A review of the new science fiction blockbuster “Project Hail Mary”
March 28th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
I love a good science fiction movie and novelist Andy Weir and scriptwriter Drew Goddard have done it again. A decade ago, Weir’s first book “The Martian” was turned into a script by Goddard to produce a most enjoyable film with Matt Damon in the eponymous role as the left-behind astronaut. This time, Weir’s third novel has been crafted by Goddard into a hugely entertaining feature, on this trip with the immensely-watchable Ryan Gosling in the main role as a junior high science teacher.
The stakes are higher this time, much higher – not just one life at stake, but ultimately the whole of humankind. And, on this occasion our reluctant hero is not alone: a charming alien is around to show that friendship can cross life forms. It’s a exciting drama but leavened with humour.
Visually the film is stunning and the sound is wonderful, so I was delighted to be able to see a 70 mm IMAX version of the movie on the biggest screen in Britain. Plot-wise, however, the film is a bit of a stretch both subject-wise and time-wise, but you just need to go with it. The problem is the dimming of our sun, caused by a microorganism known as an astrophage (Greek for ‘star-eater’) which will cause Earth to suffer global cooling (and you thought that global warming was our problem). There might be a solution in a star system some 12 light years away (that’s about 70 trillion miles).
You’re wondering how humans could possible make such a journey and how one could persuade a mere school teacher to go on such a suicide mission (did I mention that the fuel that they’ll use will only be enough for a one-way expedition?). Go see this fun movie.
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A huge protest against the far Right in Britain
March 28th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Today’s Together Alliance March in London was a huge demonstration and there were similar events all around the country. The official website of the organisers stated the aim as “Together for love, hope and unity against the far right”.
So there was a massive protest against racism and support for immigrants. But there was also a great deal of pro Gaza/anti Israel sentiment plus opposition to the bombing of Iran and some people remembered Ukraine. A whole variety of other causes, from environmentalism to trans rights and even anti-Brexit, were on show.
Trade unions were the backbone to the event with the only political parties in evidence being the Socialist Workers Party (as always lots of placards), the Socialist Party (the former Militant) and even the Communist Party (shouting for revolution).
I met a number of people I know.
Organisers of the march said that as many as 500,000 people had attended, although the Metropolitan Police estimated the figure to be closer to 50,000, adding that precise figures were hard to determine due to the spread of the crowds.
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A review of “The Longest Afternoon” by Brendan Simms, a particular account of the Battle of Waterloo
March 27th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
On 18 June 1815, an allied force commanded by the British Duke of Wellington beat a French army led by the Emperor Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo, one of the most consequential conflicts in European history. This short work, first published in 2014, concentrates on one particular geographical section of this epic event, the farm of La Haye Sainte, and on one particular unit, the riflemen of the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion.
Using a wide range of sources, including many personal accounts, Simms tells a gripping story which illustrates great courage and heroism but also vividly describes the brutality and horror of such a fiercely-fought encounter. As he summarises the matter: “The struggle for La Haye Sainte and its environs was not merely ‘a battle within a battle’, for much of the afternoon it was the battle.” The battalion of almost 400 men suffered something like 40% casualties but held out for nearly five crucial hours.
The origin of most this defending unit, the area of Hanover, leads Simms to question whether the Battle of Waterloo as a whole was a ‘German victory’. After all, “About 45% of the men with whom Wellington started the battle spoke German of one sort of another, and the proportion increased with every Prussian formation reaching the scene.” But he opines: “It would be more accurate and more helpful, however, to describe Wellington’s army as ‘European'” and points out that 36% of the initial force was British.
Of course, after a relative peace in Europe of half a century, the French and the Germans would be back in mortal combat with one another repeatedly – the Franco-Prussian War. the First World War, the Second World War – and, in the last two of those gigantic clashes, the British and the Germans, such strong allies at the Battle of Waterloo, would be irrevocable enemies. That’s history for you.
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Ever heard of culturally responsive pedagogy?
March 25th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Sometimes it’s good to go to a new place and engage with a new subject. So it was that, this evening, I was at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at University College London (UCL) for the launch of a book titled “Culture and Science Education: Towards More Inclusive Practice”. The event was chaired by the co-editor of the book who is a friend of mine, Professor Justin Dillon.
It was a rather different event from my own book launch a week ago (check out “Everyone Has A Story” on Amazon). Thanks to a failure by the publisher Bloomsbury, there are no copies of the book currently available, whereas I self-published my book in time to give all attendees at the launch a free and signed copy. The Bloomsbury book will retail at £90, whereas Amazon is only charging £7.99 for mine.
