Adam Lowes
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DVD Review: The Zero Boys
★★★☆☆ Cult film archivists Arrow Video sometimes unearth an obscure artefact from a cinematic bygone era which proves to be something of a lost gem and is rightfully lavished with the kind of praise that has previously eluded it. It’s safe to say The Zero Boys isn’t one of those releases, yet in its own…
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DVD Review: The Ninth Configuration
★★★★☆ Ever had trouble in a casual conversation explaining the plot of a film you’ve recently watched? Try recounting what happens in The Ninth Configuration and you’re liable to end up in a gibbering, tongue-tied mess on the floor. A uniquely original take on the manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder, it tiptoes around maintaining a…
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DVD Review: Three Days of the Condor
★★★★☆ Remember a time when the espionage film wasn’t required to move at breakneck speed or involve the protagonist performing death-dying leaps around rooftops and engaging in high-octane car chases? Watching the opening credits of Three Days of the Condor reads like a ‘best of’ 70s US cinema. The DP is The French Connection‘s Owen…
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DVD Review: Bride of Re-Animator
★★☆☆☆ Much like the sequel spawned from Evil Dead, a similarly cherished 80s horror, this follow-up to Stuart Gordon’s 1985 bona fide cult classic Re-Animator (it’s jokingly referenced by a stoned Kevin Spacey in American Beauty) isn’t so much a continuation of the first film as a remake of what has come before – the…
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Film Review: Victoria
★★★★★ The one-shot feature has yet to work its way into the cinematic landscape in the same ubiquitous way that the found footage conceit once did. But even if it grows into a popular storytelling tool, it’s doubtful we’ll see as stunning an achievement as what director Sebastian Schipper and his creative team have pulled…
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DVD Review: Waking Life
★★★★★ Richard Linklater may have received the best notices of his career for Boyhood (and rightly so) but it’s easy to forget previous to that film, he’d played around with the elasticity of storytelling in film, to equally stunning effect. Perhaps given the ostensibly bookish subject matter, Waking Life has seldom been acknowledged as a…
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DVD Review: Green Inferno
★☆☆☆☆ It seems hard to believe that The Green Inferno is the first big screen directorial outing from Eli Roth since his 2007 sequel to Hostel, largely because he’s turned himself into something of a one-man industry and brand, producing numerous genre features and godfathering several first-time projects from fledgling filmmakers. He certainly hasn’t idled…
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DVD Review: The Ninja Trilogy
★★★☆☆ Aside from a couple of exceptions, Cannon Films’ Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus may not be remembered in the annals of film history as purveyors of quality cinema, but they certainly showed a skill for spotting and quickly capitalising on growing social trends. This is the duo who reaped vast box office rewards by…
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DVD Review: Straight Outta Compton
★★★★☆ From the outset, a HBO mini-series would appear to have been the more logical fit for the epic story charting the rise and fall of notorious LA-based rap group NWA. The pioneering band not only established the West Coast rap scene, but following their break-up, key members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube went on…
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DVD Review: The Wolfpack
★★★★☆ Every once in a while a tale from real life springs up seemingly out of nowhere, offering the kind of rich, larger-than-life content most documentary makers could only dream about chancing upon. The Wolfpack opens with a sweded version of Reservoir Dogs being recreated by a group of similar- looking teenagers, all of whom…