A review of the 1983 film “Educating Rita”
July 27th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
It took me over 60 years to catch up with this starring vehicle for Michael Caine, by which time he had retired at the age of 90 after a career involving over 130 cinematic appearances, this being one of his finest. His co-star, Julie Walters, has done much of her most memorable work on television, but here shines as brightly as any point in her own long career. For their wonderful performances in this film, Caine and Walters both won BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for best actor and best actress.
Caine is Dr Frank Bryant, a disillusioned, hard-drinking university professor of literature. Walters is a 26 year old working class hairdresser who wants to discover herself. These very different characters are brought together when Bryant becomes an Open University tutor to the aspiring Rita. The witty script is by Willy Russell who adapted his own stage play. Lewis Gilbert produced and directed this aeon to the transformative power of education. Alone the way, you’ll learn the meaning assonance.
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A review of the superb 1994 film “Leon”
July 22nd, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Following the success of “Nikita”, the French Luc Besson made this superb and stylish action-thriller in the English language as both writer and director.
Set in New York City, it brings together the eponymous Italian-American ‘cleaner’ aka hitman (Jean Reno who played a similar character in “Nikita”), a grizzled, brilliantly efficient operator who loves milk and his plant, and 12 year old abused American girl next door Mathilda (a remarkably assured Natalie Portman in her feature film debut), who comes to owe her life to him and wants to emulate him. Leon works for local gangster Tony (Danny Aiello) and he and Matilda are pursued by a corrupt, bloodthirsty, drug-fuelled DEA agent (Gary Oldman).
The film opens with an exciting display of Leon’s professional talents and ends with him taking on a whole battalion of heavily-armed SWAT police. Along the way, Leon and Matilda develop a kind of romance, not overtly sexual but deep and moving, each giving the other a new purpose in life. This is one of my favourite movies.
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A review of the summer blockbuster movie “The Odyssey”
July 22nd, 2026 by Roger Darlington
A budget of $250 million, 50 boats, 5,000 extras, filming at 20 locations in Greece, Italy, Morocco, Scotland, Iceland and Malta. This was always going to be a massive movie.
After the huge success of “Oppenheimer”, so excited was I in anticipation of the next film – his 13th – from Christopher Nolan, co-writer and director of “The Odyssey”, that I decided to familiarise myself with Homer’s poem of some 2,700 years ago by reading a version of it – actually Stephen Fry’s excellent and accessible interpretation – before the movie’s release. I’m so glad I did because otherwise I would have struggled with the extensive cast of characters and Nolan’s trademark mixture of timelines.
In this enormously ambitious and expensive spectacle of 173 minutes, Nolan has done an excellent job summarising and interpreting this classic text, although the start is somewhat slow and purists will be upset by the omissions (such as the island of the Lotus Eaters) and the changes (especially in the final segment). Nolan famously avoids special effects, so Cyclops and Scylla could have been rendered more effectively and the representation of Hades is poor, but the Trojan Horse is striking, the sea scenes are exciting, and the fighting sequences are thrilling.
It is a starry cast: Matt Damon as the complicated Odysseus, hero of Troy and King of Ithaca; Anne Hathaway as his wife Penelope who waits 20 years for his return; Tom Holland as their son Telemachus; Zendaya (Holland’s wife) as the goddess of war Athena; Charlize Theron as the deity Calypso who keeps Odysseus on her island for seven years; and Robert Pattinson as Antinous, the leading suitor of Penelope. Hathaway and Pattinson are particular impressive.
The cinematography by the Dutch Hoyte van Hoytem and the sound by the Swedish Ludwig Göransson – both regular collaborators with Nolan – are stunning, but the dialogue (by Nolan himself) does not offer any of the sort of memorable lines that we had in “Gladiator”, a even better film set in the classic period. Essentially, “The Odyssey” – indeed like Gladiator” and many other films, books, plays and poems – is about a hero’s struggles to return home. It is worth the journey.
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A review of the 1939 classic French film “La Grande Illusion”
July 18th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
This is famous war, actually anti-war, film that has no battle scenes in it. Instead, most of the action is set in two prisoner of war camps in 1914, the first year of what was then known as the Great War or the war to end wars. The prisoners are French and the film is French, directed and co-written by Jean Renoir, son of the Impressionist painter. The main French characters are a working class man (Jean Gabin), an aristocrat (Pierre Fresnay) and a Jew (Marcel Dalio) who work together on an escape plan, while the lead German character is played by Erich von Stroheim who laments the declining power of the European nobility.
This powerful and moving film was released in 1937, when there were growing expectations that another world war was in the offing. Much of the Great War was on French soil and millions of French lost their lives, so there was a ready audience for a film that challenged the illusion of war and presented a humanist approach with the clear message that class and love are more important than nationality or language. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy banned the film and, after the German invasion of France in 1940, both occupied France and Vichy France withdrew the work in its home nation.
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A review of “Odyssey” by Stephen Fry
July 13th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
As I anticipated the 2026 blockbuster movie “The Odyssey” by Christopher Nolan, I thought that it was about time that I familiarised myself with Homer’s epic work of some 2,700 years ago. The original poem was recited from memory and eventually was set down as a work of 12,109 lines composed in ancient Greek in a form known as dactylic hexameter. There have been many translations and lots of interpretations.
A friend, who is an English teacher, recommended the 1996 translation by the American academic Robert Fagles, but I confess that I immediately felt intimidated by this tome. Instead, I decided to read a simplified 2024 version written by the British actor Stephen Fry, actually the last of four books in his series retelling the Greek myths.
