Aloha, Stranger: Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna are somewhere down there beholding the might of an alien invasion force in BATTLESHIP.

Cinefantastique Spotlight: BATTLESHIP

The aliens have landed! Yes. Again. This time they’ve invaded off the coast of Hawaii, so it’s just like Pearl Harbor, if the attack on Pearl Harbor had included such devastating weaponry as Giant Exploding Pegs and Hot-Rodding Robot Fireballs. Can slacker sailor Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), finding himself in command of the lone, surviving …

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The Fangs are Almost as Big as the Lapels: An undead Johnny Depp braves the ravages of the 70's in DARK SHADOWS.

Cinefantastique Spotlight: DARK SHADOWS

Two hundred years is a long time to revive a vampire, but then again, forty years is long time to revive the first horror soap opera (not counting an earlier, feature adaptation and a TV reboot in the ’90s). In Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) is cursed into vampirehood by spurned lover …

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Are You Really Going to Leave THESE Girls Behind?: The women of a Lebanese village recruit some unusual allies to stave off a war in WHERE DO WE GO NOW?

Nadine Labaki on WHERE DO WE GO NOW?

A comedy about dire consequences, WHERE DO WE GO NOW? takes a look at the ease with which humanity slips into war, and the sometimes insurmountable difficulties that arise as people struggle to avoid it. Setting the film in a small Lebanese village where Christian and Muslim live side-by-side, director/writer/actress Nadine Labaki tells the tale …

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Dustin Poirier in Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's FIGHTVILLE.

The Indie on Demand Movie Review: FIGHTVILLE

I’d like to think humanity has advanced beyond the primal necessity of raw combat, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole lot of people who are willing to pay good money to see a couple of guys get locked in a cage and beat on each other for a while. Fightville is a documentary …

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Left to right: Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, Robert Downey Jr, and a mass of pixels that look kinda like Mark Ruffalo prepare to do some avenging, because they are THE AVENGERS.

Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE AVENGERS

There are so many ways a grand conglomeration of super heroes could turn into a car wreck (case in point: THE FANTASTIC FOUR), that we should be grateful when a film manages just to clear that bar. Fortunately, and quite happily, THE AVENGERS not only manages that base-line feat, but goes far beyond it, becoming …

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Cinefantastique Spotlight: BATTLESHIP Cinefantastique Spotlight: DARK SHADOWS Nadine Labaki on WHERE DO WE GO NOW? The Indie on Demand Movie Review: FIGHTVILLE Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE AVENGERS

Apr
24

Tribeca 2012 Diary: UNA NOCHE Director Lucy Mulloy

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by Dan Persons

The drama of three young Cubans taking the not-inconsequential step of escaping their country to the (possibly) welcoming arms of the United States is traced in startling detail in UNA NOCHE. Filming on-location, director Lucy Mulloy makes her feature film debut by capturing a compellingly credible portrayal of life in modern-day Havana — the struggle for a decent job, the quest for the simple essentials of life, and the difficulty of implementing the ninety mile voyage that would take one away from the oppressive poverty.

Lucy and I met up outside Tribeca’s press lounge to discuss the film. Our interview is below.

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Apr
23

Tribeca 2012 Diary: REPLICAS’ Jeremy Power Regimbal & Josh Close

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by Dan Persons

Cherish what you’ve got, ‘cuz it’s likely others sure as hell do. In REPLICAS, an upscale family (Selma Blair, Josh Close — who also wrote the screenplay — and Quinn Lord) take a trip to their vacation home in order to recover from a recent tragedy, and receive a visit from a set of excessively friendly neighbors (Rachel Miner, James D’Arcy, and Alex Ferris) whose curiosity about the comfortable lifestyle they witness turns from merely discomfiting to out-and-out deadly. Director Jeremy Power Regimbal makes his feature film debut with this tense tale of class envy pushed to extremes.

Regimbal and Close met up with me at one the Tribeca Festival’s hotels, and were willing to talk a little about what motivated the project. The interview is below.

