Mar
17
Here’s a curious thing: A fun, funny, action-packed animated family film that just by happenstance strikes at the very core of the ugliness behind the presidential campaign of a certain, stubby-fingered, orange-American. Couldn’t have been by design, not with production schedules for CG animation being what they are, but there it is: ZOOTOPIA — anthropomorphized …
Feb
28
Former Judge Mark Ciavarella wants you to know it was never about Kids for Cash. In his interviews with director Robert May (and kudos to the documentary-maker for scoring lens-time with the perpetrators of this scandal, along with their victims), he bristles against being tagged with that identifier. And, indeed, he’s got a point: It’s …
Feb
19
American movies apply a pretty straightforward technique to devastate an audience: build up the emotion; accelerate the cutting; maybe throw in some shouting; add a swell of music; boom, you’re there. Things apparently are different in Romania. Maybe Romanians are a more patient people, or we’re seeing the remnants of a culture where, not all …
Feb
17
And so, shouldering our backpacks and steeling ourselves against the urge to look back, we leave the doldrums of the start-of-2014 release schedule. Farewell, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES! Farewell, I, FRANKENSTEIN! Farewell, (ugh) VAMPIRE ACADEMY! May our paths never cross again. (A fruitless wish in the case of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY — the next installment …
Dec
06
Ah, the romance of the outlaw — dashing and fearless, living a life of danger and adventure. Except when they’re greedy sociopaths leaving a trail of corpses in their wake. NARCO CULTURA looks into the world of the Mexican drug cartels and how it has spawned a culture that romanticizes and celebrates the bloody exploits …
Nov
08
It’s back to the border for John Sayles, who in films like LONE STAR has explored the distinctive tensions that brew in the towns that neighbor to Mexico. Now he’s applying that worldview to the mystery thriller in GO FOR SISTERS, the story of a parole officer (LisaGay Hamilton) whose son may be in big …
Jun
29
So in the midst of the interstellar conflicts, zombie plagues, and giant robots, how about a summer movie that’s a little more grounded? How about Sandra Bullock as a Type A, by-the-book FBI agent clashing up against Melissa McCarthy as a loose-cannon Boston police detective as they try to take down a drug lord? THE …
Jun
20
Who among us didn’t watch lonely, trusting J.F. Sebastian take renegade replicant Pris into his digs at the Bradbury building and think, Oh, this shall not end well? It was William Sanderson who gave BLADE RUNNER’s afflicted replicant designer an awkward vulnerability, but the actor also gave life to TRUE BLOOD’s conflicted Sheriff Bud Dearborne …
Jun
10
THE PURGE had a happy weekend at the theaters and a not-so-happy weekend in the press, drawing healthy box office but getting slammed by most critics. Somewhat reflecting the confusion, the Cinefantastique Online gang of Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons are of mixed opinions about this tale of the United States undergoing a …
Apr
24
In the future — and by “future,” we mean 2001 — the Chinese prison system will be stupid. Also violent, sadistic, and quite, quite unsanitary — what with there not being a wall, fixture or floor that isn’t thoroughly coated with the viscera of its unfortunate inhabitants — but mostly really, really dumb. That’s the …
