Adam Lowes

★☆☆☆☆ It’s been almost two decades since idiosyncratic French filmmaker Patrice Leconte delivered a near-masterpiece in the form of 1996’s Ridicule, an opulent and hugely absorbing period drama of verbal sparring in the court at Versailles. It’s safe to say that A Promise (2013), the director’s first English-language foray, won’t be knocking that aforementioned feature…

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★★★☆☆ Partially funded by Kickstarter, Daniel Patrick Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013) arrives in selected UK cinemas this week having picked up a number of accolades from various film festivals across the pond. It’s easy to see why. While it may meander a little on occasion, the film is full of small yet hugely…

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★★★★☆ Another forgotten gem given new life on DVD and Blu-ray here in the UK, John Guillermin’s Rapture (1965) is a beautifully-made and challenging oddity. It’s a film which undoubtedly sent the top brass at Twentieth Century Fox (the studio who first brought it to screen) into a spin when it was first released, but…

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★★☆☆☆ For every Hollywood franchise to complete the victory lap, there are those unfortunate ventures which fall at the first hurdle. The latter was definitely the case with 1985’s Remo Williams: The Adventure Begin, which is brought back to life in this peerless transfer from Arrow Video. From the film’s subtitle alone, it’s clear there…

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★★★☆☆ It was perhaps inevitable that Swedish author Jonas Jonasson’s popular 2009 novel, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, would make it to the big screen. A tale which straddles multiple decades and features a host of colourful supporting characters, it’s a book which almost seemed primed for cinematic treatment upon…

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★★☆☆☆ Competing for the record number of red herrings in a single motion picture, Non-Stop (2013) initially teases ninety minutes of high-concept fun, but quickly gets bogged down in a mire of tired clichés, laboured characters and distracting plot-holes. A huge waste of star Liam Neeson, Jaume Collet-Serra’s airborne whodunit is reminiscent of the kind…

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★★★★☆ The story of a burgeoning love affair between two teenage cancer sufferers from an insanely popular title in young adult literature (more than nine million copies have been sold worldwide, thus far). With that hefty fanbase waiting to embrace it on the big screen, The Fault in Our Stars (2014) is as close to…

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★★★☆☆ You have to hand it to Hollywood polymath James Franco. He certainly seems unfazed when it comes to the challenges he sets himself. Adapting (with co-writer Matt Rager) and starring in this classic work from American author William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (2013) also marks his feature directorial debut. While it’s undeniably messy…

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★★★★☆ The Star Wars of smut-tinged coming-of-age comedies, Bob Clark’s Porky’s finally gets a new high-definition lease of life this week courtesy of cult connoisseurs Arrow Video. Unlike The Last American Virgin, another recent acquisition of theirs which covers similar terrain, the years have been much kinder to this 1982 US-set, Canadian-funded production. It’s a…

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★★☆☆☆ The latest offering to emerge from Bristol’s iFeatures micro-budget funding scheme, which also saw Polish-born director Katarzyna Klimkiewicz’s impressive Flying Blind (2012) secure a UK theatrical release last year, Mark Simon Hewis’ debut feature 8 Minutes Idle (2012) (based on a novel of the same name by Matt Thorne) also had the added backing…

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