Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the new Netflix offering “The 355”
November 18th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I’m all in favour of female action figures and there’s some thespian talent in this espionage thriller, but this is a thinly-plotted effort that all too obviously is contrived to appeal to the widest possible audience on television screens. So we have no less than a quintet of leading actresses: Jessica Chastain for American viewers, […]
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A review of the new film “Past Lives”
November 11th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
At a time when so many films are sequels, prequels or remakes, it’s so refreshing to welcome an original story told in an original way. I’m reminded of “The Farewell” (2019) which was written and directed by a Chinese-American, set largely in China, with most of the dialogue in Mandarin. “Past Lives” (2023) is written […]
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A review of the new film “Pain Hustlers”
November 8th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
A Netflix film starring Emily Blunt (“A Quiet Place”), Chris Evens (“Captain America”) and Andy Garcia (“Book Club”) has to be worth seeing, right? Well … The story is interesting enough: based on real events, it explains the role of key personnel at one of the pharmaceutical companies behind the opioid epidemic that has ravaged […]
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A review of the new David Fincher film “Killer”
November 6th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Director David Fincher is the master of the thriller movie – think “Seven” or “Fight Club” or “Gone “Girl”. Here the tension begins with the jarring opening credits and never caeses for the next two taut hours. In his first screen role for four years, Michael Fassbender plays a superbly professional assassin – never named […]
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Killers Of The Flower Moon”
October 31st, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Such is my admiration for them that I would see any film directed by Martin Scorsese or starring Robert De Niro or Leonardo DiCaprio, so I am never going to miss a work like this that combines the talent of all three. A few statistics: this is Scorsese’s 26th feature, it is the ninth film […]
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A review of the 1973 classic film “Mean Streets”
October 28th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Somehow, in spite of my lifelong love of the movies, I managed to miss this classic film for half a century, but then I saw a 50th anniversary showing at the British Film Institute. It was only the third feature from director Martin Scorsese – who, in this case originated the story and co-wrote the […]
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A review of the philosophy book “How To Be Good” by John Harris (2016)
October 24th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I don’t read books about philosophy very often because I find them too abstract and removed from the real world, but this book was given me by the author (Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester), it is commendably short (less than 200 pages), and the title intrigued me. It is a thoughtful […]
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A review of the classic Indian film “Pather Panchali”
October 19th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
The story of the little Bengali boy Apu started as the first of three bestselling novels by Bhibuti Bashan Bannerjee and became the first of three films by acclaimed Indian director Satyajit Ray: “Pather Panchali” (“Little Song Of The Road”) in 1955, “Aparajito” (“The Unvanquished”) in 1956, and “Apur Sansar” (“The World Of Apu”) in […]
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A review of “Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin
October 18th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I was attracted to this novel by its intriguing title, its wonderful cover, and the awareness that it has become a global bestseller. The title is a reference both to the possibility of infinite rebirth offered by video games and to the soliloquy about the meaninglessness of life in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Spanning two and a […]
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A review of the bizarre new movie “Poor Things”
October 15th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I confess that I struggled with the last work from director Yorgos Lanthimos, the 2018 film “The Favourite”, as I found the treatment of historic British characters just too off-beat and his whole style just too dislocated. But I warmed much more to “Poor Things”. Aurally, visually and narratively, this is an unsettling film but […]
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