Lucy Popescu
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Film Review: Little Men
★★★★☆ The final film in a trilogy focusing on New York City, Ira Sachs’ latest feature Little Men, starring Jennifer Ehle and Greg Kinnear, follows the rites of passage of two thirteen-year-old boys, Jake (Theo Taplitz) and Tony (Michael Barbieri). Jake is a sensitive loner whose artistic talents are derided by his school teacher and…
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Film Review: Things to Come
★★★☆☆ Mia Hansen-Løve’s fifth feature, Things to Come, is an introspective exploration of a woman losing her moorings and facing up to old age. Isabelle Huppert plays Nathalie, a high school philosophy teacher. When Heinz (André Marcon), her husband of twenty-five years, also a philosophy lecturer, admits he has met someone else, she asks “Why…
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Film Review: Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
★★★☆☆ It’s incredible to think that Absolutely Fabulous, the popular sitcom starring Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, ran from 1992-2012. Some twenty-five years after the TV pilot, the pair are back, this time on the big screen; older but no wiser. Given the current malaise settling on Britain, the timing of Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie could…
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Film Review: The Meddler
★★★★☆ Although Lorene Scafaria’s tender, bittersweet comedy The Meddler, starring Susan Sarandon and J.K. Simmons, is marred by the occasional cliché, it’s also an unexpectedly perceptive film about loneliness, grief and mother-daughter relationships. After the death of her beloved husband, Joe, Marnie Minervini (Sarandon) moves to Los Angeles to be close to her daughter Lori…
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HRW 2016: Mediterranea review
★★★★☆ Jonas Carpignano’s debut feature Mediterranea follows the fortunes of two African migrants, Ayiva (Koudous Seihon) and Abas (Alassane Sy), friends from Burkina Faso in search of a better life on the European continent. They endure a hazardous journey through Algeria and survive a run in with violent bandits. Once in Libya, they join a…
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HRW 2016: Hooligan Sparrow review
★★★★☆ Hooligan Sparrow, Nanfu Wang’s astonishing documentary about corruption in China, opened this year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Many Chinese dissidents take on a pseudonym in order to protect their identity. Artist and activist Ye Haiyan, aka Hooligan Sparrow, does not attempt to hide herself – in fact she shot to notoriety in China…
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HRW 2016: The Crossing review
★★★★☆ Aptly, migration is one of the major themes explored at the 20th Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London. Photojournalist and filmmaker George Kurian’s absorbing documentary The Crossing follows the fortunes of a small group of Syrian refugees who leave Egypt for Europe in an old fishing boat. They are rescued from the sea by…
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Film Review: Chronic
★★★★☆ Michel Franco’s assured English-language debut Chronic follows hospice nurse David (Tim Roth) and his care of terminally-ill patients. Initially, David appears efficient and compassionate and has an easy going rapport with his charges. He forges closes links with many of them and assiduously performs duties that family members cannot contemplate. It’s interesting to note…
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Film Review: Rams
★★★★☆ Grímur Hákonarson’s Rams is an affecting feature about sheep which also speaks reams about the human condition. Hákonarson focuses on two estranged brothers who share a passion for sheep farming. Set in a remote part of Iceland, Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson) own adjacent land but have not spoken to each other…
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DVD Review: Mia Madre
★★★★★ Italian auteur Nanni Moretti is well-known for his bittersweet explorations of love, loss and mortality. Mia Madre (2015), his beautiful, humane portrait of bereavement is his best yet. Film director Margherita (Margherita Buy) finds it hard to accept that her mother Ada (Giulia Lazzarini) is dying. Ada has been hospitalised with an enlarged heart…