What the best year to have been born?
November 22nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
The “Guardian” newspaper this week published this letter:
I agree with Julian Richer: the circumstances into which we are born affect how we get on in life (It’s time to bust the meritocracy myth – I’ll be first to say I’m lucky, 18 November). I had a relatively ordinary background and worked in the public sector, but the security I had allowed me to have a good life. As he says, these things are not available to so many children. Considering the wealth in this country, that is a disgrace.
In 2009, the Guardian published an article about 1948 being the best year to have been born. This was based on every aspect of life you can think of: free education, NHS, availability of work, final-salary pensions and opportunities to buy houses at sensible prices. I was born in 1948. What a total privilege.
Mary Mullarkey
I was actually born in 1948. I’ve offered sone notes on “Why it’s fun to be in one’s sixties or seventies in Britain”.
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A review of the new film “The Running Man”
November 21st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I haven’t read the 1982 novel by Stephen King, on which this film is based, and I haven’t seen the 1987 movie version, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it was one of those evenings when I fancied some mindless entertainment and I found that big-time by viewing this 2025 adaptation on an IMAX screen.
The central idea – a mass entertainment television programme that brutalises its players for the enjoyment and escapism of the masses – reminded me of the 1975 film “Rollerball”, but the world it imagines (ironically the novel was set in the year of the release of this new version) is all too redolent of today’s America, a society controlled by media corporations in which surveillance is ubiquitous and inequality and greed are totally dominant.
The female roles are underwritten and the sharpest performances come from Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo in hugely manipulative roles. The eponymous hero, the blue-collar worker Ben Richards, is played by Glen Powell, a rising star who some are calling the new Tom Cruise. He is immensely watchable but, in a messy plot, it is far from clear how Ben has the skills to beat the system and inspire revolution, while the ending is morally nasty.
The film is co-written, produced, and directed by Edgar Wright who has done better work (think “Baby Driver”), but here has a bigger budget that he splashes on noisy action sequences while failing to provide a better script.
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How can you prevent dementia?
November 10th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Many dementia cases might be preventable.
The biological processes that may lead to dementia can begin 20 to 30 years before diagnosis. While some factors, like age and genetics, are beyond our control, many others are modifiable through changes in health habits and disease management. Scientists have identified 14 major risk factors for developing Alzheimer’s disease.
By addressing these factors early, we can take meaningful steps towards protecting long-term brain health. But it is important to emphasise that it is the probability (or likelihood) – not the possibility – of dementia one is decreasing with all the suggested actions. One can still get dementia after addressing all of them, but it is much less likely.
The 14 risk factors are:
low-level education
diabetes
head injury
obesity
air pollution
smoking
high cholesterol
hearing impairment
hypertension
physical inactivity
untreated depression
untreated vision loss
infrequent social contact
excessive alcohol consumption
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A review of the radical new film “Bugonia”
November 10th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most unconventional and exciting directors around today and Emma Stone is one of the most talented and audacious actresses in the current firmament. So any film which combines their skills is a must-see for any serious fan of cinema. “Bugonia” – actually a remake of the 2003 South Korean film “Save The Green Planet!” – is a challenging view, both narratively and visually, and will not appeal to all, but it is never dull and I rate it highly.
Stone plays Michelle Fuller, a high-powered CEO of Auxolith Biosciences, who is kidnapped by two conspiracy theorists, the maniacal Teddy (Jesse Plemins) and his mentally challenged cousin Don (Aidan Delbis). Stone and Plemons have almost all the lines in the script and literally throw themselves into the roles (Stone is given a buzz-cut for real on camera) and they will rightly receive nominations for their performances.
Teddy believes that Michelle is an alien who is out to destroy the human race and, in his imprisonment of the executive, the power dynamic between them and the viewer’s comprehension about what is going on vacillate wildly. As with any Lanthimos film, the shooting and the sound are key ingredients in a story that is often shocking, occasionally funny, and always gripping.
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A review of the classic film “Kind Hearts And Coronets” (1949)
November 4th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This deliciously black comedy from Ealing Studios is loosely based on the novel “Israel Rank: The Autobiography Of A Criminal” (1907) by Roy Horniman. The work, co-written and directed by Robert Hammer, is regarded as one of the best British films ever made and remains a popular piece of entertainment.
Set in the class-ridden times of Edwardian England, the central character, Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini (the suave Dennis Price), is the narrator who tells his murderous and fantastical story while in prison awaiting execution the following morning. Denied the family’s dukedom, he needed to eliminate the eight people ahead of him in the line of succession to the title, all of them portrayed by the versatile Alec Guinness (in one shot, Guinness appears as six of his characters at once in a single frame). The plotting is inventive and the ending is simply wonderful.
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Is the United States the greatest country on earth?
November 3rd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
According to a new report from Oxfam America, over 40% of the US population, including nearly 50% of children, are considered low-income, with family earnings that are less than 200% of the national poverty line.
When pitting the US against 38 other higher-income countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second-lowest life expectancy rate.
