A review of the new Spielberg blockbuster “Disclosure Day”
June 15th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
I’m a big fan of Steven Spielberg and I love science fiction movies, so I was excited to see what could be regarded as the third of the director’s trilogy, following those wonderful offerings “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982). The theme of all three works is that humans are not alone in the universe and that other life forms, who have reached us, wish us well – an optimistic message at any time, but particularly when – as in this film – the world appears to be on the brink of nuclear war.
Two individuals hold the key: television weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and security expert turned whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), although they don’t seem to know each other. Two others know something about what’s going on: the head of a malicious defence company (Colin Firth) and some guy in a warehouse (Colman Domingo). It takes a while before the viewer can make any sense of it all – but enjoy the ride.
The acting here is good – especially from Blunt in her best performance to date – although it’s hard to picture our charming Colin Firth as such an evil character. And there are some exciting sequences – notably when a car holding the two heroes and a train speeding down the track come into the same space. But the film is too confused and over-long with some weak special effects. Most seriously, the plot is so full of black holes.
It would take remarkable intelligence and technology for any aliens to reach Earth so, having gone to so much trouble: why do they keep crashing in remote areas of the USA? why do they reveal themselves to so few people (usually Americans) and in such oblique circumstances? and why don’t they give out more widely those wonderful gadgets that can do all sorts of magical things? If there is to be a big reveal to the global population, why don’t those clever aliens just take over any number of television channels? And, if this great revelation is to be left to a local tv station in the US, how come everyone instantly believes them (someone mentions that the government films might be AI) with no due diligence whatsoever?
So, less a case of disclosure day and a more a matter of a disappointing two and a half hours.
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A review of the 1985 film “Kiss Of The Spider Woman”
June 11th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Based on the novel by the Argentinian Manuel Puig – a gay man with a passion for cinema – and directed by the Argentinian-born Brazilian Héctor Babenco, this film was set in and largely shot in Brazil, but it was made in the English language and screenwriter Leonard Schrader and the leading actor William Hurt were American.
The main action – essentially a series of conversations – takes place in a high-security prison during a mid-1970s period of dictatorship when two very different characters are forced to share minimum space but maximum time together. One is a sensitive and apolitical gay man (Hurt), while the other is a hardened leftist revolutionary devoted to “the struggle” (Raul Julia). They find periodic psychological escape from their confines when Hurt’s character narrates scenes from a favourite movie set in Nazi-occupied France which, in some respects, mirrors their own situation. This ‘film within a film’ structure is further embellished by use of what is known as metafiction with the wartime film deploying exaggerated acting and unlikely plotting.
If all this sounds a bit surreal (I haven’t even mentioned the Spider Woman), this tale of fantasy and friendship is brilliantly executed with subtle examination of political and gender issues. Hurt gives a thespian masterclass which rightly won him the Best Actor Award at both the Oscars and the BAFTAs.
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A review of the 1992 classic western “Unforgiven”
June 9th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
There have been a growing number of revisionist westerns that challenge the mythology of the Old West, but this is the best and the delicious irony is that it was produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and stars him in the leading role.
This is not the young, confident cowboy that Eastwood portrayed as ‘The man with no name’ in the “Dollar” trilogy or as the “High Plains Drifter” or the Pale Rider”. Instead this is aged Will Munney, a widower and teetotaller with two young children trying to eke out a living as a farmer with diseased hogs, a one-time cold and callous killer who these days struggles to mount a horse or shoot straight with a pistol. Persuaded, for the money, to seek a bounty, he doesn’t expect to encounter the cruel sheriff of the town of Little Whiskey, ‘Little Bill’ Daggett (Gene Hackman).
As the story unfolds, we are repeatedly reminded aurally and visually that killing is not easy or guilt-free even in the Wild West. As reformed and repentant Will Munney puts it: “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” The film was nominated for no less than nine Academy Awards and won Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood and Best Supporting Actor for Hackman. The cast also starred Morgan Freeman and Robert Harris.
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A review of the 1956 classic western “The Searchers”
June 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
This is a stromg candidate for the best western ever made and it pairs two of the giants of the genre, director John Ford and actor John Wayne, who worked together on eight of Ford’s sound westerns. The story opens in Texas in 1868, but the lengthy narrative proceeds over five years and the location shooting – with stunning vistas in vivid technicolour – was mainly at Monument Valley in Utah/Arizona.
Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a veteran of the Confederate Army in the civil war and of the Second Franco-Mexican War, who goes in search of his young niece Debbie (Natalie Wood when the girl is supposedly 11) who has been kidnapped by raiding Comanches. Ethan is not your classic hero: courageous and resourceful certainly, but also deeply racist and often cruel.
The script is based on a book which in turn was loosely inspired by some actual events. The most memorable line – repeated four times, according to my count – goes to Wayne’s character: “That’ll be the day.” The magnificent cinematography includes regular shots looking out through open doorways, most notably at the very beginning and at the very end.
When I first saw “The Searchers”, I pondered on the motivation of Ethan: why was he so obsessive about finding Debbie and why was he so conflicted over whether he wanted her to live or die? On further viewing of this psychologically complex work, it is clear that he was in love with Debbie’s murdered mother and it seems plausible that he is even Debbie’s father.
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My next book: a collection of reviews of classic films
June 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
It’s three months now since my last book was published: “Everyone Has A Story” – profiles of 33 of my friends with really interesting stories. If you don’t yet have a copy, you can purchase it from Amazon.
Now I’m working on my next book, “Classic Cinema”, which will be a collection of reviews of around 200 classic movies. Which are some of the films that you think I should include? Let me know here and I’ll tell you:
- if they are already in the collection because we think alike
- if I’m likely to add them because of your recommendation
- why I might be minded not to include them
Over to you, my friends …
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Ever heard of the Provisions of Oxford?
