purportedly secure, safe, and protected abodes of the elite. One night, while breaking into...

Tokyo Vice (season 2)–American in Translation

Written by Diana Paul on June 20, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Tokyo Vice (season 2)–American in Translation

Based on an American reporter’s experience as a twenty-something neophyte journalist in Tokyo, Jake Adelstein, (Ansel Elgort from “Baby Driver”) is a cocky American. Living in Tokyo during college, Jake becomes fluent in Japanese, both spoken and written, in order to become a reporter for a major Japanese newspaper. He is the first non-Japanese to have such a position. In season 2 (see June 17, 2022 review of season 1) Jake continues his investigation of the Yakuza who control the police and the government. Again we see the unlikely partnership between the politically impractical...

Ripley (2024)–The One Who Got Away?

Written by Diana Paul on June 9, 2024. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Ripley (2024)–The One Who Got Away?

Based upon Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 classic, The Talented Mr. Ripley, this neo-noir remake reinterprets good and evil, survival and triumph, guilt and psychopathology. Tom Ripley is a young intelligent grifter residing in squalor in the 1960s, sharing a filthy bathroom with sewage backing up into the drain. Feeling destined for the best that money can buy, Ripley is determined to set out to live that life, leaving his small-time operation as a con-man in Brooklyn. We know little of his backstory except he was an orphan having been abandoned after the death of an...