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Apr
22

Tribeca 2012 Diary: THE PLAYROOM Director Julia Dyer

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by Dan Persons

The kids are telling tales out of school, and so are their parents. Set one restless night in the mid-seventies, THE PLAYROOM juxtaposes a quartet of siblings spinning a strange, heartbreaking tale of freedom in their attic sanctuary with the darker dynamics of a small, “neighborly” get-together between adults in the living room below. Capturing a period when innocence was under assault on all fronts, director Julia Dyer (LATE BLOOMERS), shooting from a script by her sister Gretchen, tells a tale old and young facing uncertain futures, not all of them with a suitable measure of grace.

I met up with Julia in a conference room at one of Tribeca’s host hotels; our conversation is below.

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Apr
20

Tribeca 2012 Diary: HEADSHOT Director Pen-ek Ratanaruang

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by Dan Persons

The hitman’s in trouble. During a political assassination gone wrong, he gets shot in the head, and wakes from a coma seeing everything upside down. On top of that, seems that everyone wants to kill him, for various and sundry reasons. Days like this make an exciting career in HVAC maintenance sound mighty appealing.

Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s HEADSHOT begins as a curious twist on the crime thriller, and proceeds from there to delve into questions of morality, redemption, and spirituality. And it still kicks ass, which is cool.

I sat down with Ratanaruang at the offices of HEADSHOT’s distributor while he was in New York for the film’s Tribeca debut. The interview is below.

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Apr
19

Tribeca 2012 Diary: BABYGIRL’s Macdara Vallely

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by Dan Persons

Yes, the Tribeca Film Festival brings the world to New York, but who knew the process could be so literal? In BABYGIRL, the very Irish director Macdara Vallely tells a very New York tale about Lena (Yanis Ynoa), a Nuyorican teen, who finds herself in the middle of a romantic triangle when her mother’s lover (Flaco Navaja) turns his unwelcome attention to her.

To inaugurate our video coverage of the fest, we met up with Macdara at the film’s opening night party. The interview is below.

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Apr
18

The Indie on Demand Movie Review: HIT SO HARD

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by Dan Persons

Escape from the Rock: HIT SO HARD's Patty Schemel

Escape from the Rock: HIT SO HARD's Patty Schemel

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll! Never gets tired, does it? Well, maybe if you’re actually in the middle of it, it may get to wear a bit, yeah.

Which brings us to the subject of this week’s episode of our weekly radio show, The Indie on Demand Movie Review. The documentary HIT SO HARD is somewhat about the birth and spread of grunge rock, somewhat about the band Hole and its tempestuous leader Courtney Love, but primarily about Patty Schemel — drummer, out lesbian, and drug and alcohol abuser — and how the rock life nearly destroyed her.

Click on the player to hear my review.

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Apr
16

Cinefantastique Spotlight: THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

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by Dan Persons

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:23:50 — 76.8MB)

Adhering to Form: Fran Kranz preps for survival in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS.

Adhering to Form: Fran Kranz preps for survival in THE CABIN IN THE WOODS.

Joss Whedon has just been the busy, busy little bee lately, hasn’t he? He was one of the producers of the Morgan Spurlock documentary COMIC-CON EPISODE IV: A FAN’S HOPE last week; he’s the director of eagerly awaited THE AVENGERS, coming up in May; and this past weekend he produced and helped co-write THE CABIN IN THE WOODS with first-time director Drew Goddard (who previously wrote CLOVERFIELD). A deconstruction of the by-now-well-known stock “slasher” horror movie, CABIN takes its clutch of cliche teenagers (played by Kristen Connolly, THOR’s Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchinson, DOLLHOUSE’s Fran Kranz and Jesse Williams) besieged in a country cabin by a family of zombie sadists, and twists the scenario around by having it being monitored and manipulated by a bunch of shirt-sleeve, nine-to-fiver types (including Richard Jenkins, Amy Acker, and Bradley Whitford), for mysterious ends.

