Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the black comedy film “Mickey 17”
March 11th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
In 2020, South Korean director Bong Joo-ho won the Academy Award for Best Picture with his stunning film “Parasite”. Five years later, we have his follow-up work, a picture in the English language based on the 2022 novel “Mickey7” by Edward Ashton. It is technically a sci-fi movie in that it is set in 2054 […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the shocking recent film “The Substance”
March 4th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Girls and women are constantly under pressure to stay young-looking, slim, attractive. Perhaps nowhere is this pressure more insidious than in the entertainment sector. And the pressure really comes on when a woman reaches a certain age. But what if there was a black market drug that enabled a woman to be transformed – at […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the award-winning film “Anora”
March 4th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
By the time that I belatedly caught up with this thoroughly enjoyable film, it was only hours away from winning no less than five Academy Awards, a remarkable achievement for a very low budget (only $6M), independent movie competing against the likes of “Dune: Part Two”, “A Complete Unknown” and “Conclave”. Most of those awards […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new rom-com “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy”
February 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Eight years after the last movie, we have the fourth – and possibly the best – film in this appealing rom-com franchise. Renée Zellweger, now in her mid 50s when often roles dry up for actresses, is a delight in the eponymous role. She makes it look easy, but we know from “Judy” that she […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
The song used by David Tennant on last night’s BAFTA Awards
February 17th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “The Brutalist”
February 4th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is not the film that I was expecting. I thought it was about an actual architect and would narrate his career designing a series of dramatic buildings across post-war America. Instead it features a fictional architect and his travails in constructing one specific project. Or maybe the architect and the project are not fictional […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “A Complete Unknown”
February 2nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This bio-pic of the emergence of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan between 1961-1965 has been a critical and commercial success with no less than eight Academy Award nominations and six BAFTA nominations. The acting and singing by Timothée Chalamet in the eponymous role and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez are simply magnificent and Edward Norton and Elle […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new movie “Babygirl”
January 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is such a watchable film: glitzy (smart clothes, cutting-edge technology, pounding soundtrack) and erotic (solo sex, marital sex, transgressive sex). It is also such an interesting film, raising so many issues around relationships: age-inappropriateness, power and powerlessness, domination and submission. I was struck by the number of young women at the screening I attended […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the 1955 classic “Rebel Without A Cause”
January 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I confess that – other than clips on film courses – it took me 70 years finally to view this classic, but the delay meant that I caught it at the British Film Institute where I could view it in the original CinemaScope and Warnercolor. The work is famous as the third and last of […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new Indian film “All We Imagine As Light”
December 14th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
When we think of contemporary Indian cinema, we usually have in mind Bollywood movies with singing, dancing, action, romance. “All We Imagine As Light”, both written and directed by Payal Kapadia, could not be more different: it is an art house film that won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2024. Much of the film […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)