Tag: Nicole Kidman

“Roar”–Hear My Voice

Written by Diana Paul on May 10, 2022. Posted in Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on “Roar”–Hear My Voice

Roar is a new Apple mini-series, a show-and-tell of eight feminist vignettes based upon Cecelia Ahern’s 2018 short story anthology. Highlighting the unexpected onslaught of devastating events from family, friends, corporations, and community, Roar attempts to address what women are trying to express about themselves. The opening graphic–a feminist scream of a vulva-suggesting mouth stretching wide inside of a rose–perhaps says it best. Hear my voice! Each of the self-contained episodes begins with the title “The Woman Who…”...

“Being the Ricardos”–Making America Great Again

Written by Diana Paul on January 24, 2022. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments on “Being the Ricardos”–Making America Great Again

Academy-Award nominated Being the Ricardos (2021) opens in the the year 1939 with a handsome 22-year old Cuban singer named Desi Arnaz (played by Javier Bardem), touring the country with his orchestra. After Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi fall in love and marry, Desi continues to have modest success on tour while Lucille struggles with bit parts in low-budget films. After ten years trying to breakthrough to stardom, Lucille turns to radio, and with “My Favorite Husband”, finds a popular medium for her comic timing. CBS asks her to...

“Nine Perfect Strangers”–A Hot Mess

Written by Diana Paul on September 29, 2021. Posted in Television reviews. 1 Comment on “Nine Perfect Strangers”–A Hot Mess

Nine Perfect Strangers is based on the Liane Moriarty novel by the same name. Starring Nicole Kidman as Masha, a spiritual therapist, she is reputed to heal all wounds of her wealthy clients at her wellness retreat, Tranquillum. Following closely after the release of White Lotus (see my August 17, 2021 review), the same territory is explored: why do uber-rich white people seem so unhappy? There is the damaged novelist (Melissa McCarthy) who just can’t trust anyone. Another has a virulent past of drug addiction (the superb Bobby Cannavale as a physically damaged...

“The Undoing”–Deeds Undone

Written by Diana Paul on December 14, 2020. Posted in Television reviews. 4 Comments on “The Undoing”–Deeds Undone

This HBO original mini-series, The Undoing, is a police procedural based upon the novel You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz. We observe the daily life of a highly successful New York therapist, Grace Fraser (Nicole Kidman), a specialist in marriage counseling, as well her husband, Jonathan (Hugh Grant), a successful pediatric oncologist. Their teenage son Henry attends an elite private school which receives generous donations from Grace’s father (Donald Sutherland). At a school fundraiser Grace...

“The Goldfinch”–Art and Loss

Written by Diana Paul on September 15, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Television reviews, Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on “The Goldfinch”–Art and Loss

Goldfinch (2020), based upon Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, tells the story of a young boy, Theo ( the astonishing Oakes Fegley), who is walking through galleries with his beloved mother at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They gaze at a Dutch Master painting of a chained bird, the Goldfinch, when a terrorist bomb goes off. Theo’s mother dies and he escapes the rubble, clutching the 17th-century masterpiece and a dying man’s insistence that he take his ring. The little boy’s life...

The Beguiled–Bewitched and Possessed

Written by diana on December 12, 2017. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 5 Comments on The Beguiled–Bewitched and Possessed

In Sophia Coppola’s reinterpretation of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film by the same name, The Beguiled opens with an eleven-year-old girl gathering mushrooms in her straw basket deep in a quiet wood in Virginia. Conjuring an image of Little Red Riding Hood soon coming upon a big bad wolf, we see her discover the wounded John McBurney (Colin Farrell), a Union soldier in the midst of the Civil War. The child decides to take him back to her girls’ boarding school. Headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) is reluctant but feels a moral obligation to tend to him. Edwina (Kirsten...