A review of the 1992 classic western “Unforgiven”
June 9th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
There have been a growing number of revisionist westerns that challenge the mythology of the Old West, but this is the best and the delicious irony is that it was produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and stars him in the leading role.
This is not the young, confident cowboy that Eastwood portrayed as ‘The man with no name’ in the “Dollar” trilogy or as the “High Plains Drifter” or the Pale Rider”. Instead this is aged Will Munney, a widower and teetotaller with two young children trying to eke out a living as a farmer with diseased hogs, a one-time cold and callous killer who these days struggles to mount a horse or shoot straight with a pistol. Persuaded, for the money, to seek a bounty, he doesn’t expect to encounter the cruel sheriff of the town of Little Whiskey, ‘Little Bill’ Daggett (Gene Hackman).
As the story unfolds, we are repeatedly reminded aurally and visually that killing is not easy or guilt-free even in the Wild West. As reformed and repentant Will Munney puts it: “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” The film was nominated for no less than nine Academy Awards and won Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood and Best Supporting Actor for Hackman. The cast also starred Morgan Freeman and Robert Harris.
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A review of the 1956 classic western “The Searchers”
June 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
This is a stromg candidate for the best western ever made and it pairs two of the giants of the genre, director John Ford and actor John Wayne, who worked together on eight of Ford’s sound westerns. The story opens in Texas in 1868, but the lengthy narrative proceeds over five years and the location shooting – with stunning vistas in vivid technicolour – was mainly at Monument Valley in Utah/Arizona.
Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a veteran of the Confederate Army in the civil war and of the Second Franco-Mexican War, who goes in search of his young niece Debbie (Natalie Wood when the girl is supposedly 11) who has been kidnapped by raiding Comanches. Ethan is not your classic hero: courageous and resourceful certainly, but also deeply racist and often cruel.
The script is based on a book which in turn was loosely inspired by some actual events. The most memorable line – repeated four times, according to my count – goes to Wayne’s character: “That’ll be the day.” The magnificent cinematography includes regular shots looking out through open doorways, most notably at the very beginning and at the very end.
When I first saw “The Searchers”, I pondered on the motivation of Ethan: why was he so obsessive about finding Debbie and why was he so conflicted over whether he wanted her to live or die? On further viewing of this psychologically complex work, it is clear that he was in love with Debbie’s murdered mother and it seems plausible that he is even Debbie’s father.
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My next book: a collection of reviews of classic films
June 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
It’s three months now since my last book was published: “Everyone Has A Story” – profiles of 33 of my friends with really interesting stories. If you don’t yet have a copy, you can purchase it from Amazon.
Now I’m working on my next book, “Classic Cinema”, which will be a collection of reviews of around 200 classic movies. Which are some of the films that you think I should include? Let me know here and I’ll tell you:
- if they are already in the collection because we think alike
- if I’m likely to add them because of your recommendation
- why I might be minded not to include them
Over to you, my friends …
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Ever heard of the Provisions of Oxford?
June 6th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
According to Simon Schama, the author of the three-volume “A History Of Britain” and presenter of the BBC series of the same name, the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 are so important that “1258 ought to be one of the dates engraved on the national memorial having far more immediate significance than 1215” when Magna Carta was signed.
The Provisions of Oxford were constitutional reforms to the government of late medieval England adopted during the Oxford Parliament of 1258 to resolve a dispute between Henry III of England and his barons. The reforms were designed to ensure the king adhered to the rule of law and governed according to the advice of his barons. A council of fifteen barons was chosen to advise and control the king and supervise his ministers. Parliament was to meet regularly three times a year.
Like the earlier Magna Carta, the Provisions of Oxford demonstrated the ability of the barons to press their concerns in opposition to the English monarchy. Henry’s failure to abide by the reforms sparked the Second Barons’ War, which ended with Henry’s victory and the restoration of royal authority. The Provisions of Oxford were annulled in 1266 by the Dictum of Kenilworth.
This was revolutionary. It was the most radical scheme of reform undertaken before the arrest and execution of King Charles I in the 1640s.
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A review of the classic 1959 film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour”
June 6th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
It took me many decades to catch this French-language film set largely in the Japanese city that was the first to suffer the atomic bomb and, by then, I’d visited Hiroshima and its Peace Museum twice, so the work had a special resonance for me.
This was the first feature film by Alain Resnais, previously a documentary film maker, and indeed it started out as a documentary and uses documentary footage from the 1945 nuclear attack. But, at heart, the is a romance, short but passionate, between a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Elji Okada), both with their own traumatic memories of the war – in her case, shown in repeated flashbacks – and both now ostensively in happy marriages. The power of this haunting work comes from the contrast between horrific events of the end of the war and the tenderness of this ill-fated relationship.
There is a lot of dialogue and, in the woman’s case, monologue and it is not surprising that it was a woman who wrote the screenplay, Marguerite Duras, and that she received an Academy Award nomination for her work.
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A review of the classic 1959 film”Some Like It Hot”
June 6th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Although at the time of its release, it was controversial in some quarters and not universally supported by critics, audiences immediately adored it and still do, making “Some Like It Hot” one of the best-loved comedies of all time. In many ways, this is a Billy Wilder movie because he co-wrote the witty screenplay and produced and directed this fast-paced and entertaining caper. So many lines of dialogue are quotable but the final line is just perfect.