Join Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they critique the critique, looking into what Goddard and Whedon bring to the (torture) table above and beyond a replication of the form, how the film’s mythology holds up under close scrutiny, and whether the SCREAM franchise has anything to worry about. Then, the gang takes a capsule look at the outer space prison riot film LOCKOUT. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

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Apr
13

Philippe Falardeau on MONSIEUR LAZHAR

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by Dan Persons

Podcast: Download (Duration: 21:14 — 19.5MB)

Learning to Heal: Fellag (right) helps a class overcome tragedy in MONSIEUR LAZHAR.

Learning to Heal: Fellag (right) helps a class overcome tragedy in MONSIEUR LAZHAR.

An Oscar nominee this year for foreign language film, Philippe Falardeau’s MONSIEUR LAZHAR finds finely-shaded drama in a venue that has defeated many a filmmaker: a classroom full of children. Partly that’s because of the situation: In a Montreal elementary school, a teacher commits suicide, and the desperate principal calls upon a volunteer — Algerian immigrant Bachir Lazhar — to serve as substitute. Partly it’s due to casting, with relaxed, believable performances from the children — including that of Sophie Nélisse and Émilion Néron as the two kids most deeply affected by the loss — and Algerian comedian and actor Fellag bringing a gentle authority to Lazhar, a man who’s as much in need of healing as his young charges. And largely it’s due to Falardeau’s keen observation of the modern-day ecology of a school, his fine, affecting portrayal of the interplay between adult and child, teacher and student, and his ability to build drama that only gains in power from its steadfast avoidance of the melodramatic.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Falardeau.

MONSIEUR LAZHAR
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Apr
12

The Indie on Demand Movie Review: KINYARWANDA

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by Dan Persons

Cassandra Freeman as a soldier facing wanton slaughter in KINYARWANDA.

Cassandra Freeman as a soldier facing wanton slaughter in KINYARWANDA.

We’re back with the newest episode of my independent film review radio series, THE INDIE ON DEMAND MOVIE REVIEW. This time, we’re looking at KINYARWANDA, a new drama in which director Alrick Brown uses a fractured timeline and mutable genres to portray how the Rwandan genocide of 1994 looked to those trapped in its madness, capturing events from such varied points of view as that of two young lovers, a military squad engaged in a rescue mission, and the Muslim and Christian clerics who sought to protect the victims.

Snagfilms is distributing this on-demand. Click the player to hear my review, and you can get more info here.

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Apr
08

Cinefantastique Spotlight: BURN, WITCH, BURN

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by Dan Persons

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:22:12 — 75.3MB)

Do Do That Career Advancement That You Do So Well: Janet Blair prevails upon supernatural forces to help Peter Wyngarde in BURN, WITCH, BURN.

Do Do That Career Advancement That You Do So Well: Janet Blair prevails upon supernatural forces to help Peter Wyngarde in BURN, WITCH, BURN.

Tricky situation this week: Two genre releases, but one, while good, is getting a very limited release to start; the other, while making it to more venues, doesn’t quite merit the attention. So we’re dipping into our 50th Anniversary archives to bring out a goody from 1962: BURN, WITCH, BURN (a.k.a. NIGHT OF THE EAGLE). The tale of college professor who comes to grief when he insists his wife quit employing supernatural forces to help him advance his career, the film boasts a script by Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson — based on Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife — some impressive performances (particularly by Janet Blair as the conjuring spouse), an overall handsome production, and, in the American release, a Paul Frees-voiced prologue that has to be heard to be believed.

This week’s main topic was proposed by Cinefantastique Online managing editor Steve Biodrowski and he joins Lawrence French and Dan Persons to discuss what works and what’s just a little silly in this little-known but very satisfying exercise in modern-day horror. Then Steve weighs in on the week’s (semi-)major release, the claustrophobic thriller ATM, and Dan gives his opinion on Morgan Spurlock’s elaborate documentary, COMIC-CON EPISODE IV: A FAN’S HOPE.

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