Paula Berman

Contributor

BSR Contributor Since January 16, 2014

Paula Berman is a writer based in Ithaca, New York.

By this Author

23 results
Page 1
Staring down death: Leonardo DiCaprio. (© 2015 - Twentieth Century Fox)

Inarritu's 'The Revenant'

We are all savages

The Revenant is an example of a microgenre, the Ghost Western, a film in which a tormented white, male protagonist must avenge himself so his ghost can rest.

Paula Berman

Articles 5 minute read
A less cuddly House: Clive Owen in "The Knick"

A look back at 2015's best television

Looking at my list of my 2015 favorites, I still see shows featuring tortured men on the moral razor’s edge, torn between the two sides of their nature — but the cracks are beginning to show.

Paula Berman

Articles 6 minute read
A father-daughter moment: Qualley and Theroux. (Photo © 2015 HBO)

‘The Leftovers’ on HBO

Let the mystery be

The change of scene in season two of The Leftovers jolted the show from a meditation on grief into a crisis of conscience — and gave me hope that it won’t spiral into the incoherent plotting of creator Damon Lindelof’s previous show, Lost.

Paula Berman

Articles 5 minute read
Hannibal + Will 4ever. (Photo by NBC - © 2014 NBCUniversal Media, LLC)

Bryan Fuller's 'Hannibal' (second review)

Sympathy for the devil

Hannibal is a retelling of Goethe’s Faust in which FBI profiler Will Graham/Faust and Dr. Hannibal Lecter/Mephistopheles fall in love.

Paula Berman

Articles 7 minute read
Two troubled antiheroes: Vaughn and Farrell. (Photo by Lacey Terrell - © 2015 HBO)

The failure of 'True Detective'’s second season

The show we deserve?

The tagline for the second season of True Detective was “We get the world we deserve.” I’m not sure what I did to deserve this mess of a season, but whatever it was, I’m sorry.

Paula Berman

Articles 5 minute read
Another kind of modern family: Louis C.K., Ursula Parker, and Hadley Delany in “Louie” (© Copyright 2015, FX Networks.)

The era of niche TV

Does (audience) size matter?

The Golden Age of TV may have ended with the finale of Mad Men, but that’s OK. There’s a new era of TV starting — the era of niche TV — and it may actually be better.

Paula Berman

Articles 5 minute read
Suzanne's creativity is unleashed. (All photos by Jojo Whilden - © 2014 Netflix)

Netflix’s ‘Orange Is the New Black,’ Season 3 (second review)

Faith and friendship

Much of the comedy in this season of Orange Is the New Black comes from mixing up the characters. New, unusual friendships make excellent use of the deep bench of supporting characters, many of whom are outcasts or invisible, or have lost their identity to groupthink.

Paula Berman

Articles 6 minute read
"Don, come home." (All photos © AMC)

The end of 'Mad Men'

The cynical redemption of Don Draper

If the purpose of the retreat is to figure out who you really are, how you feel about that, and how to recognize love, then isn’t it an act of radical honesty and self-acceptance for Don to embrace himself as a person who works best when he spins his dreams into brilliant ad copy?

Paula Berman

Articles 6 minute read
Fembot or femme fatale? (photo by Eva Rinaldi via Creative Commons/Wikimedia)

The integrity of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian

In defense of Kimye

Enough with bashing Kanye West and Kim Kardashian — they're living the American dream.

Paula Berman

Essays 5 minute read
Are they really friends? Burgess and Kemper (© 2015 Netflix)

‘Kimmy Schmidt’ and ‘Broad City’ Take Manhattan

Both Kimmy Schmidt and Broad City feature socially awkward 20-something women struggling to thrive in New York City. That’s where the similarities end.

Paula Berman

Articles 5 minute read
Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything."

The case against Oscar-bait biographies

Bio(nit)pic

My beef with biopics goes way back to when I was 11 and Gandhi beat E.T. for Best Picture.

Paula Berman

Articles 6 minute read
A douche in a black GTO: Hawke (right) and Linklater. (© 2014 - IFC Films)

Richard Linklater’s ‘Boyhood’ (second review)

The inexplicable canonization of Boyhood

Linklater’s concept was ambitious, and I understand the urge to heap accolades on his inventiveness. I wish more established Hollywood filmmakers took such creative risks. But that alone was not enough to lift Boyhood up from an interesting experiment into a life-changing cinematic experience.

Paula Berman

Articles 5 minute read
Lashing out in violent, counterproductive ways: James Nesbitt in “The Missing” (Photo by Jules Heath - © New Pictures Limited/ Company Television Limited 2014)

'The Missing' and 'The Affair'

The child is gone

Only two serial programs in 2014 really made an impression on me: The Missing and The Affair. And unfortunately for my joie de vivre, both were about how the tragic loss of a child destroys the lives of his parents.

Paula Berman

Articles 5 minute read
A bust of Homo neanderthalensis by artist John Gurche in the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Reconsidering the Neanderthals

I’m a Neanderthal, you’re a Neanderthal

We’re the Borg of the primate world. We assimilate, not just knowledge, but whole societies — like that of the Neanderthals.

Paula Berman

Essays 5 minute read
Check the attic! (“The Conjuring,” 2013: Photo by Michael Tackett - © 2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved)

Haunted house movies

Haunted house, haunted family

Haunted house movies rely on tired old tropes because all the movies explore the same theme: a dysfunctional family and how its secrets tear it apart.

Paula Berman

Articles 6 minute read