Adam Lowes

★★★☆☆ Mexican director (and now Oscar-winner) Alejandro González Iñárritu has toyed around with the elasticity of the medium before, most notably in the daringly non-linear 21 Grams (2003). With Birdman (2014) he once again attempts to turn the format on its head, concocting a visually exhilarating commentary on the pitfalls of celebrity and the process…

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★★★★★ From an era where the buddy movie became a ubiquitous fixture comes the one film which firmly stood out from the rest. The first film to showcase a looser, comedic turn from Robert De Niro (and considerably more grounded than his Meet The Parents shtick), Marin Brest’s Midnight Run (1988) provided the best use…

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★★★☆☆ As composer Roy Ayers’ silky lounge-jazz score comes in during the credits and that era-specific funky typeface fills the screen, you’re more than aware of what’s in store for you with 1973’s Coffy. This is a blaxploitation offering with all the wonderful chintzy seventies trappings, lashing of scuzzy violence (including one particularly horrific comeuppance)…

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★★★★☆ Rereleased to coincide in the forthcoming retrospective at the BFI of director Robert Siodmak, the supporting promotional blurb around the 1948 New York-set crime yarn, Cry of the City (1948) mentions its influence over one the city’s favourite cinematic sons, Martin Scorsese. The grimy depiction of the mean streets of Little Italy might be…

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★★★★☆ Taking into account the countless iterations of vampire mythology in popular culture over the last few years, you’d be forgiven for thinking that a stake had been driven through the heart of originality when it comes to the cinematic exploits of the toothsome undead. Thankfully, What We Do in the Shadows (2014) proves that…

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★★★★★ The legendary (if media-propagated) Brat Pack proved to be an intrinsic part of 80s pop culture, and was a movement which grew primarily out of the films of John Hughes. The Michigan-born filmmaker enjoyed an incredibly prolific run in a relatively short time, but it was his seminal work The Breakfast Club (now celebrating…

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★★☆☆☆ On more than a few occasions during the big screen promo trail for The Judge (2014), star Robert Downey Jr. cited the character-driven US films of the 70s as his inspiration behind the project (a labour of love for the actor; his wife Susan has a producer credit). What might have looked promising on…

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★★★☆☆ There was a time when the zombie was considered the less illustrious horror stablemate to the sexier, more outwardly alluring vampire. The shift in popularity has risen significantly of late, and given the increasing prominence of the zombie mythos in mainstream entertainment, Doc of the Dead (2014) is both a welcome and long overdue…

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★★★★☆ Last year’s Stranger by the Lake (also distributed by Peccadillo Pictures) marked something of a sea change in the transitioning of LGBT cinema into mainstream acceptability. Like that film, this lovely coming of age feature, The Way he Looks (2014) – a much gentler affair and minus the sometimes graphic nature of its stablemate…

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★★☆☆☆ Unceremoniously shifted from a healthy summer spot last year to capitalise on the pre-blockbuster month of February, it’s doubtful that lack of competition will bolster the box office of Jupiter Ascending (2015) – a tiresome sci-fi yarn that cannibalises from so many past fantasy properties that in the future, special ‘spot the homage’ screenings…

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