There are numerous characters and many adventures in this tale of the ten-year journey of Odysseus from his victory at Troy to his waiting wife Penelope and son Telemachus on the island of Ithaca, but Fry makes an admirable fist of guiding us through the complicated cast of gods, monsters and mortals and the amazing challenges faced by the returning Greeks. Odysseus himself comes across as a complicated and conflicted character. Certainly, a great fighter and leader who is immensely brave and resourceful, but also a man who is vain, selfish, deceitful and a womaniser.
So many modern plays, novels and films make reference to, or borrow from, “The Odyssey” so, why does it continue to resonate so vividly? Fry highlights that, at its heart, it is the idea of a return home and concludes: “Whether home is a physical or a spiritual, a real or imaginary place, our journeys to find it or return to it will always remain, we can be sure, a proper subject for art, music, drama and entertainment. Homer’s Odyssey will eternally stand as the avatar and exemplar – as appropriate enough, the home of such stories.” This is why we should all have some knowledge of the work.
I can’t wait to see Nolan’s film.
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A review of the classic 1953 western “Shane”
July 13th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
This iconic western is based on a novel which, in turn, was inspired by the Johnson County War, a conflict between ranchers and homesteaders which took place in Northern Wyoming from 1889 to 1893. The film begins with the eponymous hero, clad in white buckskin, riding into view and it concludes with him riding into the distance. In between, we witness the efforts of Shane, played by Alan Ladd, to leave behind his days as a gunslinger, a forlorn hope when he finds himself siding with the homesteaders against the rancher gang who hire the sharp-shooting, black-clad Wilson (Jack Palance) to do their dirty work. As Shane declares, just before he departs: “There’s no living with a killing.”
Ably directed by George Stevens, at one level, this is a relatively familiar story of two different efforts by white immigrants to make a living in the tough frontier. At an other level, this is a more psychological examination of how a charismatic newcomer interacts with one struggling, homesteader family, resulting in the father (Van Heflin), the mother (Jean Arthur) and most especially the son (nine year old Brandon De Wilde), in different ways each falling in love with him. As the hero disappears into the sunset, young Joey shouts out: “Shane. Shane! Come back! Bye, Shane. – one of the most moving scenes in any western.
Shot in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with the purple and white Grand Teton mountains in the background, the film only won one Academy Award (that for photography) but, over the years, it has achieved an enduring, almost fairy-tale, reputation.
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A ninth five-star review for “Everyone Has A Story”
July 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
My latest book – available on Amazon – has just received a short but positive review: “Mr. Darlington has created a set of intriguing biographies about people he has met, by interviewing them. They are all different, but all are interesting. Superbly written.”
If you haven’t already bought a copy of the book, please consider doing so. If you have a copy, maybe you would like to gift another copy to family or friend. Thanks for your support. I promise that you won’t be disappointed.
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A review of the 1976 classic movie “Taxi Driver”
July 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Following “Mean Streets” (1973), this is another collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, both still at the beginning of their careers and both of whom went on to have stellar achievements for half a century. In this case, they had a strong script, courtesy of Paul Schrader who presents the descent into psychological hell of former marine and Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle (De Niro in intense and brilliant form), an insomniac who works nights as a New York City cab driver, despises most of what he sees, and eventually takes it upon himself to become a lone avenger, rescuing an underage prostitute (12 year old Jodie Foster).
This violent film noir has director Scorsese in a cameo slot and the support roles include Cybill Shepherd and Harvey Keitel (also in “Mean Streets”). A particularly memorable scene has a beefed-up and well-armed Travis conversing with himself in the mirror: “You talking to me?” he asks four times. He warns us: “Here is a man who would not take it anymore.” From the very beginning, the atmospheric saxophone score by Bernard Hermann creates a dark and edgy ambiance. The music was finished mere hours before his death and the film is dedicated to him.
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A review of the classic 1961 movie “West Side Story”
July 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
“West Side Story” was a spectacular theatre musical (when I was in Vienna, I saw a version in German!) and it was an enormous success as a film (when I first saw it at the cinema as a teenager, my girlfriend was repeatedly in tears) that won all but one of its 11 Academy Award nominations. Inspired by Shakespeare’s “Romeo And Juliet”, it centres on conflict between two rival gangs in New York City, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Polish Jets, and the romance between members of the opposing communities: Maria (Natalie Wood) and Tony (Richard Beymer) respectively.
The casting of the film could have been more ethnically sensitive – something addressed by the 2021 remake – but the music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and choreography by Jerome Robbins are all outstanding. In so many musicals, there are a couple of songs that stand out, but almost every song in “West Side Story”is memorable. My particular favourite is “America” for its thrilling music and sharp lyrics addressing the challenges of being an immigrant in the United States.
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A review of the 1939 classic movie “The Wizard Of Oz”
July 4th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Rarely can a movie have been so troubled in production but so successful in outcome. The work had 14 writers and four directors; casting was a problem and there were on-set accidents and drunkenness; it was over schedule and over budget. And yet “Oz” was a huge success and, according to the US Library of Congress, this beloved musical is the most viewed film in cinematic history.
The source material was the 1900 book by L. Frank Baum. In the novel, the main character of Dorothy was a 10 year old girl with blonde curls but, in the film, the role finally went to 16 year old redhead Judy Garland who is a delight. The colourful cast includes Dorothy’s loveable travel companions along the Yellow Brick Road, The Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), The Tin Woodman (Jack Haley), and The Cowardly Lion (Bert Lehr), and together they eventually encounter The Wizard (Frank Morgan). We have a good witch, a bad witch, 120 ‘munchkins’ (played by an entertainment troupe called Singer’s Midgets), and Toto the male dog played by Terry a female terrier,
The movie begins in sepia black and white but, 20 minutes into the story, a door opens to a dreamland of luscious Technicolour. My favourite line – a version of which I often use when something unexpected happens – is “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.”. I once saw Dorothy’s magic ruby slippers in the Museum of American History in Washington DC.
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