Tag: Netflix

“The Life Ahead” –And Then the End

Written by Diana Paul on March 7, 2021. Posted in movie reviews. 2 Comments on “The Life Ahead” –And Then the End

This 2020 Italian drama stars Sophia Loren in an adaptation of the Romain Gary novel, The Life Before Us. Directed by Sophia Loren’s son, Edoardo Ponti, The Life Ahead is the third film based on Gary’s novel. The Life Ahead has two main characters: Madame Rosa, an octogenarian ex-prostitute and...

“Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am”–Dissembling the American Dream

Written by Diana Paul on February 22, 2021. Posted in Film Festivals, movie reviews. 1 Comment on “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am”–Dissembling the American Dream

Toni Morrison (1931-2019), the 1993 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, was a complex artist who did not hold back from confronting the worst of human history. The documentary, Toni Morrison: Pieces I Am, is a historical panorama of a slice of history dating from the 1930’s until the conclusion of the film in...

“Retribution”–Karma is a Beast

Written by Diana Paul on December 7, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews, Unhealed Wound.

Retribution ( a 2016 BBC production originally titled “One of Us”) opens with a horrific double murder, which will tear apart the lives of two families, the Douglases and the Elliots. They are friends who live side-by-side in the isolated Scotland Highlands hamlet of Braeston. The atmospherically...

“Richard Jewell”–A Hidden Gem

Written by Diana Paul on November 30, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on “Richard Jewell”–A Hidden Gem

In Richard Jewell, a 2019 Clint Eastwood docudrama, Richard Jewell (played by relative unknown Paul Walter Hauser) , is first adored as a hero for thwarting the bombing of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. But “alternative facts” and frenzied media coverage turn against him. His daily life is turned upside down when...

“Belgravia”– Downton Abbey REDUX

Written by Diana Paul on September 7, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews. 1 Comment on “Belgravia”– Downton Abbey REDUX

Belgravia, based on “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes’ 2016 novel of the same name, opens two days before the Battle of Waterloo at an aristocratic ball. Two London families—the Earl (Tom Wilkinson) and Countess of Brockenhurst (Harriet Walter) and the up-and-coming merchants, Anne (Tamsin...

“The Good Liar”–A Story Within a Story

Written by Diana Paul on August 31, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 2 Comments on “The Good Liar”–A Story Within a Story

The Good Liar, a 2019 crime thriller, based on the titular novel by Nicholas Searle, is a cat-and-mouse plot featuring a septuagenarian wealthy widow, Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) and an octogenarian con artist Roy Courtnay (Ian McKellen). They meet on a first date scheduled through a dating app for...