Lucy Popescu
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Blu-ray Review: ‘Listen Up Philip’
★★★☆☆ Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip (2014) follows a self-absorbed writer (Jason Schwartzman) who scuppers his fledgling career through sheer arrogance and misanthropy. It;s both an engaging and a frustrating watch. From the very first scene, Philip is being obnoxious to a former girlfriend who turns up late to their appointment. He berates her…
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DVD Review: ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’
★★★★☆ Youth, beauty and mortality are potent themes in Olivier Assayas’ latest feature Clouds of Sils Maria (2014), starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. Binoche plays Maria Enders, a middle-aged actress who remains at the top of her game but is assailed by doubts about her career and which direction to take. The film opens…
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DVD Review: ‘The Face of an Angel’
★★★☆☆ Michael Winterbottom’s latest feature, The Face of an Angel (2014), explores the intersection of beauty, youth, sex and violent crime. Inspired by Amanda Knox’s alleged murder of British student Meredith Kercher in Italy, Winterbottom offers a perceptive, but at times plodding, take on the media’s sensationalised coverage of her trial. Thomas Lang (Daniel Bruhl)…
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Edinburgh 2015: ’45 Years’ review
★★★★☆ Based on a short story by David Constantine, British director Andrew Haigh’s poignant drama 45 Years (2015) is led by two terrific central performances from Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling. Kate and Geoff are preparing for their forty-fifth wedding anniversary. They have no children and live in a small rural village near the Norfolk…
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Film Review: That Sugar Film
★★★★☆ Damon Gameau’s feature documentary about the detrimental effects of refined sugar and excess fructose on our health is both educative and entertaining. The central message of That Sugar Film (2015) is that the calories from sugar behave differently from other foods. Recalling Morgan Spurlock’s McDonald’s overdose in Super-Size Me (2004), Gameau set himself the…
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DVD Review: ‘Testament of Youth’
★★★★☆ James Kent’s magnificent feature debut Testament of Youth (2014), based on Vera Brittain’s bestselling memoir about the First World War, is a real tearjerker that should move male and female audiences alike and appeal to fans of Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007). Screenwriter Juliette Towhidi (Love, Rosie) focuses on Brittain’s coming of age – from…
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HRWFF 2015: ‘Uyghurs: Prisoners of the Absurd’ review
★★★★★ Montreal-based Patricio Henriquez’s compassionate film Uyghurs: Prisoners of the Absurd (2014), follows the stories of three Uyghurs unlawfully imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay. East Turkestan has been annexed to China on and off for the last three centuries and was named ‘Xinjiang’ (new frontier) in the nineteenth century. China has repressed the Uyghurs for decades…
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HRWFF 2015: ‘No Land’s Song’ review
★★★★★ Ayat Najafi’s enthralling doc No Land’s Song (2014) is about his sister Sara’s attempts to stage a concert in Tehran featuring female soloists. Following the Islamic revolution of 1979 female singers were banned from performing solo in public, unless to an exclusively female audience. Iran has a history of iconic female singers, such as…
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Film Review: ‘Suite Française’
★★★★☆ Saul Dibb’s film adaptation of Suite Française (2014) dramatically compresses the many strands of Irène Némirovsky’s incomplete World War II novel, discovered by her daughter after her death and published to great acclaim in 2004. Némirovsky intended to write five parts dealing with the tumult of war but only completed two novellas – she…
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DVD Review: ‘Leviathan’
★★★★★ Living up to its title, there is an epic quality to Leviathan (2014), Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s tragic drama about corruption and impunity in modern Russia. Mechanic Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov) and his second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) are facing eviction from their home overlooking the Barents Sea in the north. It’s in a prime position and…