Adam Lowes

★★★★☆ In recent years, Luc Besson has become most recognisable for churning out a raft of money-spinning but largely forgettable euro-flavoured actioners from his EuropaCorp studio. That has been to the detriment of his own directorial output (which has become increasingly lacklustre of late), and then along comes this screamingly ridiculous, hugely entertaining pulpy sci-fi…

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★☆☆☆☆ Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez have a lot to answer for. Seven years after failing to replicate the sleazy low-budget thrills of the grindhouse era, there have been numerous attempts in their wake to achieve the same thing, the majority of which have also stumbled badly. Into that mix comes Vengeance Road (2014), yet…

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★★★★☆ The barren, sun-scorched Australian Outback has proved a fertile creative ground for filmmakers interested in exploring tales of a dystopian nature, and director David Michôd gets great mileage out of it for his second feature, The Rover (2014). Bypassing the inherent high-octane exploitation route of this cinematic lineage, he opts instead for a much…

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★★☆☆☆ Based on Elmore Leonard novel The Switch (presumably the rather prosaic retitling was to stop confusion with star Jennifer Aniston’s 2010 comedy of that name) Life of Crime (2013) actually received a limited cinema release, although upon viewing, you’d be forgiven into thinking you had just witnessed a straight-to-video feature. Despite a fine and…

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★★☆☆☆ After an almost decade-long gap since Sin City (2005), you’d think that collaborators Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez would have made time to craft a watertight narrative and ensure that expectations were not only met but exceeded in belated sequel, Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For (2014). Sadly, that isn’t the case.…

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★★★★☆ The life of revered Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti almost feels too unwieldy and ambitious to fit into just one feature-length documentary, but Alex Gibney makes a good fist of it with Finding Fela (2014). The many facets of his career splinter off into a series of dramatically rich threads after an…

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★★★★★ It’s hard to believe the film that launched a thousand talky, hipster-inflected indie movies and changed the whole face of the industry is actually twenty years old. The sophomoric effort of a young film geek who had greatly impressed critically (if not commercially) with his debut Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) has remained…

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★★★★★ Four decades after its release, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) still justifies its place in the pantheon of all-time horror greats. Fully ingrained in the psyche of genre fans via the many manifestations of real world-inspired horror directly indebted to it, the film’s influence still ripples through pop culture to this day (see the…

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