Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the streaming film “The Unforgivable”
September 18th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
This story started out in 2009 as a British miniseries written by Sally Wainwright and titled “Unforgiven”. Then, in 2012, it was turned into a film and transposed to the United States as a starring vehicle for Sandra Bullock who was a co-producer. Bullock plays a woman, released from prison after 20 years for killing […]
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A review of the new action movie “The Equalizer 3”
September 17th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I’ve been a fan of Denzel Washington since he played young Steve Biko In “Cry Freedom” in 1987. Back then, I would never have imagined that he would be portraying an action hero in his late 60s, but this is an actor with charisma as well as ability. Since 2001, when he starred in “Training […]
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A review of the new film “Love At First Sight”
September 16th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I guess that many would call this a chic-flic. After all, it’s directed by a woman, written by a woman, and based on a novel by a woman. But I’m a bit of a sucker for rom-coms, especially those filmed in my home city of London. I didn’t expect much from this Netflix offering but […]
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A review of “Act Of Oblivion” by Robert Harris
September 7th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Over a period of three decades, British novelist Robert Harris has written 15 bestselling novels, mostly works of historical fiction, many set in Ancient Rome or around the Second World War. “Act Of Oblivion” is the eighth that I have read. It is classic Harris but set in a different time period: the two decades […]
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A review of the 1953 classic film “Tokyo Story”
September 6th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
When film critics worldwide are polled on the best films ever made, this Japanese work directed and co-written by the famous Yasujiro Ozu usually comes in the top batch. It is a classic art house movie: black and white, slow, minimalist, portentous and shot in a very distinctive style (lots of static, low shots and […]
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A review of the new action movie “Heart Of Stone”
August 14th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Sadly, everything about this Netflix movie is contrived, starting with the title. Heart is the name of a super-powerful system of artificial intelligence, just like The Entity in the “Dead Reckoning” segment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise. Stone is the surname of the special agent at the heart of the plot (see what I did […]
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A review of the novel “Heat And Dust” by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
August 12th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
For a long time, I assumed that the author was of Indian ethnicity because of her name and her long association with film director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant. In fact, her parents were Polish Jews, she was born in German, and she came to England at the age of 12 when in 1939 […]
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A review of the 1983 film “Heat and Dust”
August 7th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
One of the great collaborative teams of British cinema was the trio of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and “Heat And Dust” was one of their most successful enterprises. Based on the eponymous novel by Jhabvala and set largely in northern India, it tells two parallel stories located in […]
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Word of the day: anabasis
August 5th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
The word means a military expedition or advance. I came across it in a book about the Czech Legion in Siberia at the end of the First World War: “Dreams Of A Great Small Nation”.
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A review of “Mission: Impossible -Dead Reckoning Part One”
August 4th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
It’s been a long time coming – and we still don’t have the complete story. Shooting of the latest IMF escapade has been interrupted so many times by Covid that the final budget is a reported $290M, making it one of the most expensive films ever, and delaying its release until five years after the […]
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