However, great credit also goes to its talented leading actors: Tony Curtis as ‘Josephine’ and Jack Lemmon as ‘Daphne’, the cross-dressing jazz musicians pursued by murderous mobsters in the Chicago and Florida of 1929. Above all, though, this has to be seen as Marilyn Monroe’s film. As the singer and dancer Sugar Kane, she is quire simply captivating. Famously, she had been experiencing all sorts of personal problems and this film was seen as something of a come-back. Indeed she was real trouble on set, but Wilder managed to coax her into this most enchanting and memorable of performances.
The last time I saw “Some Like It Hot” in 2026, the British Film Institute was showing a major Monroe season to mark the centenary of her birth. The film was introduced by the season’s curator Kimberley Sheehan who put the work in context, arguing that the star was far from the ‘dumb blonde’ seen by some studio executives but instead, in spite of her insecurity and anxiety, a serious and talented actor. The word ‘icon’ could have been invented for the lasting persona of the great Monroe.
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A review of the best-selling novel “There Are Rivers In The Sky” by Elif Shafak
June 4th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
I had not heard of this book, or even of the Turkish-British author, before the novel was gifted to me by a good female friend, but I found it a thoroughly enjoyable read and a really impressive piece of work.
Following a introduction set in Ancient Mesopotamia, the hugely ambitious narrative features three characters from different times and places whose stories intersect in all sorts of ways: Arthur, who lives from 1840-1876, rising from destitution in Victorian London to becoming an acclaimed expert on the ruins of Nineveh (a person loosely based on an actual historical figure called George Smith); Narin, a nine year old Yazidi from Turkey in 2014 who is learning about her culture as she is going deaf; and Zaleekhah, a 31 year old hydrologist working in London in 2018 who has just left her husband to live on a house boat. The novel flips from one character to another and back again over almost 500 pages.
There is much to commend in this work: the text is shaped by formidable research, with rich and erudite descriptions in beautiful language, littered with wonderful similes and metaphors. Recurrent themes are water, rivers, Nineveh, lamassu, cuneiform, and most importantly the Yazidi.
However, too much of the dialogue is clumsy and frequently expository. Most seriously, the allusions to water are excessive and often contrived and the author appears to regard the substance as not just mysterious but mystical. The flirtation with the notion of ‘water memory’ and the suggestion that a drop of water can retain its essential character over space and time go beyond literary licence to something approaching pseudo-science. This 2024 novel by Elif Shafak reminds me a little of the 2004 “Cloud Atlas” by David Michell but, in the latter work, the inter-locking lives are connected more subtly.
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A review of the 1972 classic film “The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie”
June 2nd, 2026 by Roger Darlington
An odd title for a very odd film, but then this French-language work was co-written and directed by the Mexican surrealist Luis Buñuel. Three upper middle-class couples try repeatedly to sit down for a meal together, only to be frustrated by an absurd number and nature of interruptions. Out of such seemingly quotidian material, Buñuel fashions a satire on the selfishness and vacuous nature of the ruling class. Three of the four dreams in the loose narrative are inspired by Buñuel’s own nocturnal experiences. The work won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, but it will not be to everyone’s taste and I found it rather irritating.
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Was the universe made for us?
May 28th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
At one level, the question may seem arrogant, even preposterous.
After all, for much of our existence on Earth, we humans thought of ourselves as a pretty big deal. Then along came science and taught us how utterly insignificant we are. We aren’t the centre of the universe. We aren’t special. We are just a species of ape living on a smallish planet orbiting an unremarkable star in one galaxy among billions in a universe that had been around for 13.8 billion years without us.”
At another level, the laws of physics are ridiculously fine-tuned for you and me. All told, about 12 parameters – such as the values of the electromagnetic force and the strong nuclear force or the amount energy contained in empty space – have been identified as being just right for life. Why?
One answer is known as the strong anthropic principle which states that the universe is so perfect for life that it must have been made for us either by an intelligent creator or, more likely, because of some fundamental features of the cosmos that drives it towards intelligent life. Another answer is known as the weak anthropic principle which states that, given that we are around to observe the universe, it simply has to allow for our existence.
Another, altogether more radical, proposition is that our universe is simply one of many multiverses, each with its own physical constants and laws. Wild as this idea seems, versions of it emerge from both quantum mechanics and standard cosmology.
So, how do you feel now?
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A review of the 1991 classic film “The Silence Of The Lambs”
May 25th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
When this film was first released, it shocked audiences and, to this day, it is still chilling to watch. An adaptation of the bestselling novel by Thomas Harris, it portrays the efforts of new FBI recruit Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) to track down an elusive serial killer with the unlikely aid of imprisoned serial killer Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lector (Anthony Hopkins). A complex relationship, with some mutual respect, ensues between the reptilian prisoner and the clever but vulnerable novice agent. Although Foster has the most screen time and is excellent, it is Hopkins who is stunning and has the best lines, most notably: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
“The Silence Of The Lambs” was the first horror movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture and actually all five major Oscars, including Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Director (Jonathan Demme). Following the success of the film, there was a sequel, “Hannibal” (2001) and a prequel, “Red Dragon” (2002) which in fact was a remake of “Manhunter” (1986).
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