Lucy Popescu
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Film Review: ‘George Harrison: Living in the Material World’
★★★★☆ Martin Scorsese’s moving documentary on The Beatles guitarist, George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), succeeds on a number of levels. Combining interviews with archive footage, snapshots of George and his music, Scorsese creates a portrait of a man full of contradictions. George’s wife Olivia (who also co-produced the film) describes how “He…
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DVD Review: ‘Circo’
★★★★☆ “The circus is tough and beautiful” says Tino, the ringmaster and central character of Aaron Schock’s documentary Circo (2010), charting the ups and downs of a Mexican troupe. One could say the same of Schock’s film. The film follows the Ponce clan, who have worked in the circus for over a hundred years but…
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Film Review: ‘Jane Eyre’ (2011)
★★★★★ Cary Fukunaga’s invigorating new version of Jane Eyre (2011), starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, should appeal to Charlotte Brontë purists as well as attracting new fans. The film couldn’t be more different than Fukunaga’s award-winning debut Sin Nombre (2009), a violent thriller about a group of immigrants travelling through Mexico to the US,…
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Film Review: ‘The Taqwacores’
★★☆☆☆ The Taqwacores (2010), adapted from the cult novel by Michael Muhammad Knight and directed by Eyad Zahra, is a quirky Indie film about young American Muslims determined to rebel against convention.Set in Buffalo, New York, Yusef (Bobby Naderi), a shy engineering student from Pakistan, moves off campus into a shared student house. Little does…
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DVD Review: ‘Lou’
★★★★☆ Lou (2010), directed and written by Belinda Chayko (Bored Olives [2000]) and starring legendary British actor John Hurt, is a tender, heartfelt film about one girl’s rite of passage. Set against the dramatic landscape of rural New South Wales, harried single mum Rhia (Emily Barclay) struggles to bring up her three daughters, hounded by…
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Film Review: ‘Amreeka’
★★★★☆ Cherien Dabis’ bitter-sweet Amreeka (2009) (Arabic for ‘America’) follows the fortunes of Muna (Nisreen Faour), a single, divorced mother, who lives in the West Bank with her teenage son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem). The opening scenes show Muna and her son having to endure regular military checkpoints on her daily commute to work in a…
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Film Review: ‘Life, Above All’
★★★★☆ Life, Above All (2010) is a moving drama about a 12-year old girl (a stunning debut from Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the prejudices and superstitions of her neighbours in a South African village. Lillian has lost her newborn baby, Sara, and the family are in mourning. But when her eldest child, Chanda, looks for…
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Film Review: ‘Ballast’
★★★☆☆ Ballast opens with a wide panoramic view of a bleak, waterlogged, windswept landscape; birds taking off in the grey distance. But for the three lonely individuals at the heart of Lance Hammer’s astonishing debut film, escape is not an option. To survive is all they can hope for. Lawrence (Micheal J. Smith Sr.), overweight,…
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DVD Releases: ‘Another Year’
Disappointment and regret loom large in Mike Leigh’s latest film, Another Year (2010). From the opening shots of Janet’s (Imelda Staunton) pained expression as she desperately tries to recall a happy moment from her past, you know Leigh will be revisiting familiar territory.As with Leigh’s previous efforts, Another Year once again serves as a showcase for the…
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Film Review: ‘Son of Babylon’
★★★★★ Son of Babylon (2009) is set in 2003, in the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s fall, and tells the story of a Kurdish grandmother and the search for her son, Ibrahim, a soldier missing since the Gulf War in 1991. A letter from a fellow soldier informs her that he had been arrested and…