Archive for November, 2023
A review of the new art house film “The Eternal Daughter”
November 28th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Films made by British writer and director Joanna Hogg make for challenging – but ultimately rewarding – viewing. Following the critical success of her autobiographical works “The Souvenir” (2019) [for my review click here] and “The Souvenir Part II” (2021) [for my review click here] – both of which I admired – comes a work […]
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A review of the film “Cold Pursuit”
November 27th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
A 2019 film starring Liam Neeson as a character seeking revenge for the death of his son – sounds like something along the well-trodden path of the “Taken” franchise (2008-2014), right? Well, no. This is actually a remake of a Norwegian film “In Order Of Disappearance” (2014) with the same director, Hans Petter Moland. It’s […]
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A review of “The Future Of Geography” by Tim Marshall
November 26th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Marshall has had outstanding success with two huge bestsellers: “Prisoners Of Geography” (2015) and “The Power Of Geography” (2021). Like the last chapter of the last book, this work is not really about geography but all about space. In his acknowledgements to this latest book, he thanks his publishers “for the freedom to write what […]
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Napoleon”
November 26th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Veteran British director Ridley Scott is now 85 and “Napoleon”, his 29th work, is a fine addition to a wonderful canon that stretches in time-setting from “Gladiator” to “Alien”. This is a hugely ambitious production, stretching from the execution of Marie Antoinette in 1793 to the death of Napoleon in i821. In that time period, […]
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Trump could be back in the White House
November 22nd, 2023 by Roger Darlington
“Public opinion polls in the United States are the stuff of nightmares. The website RealClearPolitics aggregates all the major polls. The eight most recent polls regarding the 2024 elections — from respected pollsters including NBC News, the Economist, Reuters and others — all show the same thing. Trump defeats Biden. In one of those polls, […]
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A review of the new film “May December”
November 19th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
At the heart of this ambitious and ambiguous movie from director Todd Haynes are two enigmatic and ultimately unsympathetic female characters. There is Gracie Atherton-Yoo (a wonderful Julianne Moore), who 24 years earlier went to prison for having sex with a teenage boy whom she later married, and Elizabeth Berry (an outstanding Natalie Portman), an […]
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A review of the new Netflix offering “The 355”
November 18th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
I’m all in favour of female action figures and there’s some thespian talent in this espionage thriller, but this is a thinly-plotted effort that all too obviously is contrived to appeal to the widest possible audience on television screens. So we have no less than a quintet of leading actresses: Jessica Chastain for American viewers, […]
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As we await the new blockbuster movie “Napoleon”, a reminder of who he was and how he met his Waterloo
November 18th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
The end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century witnessed nearly a quarter of a century of almost continuous war in Europe. The French Revolutionary Wars of 1793-1802 and the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 -1815 embroiled all the great European states and caused the death of between five and six million combatants […]
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If you were going to launch a rocket into space, which direction would you do it? East or west?
November 17th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
Most countries launch space rockets eastwards because the Earth spins west to east and launching eastwards gives rockets a boost from the Earth’s rotational speed. But Israel, with its Shavit space launch vehicle, launches due west against the planet’s spin. This ensures that the rockets fly over the Mediterranean Sea and not over Israel and […]
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A review of the new film “Past Lives”
November 11th, 2023 by Roger Darlington
At a time when so many films are sequels, prequels or remakes, it’s so refreshing to welcome an original story told in an original way. I’m reminded of “The Farewell” (2019) which was written and directed by a Chinese-American, set largely in China, with most of the dialogue in Mandarin. “Past Lives” (2023) is written […]
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