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A review of the French film “The Tasting”
November 2nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is a small French film from 2022 that would never be shown in most British cinemas, but I managed to catch it at the Ventnor Film Society on the Isle of Wight. It is a romantic comedy which has much humour in the first half but then progressively features more serious issues of life and death. It is set in the beautiful medieval city of Troyes, situated within the Champagne wine region, and there is some smart cinematography such as use of reflections.
The love match is not the classic one of the rom-com genre. The couple are middle-aged characters who have issues: Hortense is a midwife in his forties who longs to have a child of her own, while Jacques is a wine merchant in his sixties who is not supposed to be drinking and hosts the wine-tasting of the title. These lost souls are played convincingly and affably by Isabelle Carré and Bernard Campan and you just long for their happiness.
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A review of the new film “After The Hunt”
October 23rd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I so wanted to enjoy this film, since the lead role is taken by Julia Roberts, an actress I admire, and the subject matter – an allegation of sexual abuse made by a black student against a white lecturer – promised drama and topicality. But I was really disappointed. The acting is fine, with Roberts in excellent form, and the dialogue from debut screenwriter Nora Garrett – when one can hear it – is challenging enough (although there is a bit too much philosophising), but the failure of the work to succeed is down to the Italian producer and director Luca Guadagnino.
It is often difficult to catch what the characters are saying because of the loudness of the diegetic sound or the imposition of non-diegetic sound. What we can surmise from the movie is then rather problematic politically, since it appears to to challenge the current recognition that offence should be seen primarily from the point of view of the ‘victim’ rather than that of the apparent perpetrator. So, both artistically and morally, a somewhat confused and unsatisfactory work.
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A review of the 1977 classic “Annie Hall”
October 23rd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is a Woody Allen film: he co-wrote and directed it and takes the lead role. But it is also a Diane Keaton movie: she absolutely lights up the screen with her beauty, personality and dress style. This was the fourth of seven works which Allen and Keaton made together and, for some of the time, they were in a relationship in spite of the 11-year age difference. What’s more, Keaton was born Diane Hall and nicknamed Annie. So, to a considerable extent, they were playing themselves here which gives added piquancy to this delightful work.
Set in the mind of Allen’s neurotic character, the film deploys a whole variety of techniques to engage the viewer – flashbacks, speech to camera, split screen, subtitled thoughts – and the very funny script is full of wonderful one-liners. There are cameos from future stars such as Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Walken, guest appearances from Truman Capote and Marshall MacLuhan essentially playing themselves, and even roles for spiders and lobsters.
“Annie Hall” won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Allen won Best Director (he was nominated for Best Actor) and Keaton won Best Actress.
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A review of the unusual novel “Brian” by Jeremy Cooper
October 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is a strange novel in format, tone and subject. The 180 pages are written as a single piece of narrative with no chapters or breaks, no plot and no direct dialogue. It is a melancholic work dealing with loneliness, isolation and obsession. It is the story of the eponymous London character who has a dull job and no friends but finds meaning in cinema. We meet Brian when he is approaching 40 and leave him when he is around 70. In the intervening 30 years, nothing really happens, but we share his visits to the British Film Institute (BFI) to see a whole succession of films – over 150 are name-checked – which are almost invariably art house, many foreign, and his speciality post-war Japanese works.
Brian does not own a mobile phone but carries a notebook everywhere. He is a man of routines who does not like to make decisions: “Brian felt comforted by sticking to trusted habits” and he was “the kind of person who needed a sheaf of reasons to act”. “In his daily life Brian was endlessly anxious”, “He felt uncertain in almost everything”, and “”Everything he touched went up in smoke, always had, since childhood. He was a disaster zone.”
We are told that “There were times when Brian felt that the only thing he understood anything about was film. Nothing much else made sense. Not that he could always make sense of the movies he saw either.” We learn that “Given the day-by-day anxieties with which Brian contended, the ability to focus attention on the niceties of films was effective distraction from an existence beset on the outside by recurring banalities.” In essence, “his contradictory purpose in watching film was to escape from the world and at the same time learn about it.”
I feel that I understand Brian: on and off for the last 50 years, I’ve been a member of the BFI and I’ve seen a lot of films, although my tastes are much wider than his. I love cinema. I’ve even met people like Brian, especially on film courses: characters who have no partners, few friends and minimal social life who find solitude and solace in the darkness of a cinema.
The author of “Brian”, 77 year old Jeremy Cooper, is an art historian who doesn’t have a mobile phone and hasn’t watched television for 25 years, but he loves cinema. Although the novel is not autobiographical, there is more a little of Brian in Jeremy who told a newspaper interviewer: “I live alone in a secluded rented cottage in west Somerset doing the same thing at the same time seven days a week” and “Almost all the films which Brian sees I too have seen, none of them re-seen for writing the book. I’ve only ever watched film live on a cinema screen.”
I guess this is why the novel is oddly compelling and why the author Zadie Smith has written a screenplay.
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