Adam Lowes

★☆☆☆☆ Respected seventies auteur Brian De Palma returns from the creative wilderness (his last feature was the 2007 Iraq War drama Redacted) with Passion (2012), a remake of 2010 French thriller Love Crime. Unfortunately, despite a sense of the director going back to basics, the end results are far from satisfying and fail to evoke…

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★★★☆☆ An exercise in atmosphere and tension is given an interesting twist in Static (2012), a solid little shocker which is certainly a cut above the usual uninspired horror titles which flood the budget DVD sales market on a weekly basis. Bereft over the death of their young child, famed novelist Jonathan Dade (Milo Ventimiglia)…

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★★☆☆☆ Jason Statham bulks up his repertoire of hard-cases, this time stepping into the well-worn shoes of the eponymous anti-hero from the series of crime novels from the late Donald E. Westlake. Unfortunately, this version eschews taut, pulp-y thrills for tiresome, big action beats, injecting little life into the powerful source material. Although adapted from…

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★★★★☆ Championed by the likes of Talking Head David Byrne, Beck and eccentric Welsh songsmith Gruff Rhys, the popularity of this influential wave of Brazilian music has been gaining momentum for a number of years. Interest has now been deemed sufficient enough to warrant the UK theatrical release of Marcelo Machado’s insightful and engaging documentary,…

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★★★★☆ Rereleased to tie in with a two-month retrospective at BFI Southbank, it’s been almost forty years since Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) debuted on screens. Although a little obtuse and raggedy at times, this beguiling and fable-like yarn sits within his finest work. Loosely based on a real-life tale, the film…

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★★★★☆ One of the breakout hits from the controversial blaxploitation era, Jack Hill’s Foxy Brown (1974) (alongside Coffy from the previous year) helped solidify the then 25-year-old Pam Grier’s reputation as the queen of that since mythologised sub-genre. Producing a new transfer which retains that grainy, tangible feel of the original film stock, cult specialists…

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★★★☆☆ It would seem that 2013 is shaping up to be the true second coming of legendary Manchurian outfit The Stone Roses. Following triumphant reunion gigs and an equally lauded documentary, Made of Stone, into the mix comes Roses-tinged teen tribute-cum-standalone rites of passage tale Spike Island (2012). It’s the summer of 1990 and the…

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★★★★☆ When critics talk of works of cinema where “testosterone oozes from the screen”, they’re usually describing some machismo-laden action flick. That same terminology feels perfectly apt for Michaël R. Roskam’s Belgian crime yarn Bullhead (Rundskop, 2011), although it exists as a literal interpretation here, particularly in the case of its superlative lead turn from…

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★★☆☆☆ The second feature from Craig Viveiros, The Liability (2012) straddles a number of interesting sub-genres (road trip, gangster yarn, the world-weary hitman). It’s a shame these outwardly intriguing elements have to do battle with a predictable and pretty contrived story. Even an impressive visual canvas eventually plumps for style over substance as the script…

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★★★★★ John Schlesinger’s celebrated slice of sixties British New Wave makes its debut on Blu-ray this week, and remains an absolute must-see for all serious cinephiles. Although lumbered with the ‘angry young men’ label back at the time of its release, Billy Liar (1963) actually eschews that kitchen sink realism and remains a quirkier beast…

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