Archive for the ‘Cultural issues’ Category
A review of the new film “The Salt Path”
June 12th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
For Staffordshire couple Raynor and Moth Winn, life suddenly went horribly wrong when they became homeless following a disastrous investment and he was diagnosed with a debilitating and ultimately terminal illness. In an act of sheer desperation, they decide to walk the South West Coast Path, a 630-mile trek around the coastline of Cornwall, Devon […]
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A review of the blockbuster movie “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”
May 31st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
For the eighth time in almost 30 years, Ethan Hunt completes an impossible mission, this time saving the entire global population from death or control by a super version of AI called The Entity. If the basic premise seems familiar, that’s because – in spite of a title change – this movie is narratively a […]
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Fika – what does it mean and why is it so important in Swedish culture?
May 30th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Fika is often translated as “a coffee and cake break”, which is kind of correct, but really it is much more than that. Fika is a concept, a state of mind, an attitude and an important part of Swedish culture. Many Swedes consider that it is almost essential to make time for fika every day. It means making time […]
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A review of the book “Four Thousand Weeks” by Oliver Burkeman (2021)
May 29th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
For many years, Burkeman wrote a column on psychology for the “Guardian” newspaper entitled ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’ which I read often. This work could be subtitled ‘This Book Will Change Your Life’ and it was recommended to me by a friend who works for Facebook. The title rests on the calculation that, […]
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A review of the stunning new film “Warfare”
April 29th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
The word unique is overused and usually misused, but “Warfare” is a unique film. The nearest work to it is Ridley Scott’s 2001 “Black Hawk Down”. Both films depict actual firefights in which American soldiers struggle to stay alive in a messy combat with the cinematography presenting a brutally visceral depiction of the violent conflict. […]
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A review of “Abroad In Japan” by Chris Broad
April 21st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
To be honest, this is not really a biography, instead it is part memoir and part travelogue. I read it while travelling in Japan and found it a very accessible and useful introduction to this wonderful but strange country. It is written in a casual, even conversational, style and it is often quite funny. Broad […]
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Ever heard of tall poppy syndrome?
April 3rd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I’d never heard of the term until today. According to Wikipedia: Tall poppy syndrome is a term which originated in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s that refers to people with notable public success, who excessively promote their own achievements and opinions. Intense scrutiny and criticism of such a person is termed as “cutting down […]
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A review of the bestselling novel “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover
March 27th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This novel was published in 2016 and, by the time that I read it almost a decade later, it had sold more than 7 million copies and been made into a film. Ironically, given that the subject of the book is abuse of women by men, the lead actress in the movie, Blake Lively, claimed […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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