Above all, of course, the subject matter of the book and the launch is utterly unfamiliar to me. So I learned a new acronym: CRP which stands for culturally responsive pedagogy. In non-academic language, this means teaching in a style which takes proper account of cultural background of the students, including issues like ethnicity, gender and language. Makes sense to me.
The event reminded me of an exchange I had with my mother when I was studying physics at school. I told her that my teacher was Scottish and it seemed to me that so many important scientists were Scottish: Maxwell, Kelvin, Watt … My Italian mother responded by advising me that, when she was at school, she was taught that all the greatest scientists were Italian: Galileo, Da Vinci, Marconi …
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Another five-star review on Amazon for my new book “Everyone Has A Story”
March 19th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
“Not only does everyone have a story, everyone could write something like this engaging book. Read this collective biography of 33 friends of the author, all assembled within a year’s time. This is not about accomplishment but connection to the author, and the variety provides a glimpse into Roger’s own bio as he comments on each of those connections. Buy it, read it, and consider doing your own version, or at least a list of those you might include.”
A great idea which truly captures the spirit of the book.
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A review of the new film “The Bride!”
March 15th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
There are far too few mainstream films made by women so, at one level, we have to welcome Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second offering after her restrained and refined work in “The Lost Daughter”. “The Bride!” is absolutely Gyllenhaal’s film: she wrote, directed and produced it and her brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) and her husband (Peter Sarsgaard) star in it.
It is also Jessie Buckley’s movie: following on from her success in “Hamnet”, this tour de force performance in the eponymous role cements her reputation as an outstanding actress. In this overtly feminist story, two other leading roles go to women: Annette Bening as the ‘mad’ scientist and Penélope Cruz as the smart (in both senses of the word) detective. The always-impressive Christian Bale is the Frankenstein figure, so this is a movie with star-power.
The film is a wild rage of expression and a riot of eclectic visual and aural material, but sadly with too little thought for narrative coherence.
Visually, we have a cornucopia of colours, whether make-up, costumes or sets, with everything from dancing and singing to chasing and shooting and many reminders of “Bonnie And Clyde”. Musically, we have a mixture of classical work (including Schubert), jazz and cabaret (including Irving Berlin), and the modern work of Hildur Guonadóttir (known for her work on “Joker” and “Tár”).
What we don’t have is a plot which is comprehensible and intelligible. So this a hugely ambitious and never-dull movie that ultimately falls disappointingly flat.
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The first Amazon review of my new book “Everyone Has A Story”
March 14th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
“This is, in a sense, the third part of a brilliantly conceived trilogy. The first took the form of a fairly conventional ‘memoir’, written essentially for family friends and former colleagues. But even here, the focus, foreshadowing later works, is on all the people Roger met during his three-quarters of a century who have illuminated his life and ‘made’ him ‘what he is’.
In the second book, Roger decided that the residents in the block in which he lived were not only fascinatingly diverse but deeply interesting. And so he set out to interview about forty of his neighbours, devoting an enthralling individual chapter to each. Certainly more imaginative than asking to borrow a cup of sugar!
In this third and latest work, entitled ‘Everyone has a Story’, our doughty author – also an impossibly prolific and indefatigable blogger (vide his weighty ‘NightHawk’) – chose more than 30 friends and acquaintances, each of whom has an extraordinary tale to tell and in whose pen portraits Roger has highlighted a particularly gripping motif. In his painstaking interviews, presented in a highly readable, conversational style, Roger has clearly laid out just how varied, instructive, and life-affirming, his extremely wide range of interests are. This will already be obvious to anyone who regularly reads his highly eclectic blog.
Space does not permit me to reference all but a few of his interviewees or to delve into their intriguing life stories, many of which were surprising and inspirational, but all of which have had a profound impact on the author. Highlights include a lifelong human rights activist, a consumer advocate, a senior trade unionist, survivors respectively of war, revolution and a kidnapping, a highly competitive marathon runner, a Holocaust historian, a champion of digital inclusion and someone who came back from the dead.
I heartily recommend this remarkable collection of tales, which has something of interest for everyone.”
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A review of the impressive and important 1961 film “Judgement At Nuremberg”
March 12th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
It was only after I had seen the 2025 “Nuremberg” that I finally viewed the 1961 “Judgement At Nuremberg”. While the first of these deals with the trial of the most senior of the Nazi war leaders by a four-power International Military Tribunal, the second film is a fictionalised depiction of one of the 12 trials – that concerning senior judges – conducted by the Americans alone.
