J Paul Johnson is Executive Editor and a writer-reviewer at Film Obsessive. A retired professor emeritus of film studies and an avid cinephile, collector, and curator, his interests range from classical Hollywood melodrama and genre films to world and independent cinemas and documentary.
I wasn’t quite sure exactly what to expect when queueing up the new Netflix series Maid. The Stephanie Land 2019 memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, on which Molly Smith Metzler’s series is based, is an affecting, important, and at times powerful read, an accounting of the young writer’s […] More
The following contains spoilers for Scenes from a Marriage Episode 4, “The Illiterates,” including discussion of its explicit sex and violence. When last we saw Jonathan (Oscar Isaac) and Mira (Jessica Chastain) at the end of Episode 3 of Hagai Levi’s updated Scenes from a Marriage, the couple’s relationship had fallen further apart, this time after […] More
The following contains spoilers for Scenes from a Marriage Episode 3, “The Vale of Tears” The first two episodes of writer-director Hagai Levi’s HBO adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s classic 1973 television series Scenes from a Marriage have made for a turbulent ride. Episode 1 depicted an unplanned pregnancy and an abortion; Episode 2, an extramarital affair, […] More
The following contains spoilers for Scenes from a Marriage Episode 2, “Poli” At the end of the first episode of writer-director Hagai Levi’s HBO prestige update of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Mira (Jessica Chastain) was left sobbing alone under the paper sheets of an antiseptic examination room, following her and husband Jonathan’s (Oscar Isaac) […] More
The following contains spoilers for Scenes from a Marriage Episode 1, “Innocence and Panic” From the very first moments of its initial episode, writer-director Hagai Levi’s modernized update of Ingmar Bergman’s classic 1973 television series Scenes from a Marriage signals a willingness to take risks. The remake—or as Levi calls it, “adaptation,”—opens with a behind-the-scenes […] More
With their stunning red-carpet arm-in-arm turn at the Venice Film Festival last week, actors and longtime friends Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac have been much in the public eye recently. The two co-star this week in director-writer Hagai Levi’s update of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. There, Chastain and Isaac will take on updated […] More
Naomi Osaka, the three-part Garrett Bradley-directed docuseries recently released on Netflix, should offer a compelling study. After all, its subject is a four-time Grand Slam champion, a lock for the Hall of Fame, currently the second-highest ranking woman, and poised this month to challenge for Olympic Gold in her native Japan. Osaka is also a […] More
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