Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the 1949 film “All The King’s Men”
January 16th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This classic film – which was remade in 2006 – is based on a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Penn Warren published in 1946. It tells the story of the rise to power of charismatic and populist Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) who storms his way to becoming Governor of a Southern US state in […]
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A review of the 1959 classic film “Ben-Hur”
January 10th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Astonishingly this movie was nominated for no less than 12 Academy Awards and managed to win 11 of them, a feat not equalled until “Titanic” 40 years later. I say astonishingly because it is really not that good. The cinematography in Panavision is wonderful and the chariot race is genuinely exciting, but the plotting is […]
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A review of the 2016 film “The Promise”
January 6th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Set in in the collapsing Ottoman Empire during the First World War, “The Promise” is both a love-triangle and an historical drama. Brilliant Armenian medical student Mikael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac) and intrepid American war reporter Chris Meyers (Christian Bale) both fall for the beautiful Armenian-born but French-raised Ana Khesarian (Charlotte Le Bon) in a part […]
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How to name your man of action
January 5th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
James Bond, Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, John Wick – notice anything?
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A review of the 2013 film “The Invisible Woman”
December 31st, 2020 by Roger Darlington
You could call this the invisible film since it has made little impact since its release and I only caught up with it during the latest lockdown of the 2020 pandemic. Unlike “The Invisible Man”, this is not a science fiction movie, but allegedly a true story of how the famous English writer Charles Dickens […]
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Bernardine Evaristo and Reni Eddo-Lodge: first black British women to top bestseller charts
December 30th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
This year, in twin firsts, black British women topped both the fiction and nonfiction charts. Both successes were a long time coming, but sparked a ray of hope that the Black Lives Matter movement may be creating space for new voices and stories. The novelist, playwright and poet Bernadine Evaristo, who made history with “Girl, […]
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A review of the novel “Identity” by Milan Kundera
December 30th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
The only other work that I’ve read by this Czech novelist – who now writes in French – was “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being”. But that was over 30 years ago and I confess that I did not understand much of the imagery in that work. Three lockdowns into the covid crisis of 2020, I […]
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A review of the new Netflix movie “The Midnight Sky”
December 26th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
Set largely in 2049, when a cataclysmic event has wiped out most of the Earth’s population, this sci-fi movie is located partly in the Arctic, where Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney who also directs) is working as a scientist, and partly in space, where the craft Aether is returning from the discovery of a habitable moon […]
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Word of the day: alas
December 26th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
According to the team behind the BBC TV show QI, the word alas has become a staple during recent parliamentary debate, having been used more than 80 times in the House of Commons in November 2020, more than any other month since 1800. According to this piece in the “Guardian” newspaper, we can thank Prime Minister Boris […]
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A review of the film “Phantom Thread”
December 25th, 2020 by Roger Darlington
It is 1954 in London and distinguished fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis, the only man to win three Academy Awards for Best Actor) meets a foreign waitress Alma Elson (Luxembourger Vicky Krieps) who becomes his muse, lover and wife in a tale written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (“There Will Be Blood” also […]
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