“Late Shift”: a foreign film with a universal message
August 5th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This is an unusual film, wonderfully made and with a powerful narrative. It is Swiss and located in German-speaking Zurich. In fact, virtually the entire film is set in one building, a local hospital, and over just one night, the titular shift.
We follow the work of one dedicated nurse Floria (played magnificently by Leonie Benesch) as she copes with demand after demand from a variety of adult patients. For much of the film, it has the feel of a documentary but, as the pressure mounts, it becomes something else. The camera follows Floria up close and the viewer feels by her side, sharing the tension as the pacing and the music become more urgent.
The message is clear: nurses are heroes, we need many more of them, and meanwhile we make impossible demands of them. The film is a really impressive work by director Petra Volpe and highly commended.
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A review of the novel “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney
July 24th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I’m a fan of Rooney’s work and have read all of her novels. This is her fourth, longest, and most ambitious.
As always, the setting is contemporary Ireland. Unusually, however,the leading characters are both men: brothers Peter (32, a successful lawyer) and Ivan (22, an aspiring chess champion).
The novel explores the relationship between the brothers, who are dealing with the grief of losing their father, and their respective relationships with women: in Peter’s case, a former lover of his own age (Sylvia) and a much younger and newer lover (Naomi) and, in Ivan’s case, a divorced woman 14 years his senior (Margaret).
The style of the book is to have alternate chapters presenting the points of view of the two brothers.
The perspective of Ivan, who is on the autistic spectrum, is represented as quite literal and straightforward. That of Peter, who consumes a lot of alcohol and has panic attacks, is much more fractured and involves sentences that have an odd word order and even missing words (reminding one of James Joyce) with lots of esoteric allusions to other texts (there are three pages of attributions at the end).
It took me a little while to become comfortable with Ivan’s ‘voice’, making this ‘harder’ than Rooney’s other novels, but it is an impressive and enjoyable work that burnishes her already formidable reputation.
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The sadness and the beauty of Ha Long Bay
July 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I was saddened to hear the news of the loss of life in Ha Long Bay in northern Vietnam.
The location is a spectacular one and I have fond memories of my time there in 2006.
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A review of the classic film “Barry Lyndon” (1975)
July 19th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
There is a sense in which any Stanley Kubrick film could be a candidate for classic and it is a mark of his genius that each of his films represents a different genre. Here we have a period drama, based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel of 1844, where Kubrick is writer, producer and director.
It is a really long film – 185 minutes – but, in the cinema, it is shown with an intermission, neatly dividing the rise of the eponymous rogue (the first two-thirds) followed by his tragic downfall (about a third). It is a work which should be seen on the big screen because it is visually sumptuous with gorgeous sets, costumes and locations. I’ve seen it in that format twice – once in Paris and, four decades later, again in London- and it is a joy to behold.
“Barry Lyndon” was not an immediate or critical success and remains the least-seen of Kubrick’s major works, but it was nominated for no less than seven Academy Awards (it won four artistic ones).
Perhaps the sign of a true classic is that it scores in so many ways: here, as well brilliant direction and those period clothes and ancient buildings, we have atmospheric lighting (use of the ‘magic hour’ and candlelight), breathtaking cinematography (John Alcott), classical music (Bach, Handel, Mozart) and a large and distinguished cast led by Ryan O’Neill, as the opportunist who betrays every relation or friend, and Marisa Berenson as his noble, but long-suffering, wife.
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A review of the 1928 classic film “The Passion Of Joan Of Arc”
July 13th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This story of the most French of characters, the defender and patron saint of the nation – Joan had been canonised just eight years earlier – was in fact directed by a Dane, Carl Theodor Dreyer, as a black & white production with no sound. Indeed the French had problems with it: the Archbishop of Paris demanded several excisions and French Government censors made further changes.
This classic work was almost lost to history: the original negative was destroyed by a fire, a second negative was lost to another fire, and a print of the original version was only finally discovered in 1981.
A restored version became available in 2015 and, ten years later, I saw that version on the screen at the British Film Institute with a live piano accompaniment. At the end, the audience applauded.
The film is an astonishing work of great power. It is based on a transcript of the 1431 trial of 19-year old peasant girl Joan who claimed to have had visions inspiring her to oppose English domination of her country. The French ecclesiastical authorities were not ready to accept that such a lowly figure was in communication with the divine and the English occupying force saw her as a insurrectionist. She stood no chance and was burned alive at the stake.
Much of the film consists of close ups of faces, often from below or above, most notably the tearful visage of Joan herself, portrayed movingly by Renée Falconetti, a theatre actress making her first (and essentially last) film appearance. The work is full of memorable imagery: crosses, birds, shadows, smoke, and over and over again those faces. Truly, a classic.
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Jurassic World Rebirth”
July 6th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
After a trio of “Jurassic Park” movies (1993, 1997, 2001) and a trio of “Jurassic World” films (2015, 2018, 2022), I’m not sure that we really needed a seventh episode in the franchise, but it seems that dinosaurs are ever-popular and ever-profitable and this latest adventure has a few things going for it. The special effects get better and better and this time we have a host of monsters thanks to the setting on an island where a previous research facility had to be abandoned after various experimental life forms didn’t work out. As well as plenty of thrills and spills and the occasional gore, there’s some humour and a hint of romance.
