Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the 1936 Chaplin classic “Modern Times”
January 22nd, 2023 by Roger Darlington
This is absolutely a Charlie Chaplin film: he wrote, produced and directed it, he composed the music, and he is the star who has one of the few and small speaking roles (actually it is a gibberish version of a song). Given the date, it should really have been a work of sound, but mostly […]
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A review of the classic Spanish film “The Spirit Of The Beehive” (1973)
January 22nd, 2023 by Roger Darlington
This Spanish-language film is the archetypical art house product and critics adore it. It is very, very slow and very, very opaque and I confess that I found it hard work, although I admired the haunting cinematography with its stark terrains and muted colours. It was director Victor Erice’s first film and the key to […]
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A review of the recent film “The Wonder”
January 18th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Set in the deeply religious rural Ireland of 1862, the wonder is that a local child called Anna O’Donnell (an impressive performance from young Kila Lord Cassidy) has apparently not eaten for four months but is still in good health. Florence Pugh is excellent as Elizabeth, an English nurse hired by a council of local […]
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A review of the new film “Empire Of Light”
January 17th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I’m always going to watch something from British director Sam Mendes and recently his output has been so variable: after the Bond movies “Skyfall and “Spectre” and the war film “1917”, we have an altogether different offering. I had originally thought that it would be a homage to cinema, something like a British version of […]
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A review of the classic Japanese film “Rashomon”
January 13th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Set in Japan in the deeply troubled 8th century, this black and white film tells a story which proves to be anything other than black and white: how a samurai and his wife are set upon by a bandit, who rapes the wife and murders the husband, all while being observing by a passing woodcutter. […]
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A review of the new film “The Pale Blue Eye”
January 8th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
This Netflix movie – an adaptation of a novel – is set at the the US military academy at West Point in 1860 and the odd title is from a line of poetry. Written and directed by Scott Cooper, it starts as a slow criminal procedure but, as it picks up pace, it acquires elements […]
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A review of the 1963 classic film “The Leopard”
January 6th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
This is a film adaptation of a famous Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The setting is Sicily in the 1860s and the story is the challenge to the power and lifestyle of the upper class presented by the ‘Risorgimento’ movement of Garibaldi and his followers. There are several versions of this classic film […]
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Word of the day: peachy
January 6th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Apparently, it means: very satisfactory.
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A review of the 1927 novel “Steppenwolf” by Hermann Hesse
December 30th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
German-Swiss Hermann Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946 and “Steppenwolf” – one of his most famous works – was published in 1927. In an Author’s Note of 1961, Hesse wrote that “of all my books ‘Steppenwolf’ is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any other”. He had […]
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A review of the movie “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”
December 28th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
“Knives Out” was a critical and commercial success and, while I enjoyed it, I found it overrated. Three years later, thanks to Netflix, we have a new murder mystery again written and directed by Rian Johnson. Of course, Benoit Blanc is back as the world’s greatest detective, but Daniel Craig is no better at effecting […]
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