June 6th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
According to Simon Schama, the author of the three-volume “A History Of Britain” and presenter of the BBC series of the same name, the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 are so important that “1258 ought to be one of the dates engraved on the national memorial having far more immediate significance than 1215” when Magna Carta was signed.
The Provisions of Oxford were constitutional reforms to the government of late medieval England adopted during the Oxford Parliament of 1258 to resolve a dispute between Henry III of England and his barons. The reforms were designed to ensure the king adhered to the rule of law and governed according to the advice of his barons. A council of fifteen barons was chosen to advise and control the king and supervise his ministers. Parliament was to meet regularly three times a year.
Like the earlier Magna Carta, the Provisions of Oxford demonstrated the ability of the barons to press their concerns in opposition to the English monarchy. Henry’s failure to abide by the reforms sparked the Second Barons’ War, which ended with Henry’s victory and the restoration of royal authority. The Provisions of Oxford were annulled in 1266 by the Dictum of Kenilworth.
This was revolutionary. It was the most radical scheme of reform undertaken before the arrest and execution of King Charles I in the 1640s.
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A review of the classic 1959 film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour”
June 6th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
It took me many decades to catch this French-language film set largely in the Japanese city that was the first to suffer the atomic bomb and, by then, I’d visited Hiroshima and its Peace Museum twice, so the work had a special resonance for me.
This was the first feature film by Alain Resnais, previously a documentary film maker, and indeed it started out as a documentary and uses documentary footage from the 1945 nuclear attack. But, at heart, the is a romance, short but passionate, between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Elji Okada), both with their own traumatic memories of the war – in her case, shown in repeated flashbacks – and both now ostensively in happy marriages. The power of this haunting work comes from the contrast between horrific events of the end of the war and the tenderness of this ill-fated relationship.
There is a lot of dialogue and, in the woman’s case, monologue and it is not surprising that it was a woman who wrote the screenplay, Marguerite Duras, and that she received an Academy Award nomination for her work.
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A review of the classic 1959 film”Some Like It Hot”
June 6th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Although at the time of its release, it was controversial in some quarters and not universally supported by critics, audiences immediately adored it and still do, making “Some Like It Hot” one of the best-loved comedies of all time. In many ways, this is a Billy Wilder movie because he co-wrote the witty screenplay and produced and directed this fast-paced and entertaining caper. So many lines of dialogue are quotable but the final line is just perfect.
However, great credit also goes to its talented leading actors: Tony Curtis as ‘Josephine’ and Jack Lemmon as ‘Daphne’, the cross-dressing jazz musicians pursued by murderous mobsters in the Chicago and Florida of 1929. Above all, though, this has to be seen as Marilyn Monroe’s film. As the singer and dancer Sugar Kane, she is quire simply captivating. Famously, she had been experiencing all sorts of personal problems and this film was seen as something of a come-back. Indeed she was real trouble on set, but Wilder managed to coax her into this most enchanting and memorable of performances.
The last time I saw “Some Like It Hot” in 2026, the British Film Institute was showing a major Monroe season to mark the centenary of her birth. The film was introduced by the season’s curator Kimberley Sheehan who put the work in context, arguing that the star was far from the ‘dumb blonde’ seen by some studio executives but instead, in spite of her insecurity and anxiety, a serious and talented actor. The word ‘icon’ could have been invented for the lasting persona of the great Monroe.
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A review of the best-selling novel “There Are Rivers In The Sky” by Elif Shafak
June 4th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
I had not heard of this book, or even of the Turkish-British author, before the novel was gifted to me by a good female friend, but I found it a thoroughly enjoyable read and a really impressive piece of work.
Following a introduction set in Ancient Mesopotamia, the hugely ambitious narrative features three characters from different times and places whose stories intersect in all sorts of ways: Arthur, who lives from 1840-1876, rising from destitution in Victorian London to becoming an acclaimed expert on the ruins of Nineveh (a person loosely based on an actual historical figure called George Smith); Narin, a nine year old Yazidi from Turkey in 2014 who is learning about her culture as she is going deaf; and Zaleekhah, a 31 year old hydrologist working in London in 2018 who has just left her husband to live on a house boat. The novel flips from one character to another and back again over almost 500 pages.
There is much to commend in this work: the text is shaped by formidable research, with rich and erudite descriptions in beautiful language, littered with wonderful similes and metaphors. Recurrent themes are water, rivers, Nineveh, lamassu, cuneiform, and most importantly the Yazidi.
However, too much of the dialogue is clumsy and frequently expository. Most seriously, the allusions to water are excessive and often contrived and the author appears to regard the substance as not just mysterious but mystical. The flirtation with the notion of ‘water memory’ and the suggestion that a drop of water can retain its essential character over space and time go beyond literary licence to something approaching pseudo-science. This 2024 novel by Elif Shafak reminds me a little of the 2004 “Cloud Atlas” by David Michell but, in the latter work, the inter-locking lives are connected more subtly.
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A review of the 1972 classic film “The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie”
June 2nd, 2026 by Roger Darlington
An odd title for a very odd film, but then this French-language work was co-written and directed by the Mexican surrealist Luis Buñuel. Three upper middle-class couples try repeatedly to sit down for a meal together, only to be frustrated by an absurd number and nature of interruptions. Out of such seemingly quotidian material, Buñuel fashions a satire on the selfishness and vacuous nature of the ruling class. Three of the four dreams in the loose narrative are inspired by Buñuel’s own nocturnal experiences. The work won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, but it will not be to everyone’s taste and I found it rather irritating.
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