Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the new film “Living”
November 17th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Bill Nighy gives the best performance of his distinguished career as Mr Williams, an old-fashioned, straight-laced, middle-ranking official at the London County Council in the 1950s. When he receives life-changing news, he has to decide whether he can start living at last and whether he can leave any kind of meaningful legacy. The film centres […]
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A review of the new film “The Good Nurse”
November 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This Netflix film is not an easy watch because it is so dark, both literally (so many scenes are in shadow) and narratively (it concerns the deliberate killing of hospital patients by a nurse). The two American characters in the centre of this true life drama are played by Eddie Redmayne as the good nurse […]
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A review of a new film version of “All Quiet On The Western Front”
November 8th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I’ve not read the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (1929) or seen the Academy Award-winning film version (1930), but – following a recommendation from my brother – I was determined to see this new German-language adaptation on the big screen even though it is a Netflix production. I’m pleased that I did because the cinematography […]
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A review of the classic French comedy “Playtime” (1967)
November 4th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
A French comedy may seem an unlikely work for inclusion in a review of classic films, but “Playtime” is featured in the book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” (when else could you see them?) and it was shown on a cinema course that I attended at London City’s Literary Institute. It was […]
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A review of the controversial new movie “Blonde”
October 15th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Both written and directed by Australian Andrew Dominik, he must have known that this would be a controversial work and probably wanted it to be so. Based on Joyce Carol Oates’s fictional biography of American actress and icon Marilyn Monroe, it has been described as a pseudo-biographical psychological drama because, while the film captures many […]
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A review of the new action film “The Woman King”
October 12th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Imagine a mainstream movie both written and directed by women: respectively American Dana Stevens and African-American Gina Prince-Bythewood. Unusual but not unknown. Imagine a film in which all the leading roles are taken by black women: outstanding African-American Viola Davis in the titular role plus young South African Thuso Mbedu, black British Lashana Lynch and […]
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A review of the 1961 classic French film “Last Year In Marienbad”
October 5th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Marienbad is a spa town in the Czech Republic, but no filming was done there for this thoroughly enigmatic work. The locations used for most of the interiors and gardens were the palaces of Schleissheim and Nymphenburg and other locations in and around Munich. But this is the least of the deceits, or at least […]
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A review of the 2017 film “The Killing Of A Sacred Deer”
August 29th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This is a very odd film in so many respects. Above all, the storyline is so unusual: inspired by an ancient Greek tragedy (which is mentioned once very briefly), it is a psychological thriller in which lives are threatened and one is lost (the titular reference to an animal is a metaphor). Although it is […]
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A review of the 1995 film “La Haine”
August 24th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
A French-language film shot in black and white with the title “Hate” might not immediately appeal, but it won the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival and it has become a major classic of recent French cinema. Written and directed by Mattieu Kassovitz, amazingly this was his screen debut and he was only […]
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A review of the film “Donnie Brasco”
August 19th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
For some reason, it took me two and a half decades to catch up with this excellent movie from 1997. By then, Johnny Depp – who takes the titular role – had been through the increasing madness of the “Pirates Of The Caribbean” series and endured two highly-publicised court cases with former partner Amber Heard. […]
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