Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the 2006 film “Inside Man”
March 6th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This starts as a bank robbery, becomes a hostage situation, and then finishes up as neither. Writer Russell Gewirtz attempts to come up with a clever plot but, in the end, it is just too beyond credulity. Nevertheless, any film directed by Spike Lee is worth seeing – although I found the flash forwards confusing. […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new blockbuster movie “Dune: Part Two”
March 3rd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
We’ve had to wait two years for the second part of French-Canadian co-writer and director Denis Villeneuve’s hugely ambitious screen version of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel of 1965. I took the opportunity to rewatch the first segment a few days before I viewed the second. As with “Part One”, I caught “Part Two” […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the 2020 film “The Courier”
February 18th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This espionage drama made little impact on its release because, at that time, we were just emerging from a global pandemic and cinemas were struggling to attract customers. Russia had not yet invaded Georgia and threatened to use nuclear weapons. But it is a film that is worth seeing because it is based on a […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (1)
A review of the 2022 film “Aftersun”
February 17th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
By the time that I caught up with this film, it had received 121 nominations and 33 awards, so the critics clearly adored it, and I wanted very much to do so too. I love to see new talent and this is the feature film debut of Scottish director, writer and producer Charlotte Wells. The […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the inspirational new film “Nyad”
February 12th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
How would anybody even think of swimming nonstop from Cuba to Florida? This is a 110-mile stretch of ocean bedevilled by powerful currents, sharks and jelly fish. American long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad knew better than anyone what would be involved and how impossible it would be. After all, when she was 28, she had tried […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review the new film “The Zone Of Interest”
February 11th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This is a really disturbing film about the greatest crime against humanity: the Holocaust of the Second World War. It is loosely based on the novel of the same name by British writer Martin Amis and it is both written and directed by Jonathan Glazer who is both British and Jewish. It is largely set […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “Society Of The Snow”
February 7th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was the chartered flight of a Fairchild FH-227D from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, that crashed in the Andes mountains on 13 October 1972. The flight was carrying 45 passengers and crew, including 19 members of the Old Christians Club rugby union team, along with their families, supporters and friends. […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “American Fiction”
February 4th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This is an African-American work in the sense that the source material (the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett), the writer and director (Cord Jefferson in a feature-film debut), almost all the actors, and the subject material are all African-American. But this is not “The Color Purple”; instead the message of the movie is that most […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “All Of Us Strangers”
February 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Paul Mescal) appear to be the only occupants of a new London tower block and, hesitantly at first, become lovers. But both, in their different ways, are troubled individuals. Adam wants to reconnect with the parents he lost in a car accident 30 years ago and, finds that when he […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “Leave The World Behind”
January 25th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
I was attracted to this Netflix offering by the impressive cast list: Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon. At first, it looked promising: an apocalyptic setting full of strange events, discordant sounds, and unusual camera angles. I kept waiting for the slow pace to pick up, for more dramatic sequences, and for a […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)