In reality, there were 16 defendants at the trial but the film only features four, two of them based on real people – Franz Schlegelberger (1876-1970) and Oswald Rothaug (1897-1967) – and two of them amalgams of the others. The film is not an easy watch: it is almost three hours long, it is very heavy on dialogue, and it uses actual footage of the concentration camps. But it is an impressive and important work.
The script by Abby Mann and the direction by Stanley Kramer are outstanding and the cast is star-stunned. The four most prominent roles were filled by Spencer Tracy as the Chief Judge, Burt Lancaster as the prime defendant, Richard Widmark as the prosecuting lawyer and Maximilian Schell as the defending lawyer. Other well-known actors in supporting roles include Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Montgomery Cliff, and even William Shatner (before his “Star Trek” days).
Above all, this is a vital piece of cinema because of the hugely complex moral issues that it examines: how much guilt should be attributed to individuals at different levels of responsibility in an authoritarian regime? how much account should be taken of the wider economic and political environment in assessing guilt and administering punishment? who should make these judgements and when? The film presents conflicting arguments, often in powerful speeches.
The film received 12 Academy Award nominations and won two (Mann for Best Screenplay and Schell for Best Actor). In 2013, “Judgment At Nuremberg” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
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A review of the memoir “The Sweet Spot” by Ronnie S Landau
March 10th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Ronnie quotes a therapist as telling him “You’re one of the most oral people I’ve ever met.” As someone who first encountered Ronnie on a course he was giving on the Holocaust and who subsequently interviewed him for a book of my own, I can confirm that the therapist was correct.
This is what has made Ronnie such an outstanding teacher of children in state and private schools, undergraduates and graduates in various universities, and even passengers on cruise ships. But he can write as well as he speaks and indeed, in this memoir, writes as if he is speaking which makes his book an easy, enjoyable and entertaining read.
“The Sweet Spot” is a memoir, not a biography, so he eschews the ‘and then …’ approach, instead telling us a series of stories – often humorous – involving some fascinating characters and his own colourful personality. The title is a reference to both “the enormous good fortune to be born in 1948” (same here) and his fortuitous life and career avoiding poverty, pain and too many problems (except the loss of his first book thanks to the death of Robert Maxwell).
We learn that, outside of his wives and children, the great loves of his life have been supporting Sunderland football club and consuming chopped liver. If these seem odd passions, there are elements of contrast, if not contradiction, in Ronnie’s life.
His two historical periods of erudition are classical Greece and Rome of some two millennia ago and the Holocaust of the last century; his writing suggests a humanistic, even socialistic, approach to life and yet he has spent a significant portion of his career in the massively privileged independent school sector; on the one hand, he wants the Holocaust to be memorialised in a contextual fashion but, on the other hand, he is deeply concerned at how the Holocaust has made Israel “such a politicised, vigilant and, in critical times, paranoid society”.
Predominately, the memoir is about Ronnie’s very accomplished professional career and not his personal life, but there are moving final chapters about his six parents-in-law, three wives and three children. Also there are appendices reproducing reviews and articles on the Holocaust and, as well as heartily recommending this memoir, I would commend his 1992 book “The Nazi Holocaust: Its History And Meaning” which is still available.
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A review of the film “A House Of Dynamite”
March 5th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Kathryn Bigelow is a rarity among American directors, a woman who makes compelling movies with a military theme. I was enormously impressed by “The Hurt Locker” (2008) and “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012). Here, she works with scriptwriter Noah Oppenheim and sound designer Paul NJ Ottosson to present to us a gripping insight into a nightmare scenario: an intercontinental ballistic missile has been launched at the United States; nobody knows who is behind this or why they have launched such a surprise attack; but the American administration has just 19 minutes to decide how to respond.
The film has a novel narrative structure: a triptych in which the same set-up, with much of the same dialogue and characters, is presented from three points of view, each in a different principal location with a different main character. So, we are in the White House Operations Room with Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson); then in the office of the Secretary of State for Defense (Jared Harris); and finally, in a helicopter with the US President (Idris Elba).
“A House Of Dynamite” has been criticised for its repetitive structure, but the approach serves to emphasise the complexity of the issues and the decision-making process. Many are also unhappy with the sudden and unresolved ending, but this is not a story with a conclusion but a question to be considered: would we really use strategic nuclear weapons?
The film was funded by Netflix, so most viewers will see it on television and struggle with catching all the dialogue. I managed to view it on the big screen and fortuitously it was a version with sub-titles (even then, technical terms and acronyms abound). So the work is only a partial success, but a worthy and effective attempt to remind us that the Cold War may be over but the nuclear threat remains.
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