Tag: Netflix

Colors of Evil: Red—Blood and Rage

Written by Diana Paul on August 18, 2024. Posted in movie reviews.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Poor Things–The Lucky Devils

Written by Diana Paul on May 6, 2024. Posted in movie reviews.

Poor Things, starring Emma Stone in her 2024 Academy Award-winning role, is a feminist Frankenstein-like tale based upon Alasdair’s 1992 eponymous novel. Opening with emotionally and physically scarred mad scientist Godwin (“God”) Baxter (Willem Defoe) admiring his creation, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) on the operating table, we know immediately that God’s sinister surgery has produced a freak. He has given the gift of life back to Bella (ironically, “the beautiful”), now reborn after she jumped off the London Bridge. Pregnant before committing...

Queen Charlotte–A Royal Prequel

Written by Diana Paul on December 11, 2023. Posted in Television reviews. No Comments on Queen Charlotte–A Royal Prequel

Some may dislike misconstruing the history of great female leaders–or any history, for that matter, for the sake of entertainment. Queen Charlotte, the newly created Netflix series by Shonda Rhimes, is a rollicking reimagining of the Regency period of King George III and Queen Charlotte. It follows from the three-seasons’ blockbuster series. Bridgerton. Since watching the opening episode of Bridgerton in which the magnetic Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) presides over a competition to select the most eligible maidens for courting marriage proposals, Queen Charlotte has become...