Two familiar creators are back: David Koepp who wrote the first two films plus this one and Steven Spielberg, director of the first two instalments and executive producer of all the others. But, we have a new director, Gareth Edwards who directed “Godzilla”, and – for the first time in a sequel in the franchise – all the actors are newcomers to the series and we have some real stars with some witty lines, notably Mahershala Ali as captain of the boat and leader of the team plus Scarlett Johansson as a covert operative and Lara Croft type character. It’s all good fun and rather entertaining, but I think its time for the franchise to become extinct.
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “F1”
June 28th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This thrilling movie is the most authentic and immersive presentation of motor car racing that you’ll have every seen. You should view it on largest screen that you can and I was fortunate enough to see it in IMAX on the biggest screen in Britain.
If the ‘sitting in the seat’ view, while you hurl around at amazing speeds with a thumping soundtrack, seems familiar, then that’s no coincidence: the director is Joseph Kosinki, the theme music is from Hans Zimmer, and one of the producers is Jerry Bruckheimer, all of whom performed the same roles on the wonderful “Top Gun: Maverick”.
The storyline is pretty formulaic: an old timer with a passion for risk, dubbed “the greatest that never was” (Brad Pitt) is recruited by a long-time friend (Javier Bardem) to tutor a talented but inexperienced rookie (Damson Iris) and, along the way, an attractive technical director (Kerry Condon) provides both winning talent and love interest. These are very watchable stars with Pitt especially perfectly cast.
Racing superstar Lewis Hamilton is co-producer and many other drivers and personalities of the sport make brief appearances. Partly shot during real Grand Prix races around the world, everything visible feels so real, even if the narrative could have come from a comic.
As someone who knows nothing about Formula One, I was struck by the incredible amount of technology in the cars and the supporting infrastructure and by the physicality of the training regime and the actual driving.
My friend Tim, who was with me, knows a great deal about the sport and he attested to its verisimilitude and recognised many of the cameo characters. The film is entertainment on a grand scale and a huge success.
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The people of Iran do not deserve this bombing or this regime
June 23rd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I don’t know if Iran was on the point of producing a nuclear weapon. I don’t know if the American and Israeli bombing raids have completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme. I don’t know if regime change is likely or what the alternative would look like.
What I do know is that, in the 6,000-year history of Persia/Iran, the one serious attempt at liberalism – the revolution of 1905-1911 with its short-lived experiment with a form of democracy – failed because of internal conflict, while America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 orchestrated the 1953 coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh which sabotaged a genuine attempt at creating a democratic nation.
What I do know is that, time and time again, in the last two decades, it has been alleged – usually by Israel – that Iran was on the verge of obtaining an atomic bomb presenting an existential threat to the Jewish nation. Over the last two decades, I’ve blogged many times about Iran and, as long ago as 2007, I wrote a piece about the possibility of an imminent raid on Iran by Israel. The nuclear assessment was wrong time and time again; is it really correct now?
What I do know is that most people in Iran do not support the present Islamic regime and that they are welcoming of foreigners and keen to establish better relations with the West. To experience their hospitality, their food, their poetry, their architecture is to appreciate that the Iranians deserve so much better. I know because I travelled around Iran in 2009.
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A review of the novel “Precipice” by Robert Harris
June 22nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Can you imagine a sitting British Prime Minister – on his second marriage and father to seven children – taking time off from affairs of state, on the edge of the greatest war the world had ever seen, to write these words to a society woman some half his age: “thinking & remembering & longing & hoping: and all thoughts & memories & longings & hopes centre around & in one person”?
This was 61 year old Liberal PM Herbert Asquith writing to 26 year old Venetia Stanley in late 1914 and early 1915 in a correspondence that involved several letters a day every single day (at the time, there were 12 daily deliveries in London). He eventually burnt all her letters but she kept all of his and some 560 still survive.
It is around this utterly astonishing correspondence that Harris has created the latest of his 16 bestselling novels (this is the tenth that I’ve consumed), quoting Asquith’s actual words and imagining those of Stanley. The author is an excellent storyteller and this is one of his most absorbing novels yet. As always, his research is deep and his narrative compelling, even when – as is so often the case with his historical novels – we know the outcome.
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A review of the new film “Ballerina”
June 22nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
If you liked the John Wick action movies – and I loved all the four (so far) films in the franchises – then you’ll definitely want to see this satisfying spin-off, set in a time period between the third and fourth adventures and containing a cameo role from Keanu Reeves as the unbeatable assassin.
This time we have a female lead, Cuban/Spanish actress Ana de Armas (remember her from “No Time To Die”?) as Eve Macarro, a member of a school of assassins fronted by a Russian ballet company – hence the title. Also, we have a new director: Len Wiseman. New locations include the Czech capital Prague and the Austrian village Hallstatt.
But the non-stop action – mainly martial arts combat – is again front and centre and this time the armoury includes grenades and flamethrowers. Expect lots of violence and a massive body count.
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