Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the classic 1975 film “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”
November 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This classic film won all five of the top Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Screenplay plus Best Director (the Czech Milos Forman), Best Actor (Jack Nicholson as rebellious inmate Randle P McMurphy) and Best Actress (Louise Fletcher as the acidic Nurse Ratchet). It is based on the best-selling novel by Ken Kesey, which he […]
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A review of the new film “The Room Next Door”
October 29th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
An internationally acclaimed director: the Spanish Pedro Almodovar making his first English-language film in his distinguished canon of 23 movies and one where he is writer as well as director. Two very talented actresses: Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore who are rarely off the scene in what is effectively an impressive two-hander. A serious social […]
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A review of the new film “The Outrun”
September 29th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Think you have problems? Well, 30 year old Scottish Rona is coping with a traumatic childhood, a bipolar father, an evangelical mother, the break-up of a relationship, a serious addiction to alcohol and acute depression, plus the wildness, windiness and loneliness of an island in Orkney. This could, so easily, have been a misery movie, […]
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A review of “The Talented Mr Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith
September 27th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Crime fiction is a massively popular genre, but I generally avoid it. I made an exception for this 1955 psychological thriller because it has become such a well-established classic: it won a number of awards, it resulted in four sequels, and it has been the subject of many radio, television and film adaptations. I thoroughly […]
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A review of the 1973 ‘classic’ film “Zarzoz”
September 19th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
It may be a bit of stretch to call the science fiction tale “Zardoz” a classic but, over the last 50 years, it has certainly become something of a cult favourite. I’ve seen it on the big screen three timse: first, on its release at the Odeon in Leicester Square; second, in the early 1980s […]
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A review of “The Old Man And The Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
September 17th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Santiago is an experienced but elderly fisherman in a Cuban fishing village who has had a prolonged run of bad luck, having failed in 84 consecutive days to catch anything. His luck is about to change dramatically, but at what cost and with what consequence? This novella of less than 100 pages won Hemingway the […]
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A review of a new bio-pic on the life of American war photographer Lee Miller
September 15th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
For British actress Kate Winslet, it has been a nine-year passion project to bring to the big screen the story of American war photographer Lee Miller (1907-1977). It was a remarkable life: after working as a fashion model in New York and a fashion photographer in Paris, during World War II she served as war […]
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A review of the classic 1949 film “The Third Man”
September 10th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
We tend to think of film noir as primarily a genre emanating from America and typically set in Los Angeles, but this classic of the genre is a British production shot on location in post-war Vienna. Written for the screen by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed, the cast is a mixture of American (Joseph Cotton […]
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A review of the classic novel “Goodbye To Berlin” by Christopher Isherwood
September 6th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Isherwood has long been a classic and was the inspiration for the musical and the film “Cabaret”. In many respects, it is an unusual novel. It is substantially autobiographical, based on the author’s time in the German capital during the dying days of the Weimar Republic in 1929-1931. The […]
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A review of “The Great Gatsby” by F Scott Fitzgerald
August 25th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
By the time that I read this work published in 1925, it had long been a candidate for ‘the Great American Novel’ and had been filmed no less than four times (I’ve seen the 1974 and 2013 versions). Ostensibly, it is an American Jazz Era story of the obsessive love exhibited by the enigmatic, new-rich […]
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