Lucy Popescu
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Film Review: The Seagull
★★★★☆ Michael Mayer takes something of a gamble bringing Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull to the screen and it doesn’t entirely pay off. This is very much an American, celebrity driven rendition of a Russian classic and the stellar cast, including Annette Bening, Billy Howle, Elisabeth Moss and the ubiquitous Saoirse Ronan, its main attraction. The Seagull…
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Film Review: The Children Act
★★★★☆ Ian McEwan’s poignant screen adaptation of his 2014 novel, The Children Act, directed by Richard Eyre, stars Emma Thompson in a career-best performance as a level-headed high court judge facing a crisis in her personal and professional life. Fiona Maye decides the legal fate of children and early on we are offered a montage…
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Film Review: That Good Night
★★★☆☆ There is the uncanny sense of art imitating life in Eric Styles’ poignant, end of life drama, featuring John Hurt’s swansong. That Good Night is about a man dealing with his impending death and Hurt was himself terminally ill when the film was shot. Ralph Maitland (Hurt), an egotistical screenwriter in his seventies, enjoys…
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Film Review: Custody
★★★★☆ In France, a woman dies every two and a half days as a result of domestic violence. Xavier Legrand’s feature debut, Custody, a hard-hitting social drama and winner of the Silver Lion, attempts to raise awareness of this harrowing subject through the powerful medium of cinema. Legrand builds on his Oscar nominated short Just…
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Film Review: Hotel Salvation
★★★★☆ Set in Varanasi, Shubhashish Bhutiani’s remarkably assured debut feature, starring Lalit Behl and Adil Hussain, has already won plaudits and awards on the festival circuit. Shot when he was just 23, Hotel Salvation is a bittersweet meditation on life, death and salvation. Haunted by a recurring dream, seventy-seven-year old Daya (Behl) is convinced it…
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Film Review: Land of Mine
★★★★☆ Inspired by true events in 1945, director Martin Zandvliet’s powerful Academy Award-nominated film about Denmark’s treatment of German prisoners, Land of Mine, demonstrates that the aftermath of war can often be just as brutal as the bloody conflict itself.Fearful of an allied invasion, Nazi forces left behind two million landmines on Denmark’s western coast…
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Film Review: Lost in Lebanon
★★★★★ This heartbreaking film by Sophia and Georgia Scott follows four Syrian refugees as they struggle to rebuild their lives in Lebanon. Syria’s neighbour has had to cope with a massive influx of refugees – Lebanon’s population of 4.4 million now comprises 1.5 million Syrians.Lost in Lebanon was shot in Beirut and on the Syrian…
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Film Review: A Quiet Passion
★★★☆☆ Terence Davies is no stranger to biographical film, having mined his own life story to great effect in Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes. The overall tone of his sensitive Emily Dickinson biopic mirrors the great American poet’s contemplative style. The languorous pace may divide audiences, despite some strong performances and…
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Film Review: I Am Not Your Negro
★★★★☆ Raoul Peck’s provocative and timely documentary I Am Not Your Negro is an incisive meditation on America’s Civil Rights Movement told through the eyes of the late novelist James Baldwin. Peck’s Oscar-nominated film focuses on Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House, about the lives and murders of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and…
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Film Review: Denial
★★★☆☆ Mick Jackson’s courtroom drama Denial focuses on the 1996 British libel suit brought by David Irving (Timothy Spall), the infamous Holocaust denier, against American historian Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) and her publisher Penguin Books. Based on Lipstadt’s book Denial: Holocaust History on Trial, and adapted for screen by David Hare, Denial offers some fascinating…