Lucy Popescu
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DVD Releases: ‘Certified Copy’
Certified Copy is the first of Abbas Kiarostami’s features to be filmed outside his native Iran. He is renowned for his use of non-professional actors, but here he employs the considerable talents of Juliette Binoche (winner of the Best Actress award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival) to work alongside British opera-singer William Shimmel, in…
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Interview: Ferzan Ozpetek, ‘Loose Cannons’
From his opening shots of a bride striding through the Italian countryside before turning a gun on herself, Italo-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek plays with our expectations. Drama, melodrama, domestic tragedy, family comedy: Loose Cannons (2010) has it all.Set in Lecce, in the south of Italy, the Cantone clan gather for a family dinner to welcome youngest…
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DVD Review: ‘Sus’
★★★☆☆ It is election night, 3 May 1979, and police officer Karn (Ralph Brown) is confident that Margaret Thatcher will win a landslide victory. An innocent black man, Leon Delroy (Clint Dyer), is brought in for interrogation, accused of murdering his pregnant wife who died after suffering a massive haemorrhage. Karn and his thuggish sidekick,…
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DVD Releases: ‘The Silent Army’
In northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, children as young as nine are forced into armed conflict. Traumatised and brutalised, the child soldiers find themselves participating in horrific massacres. Thousands die in this way. Congo-born director, Jean van de Velde, has brought this sobering subject to the screen in The Silent Army (2008).…
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Theatrical 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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Theatrical Releases: ‘The Hunter’
The Hunter (2010) is Iranian-British director Rafi Pitts’ follow-up to his acclaimed 2006 film It’s Winter. Again, we are in Iran, just before the elections. Progress is evident in the vast cranes that dominate the skyline, but the film’s opening shots reveal Tehran to be a concrete jungle, bleached of colour. There are endless traffic jams on…
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LFF 2010: ‘Loose Cannons’ review
★★★★☆ From his opening shots of a bride striding through the Italian countryside before turning a gun on herself, Italo-Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek plays with our expectations. Drama, melodrama, domestic tragedy, family comedy…Loose Cannons (2010) has it all.Set in Lecce, in the south of Italy, the Cantone clan gather for a family dinner to welcome…
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LFF 2010: ‘Another Year’ review
★★★★★ 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…
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Raindance Film Festival 2010: ‘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…
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Theatrical Releases: ‘Bella’
Jose (Eduardo Verastegui), a rising soccer superstar has a dazzling career ahead of him until a fatal accident dramatically alters the course of his life. He shifts down a gear, grows a bushy beard and takes work as a chef in his brother Manny’s (Manuel Perez) New York restaurant. Here he meets Nina (Tammy Blanchard),…