Archive for July, 2025


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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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