Trying something new here: a radio show evocatively titled Indie on Demand Movie Reviews. They’re short, snappy reviews of indie films that have recently been released on-demand. This episode’s on the gritty Brazilian police/political thriller, ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN; new eps will post on a weekly basis. Check it out and let me know …
Tag Archive: War
Feb
19
Cinefantastique Spotlight: GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE
In a pair-up as enticing as a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE combines the rich, nutty goodness of Nic Cage with the tasty junkiness of the Neveldien/Taylor directing team. Transporting Marvel’s tortured, soul-sucking biker to Eastern Europe, the sequel has him joining forces with Idris Elba and Violante Placido to save …
Feb
12
Cinefantastique Spotlight: STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE
There was no shortage of curiosity when George Lucas announced that he was converting his STAR WARS features to 3D, and no little disappointment when it was revealed that the first film to undergo the process would be the almost universally reviled EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE. Nevertheless here we are at the longest …
Jan
23
Cinefanastique Spotlight: UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING
The UNDERWORLD franchise’s relentless, death-dealing vampire, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), goes under ice at the beginning of UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING, and so does most of the series’ political intrigue, swapping out the power struggles from the previous entries in favor of even more chases, gunplay, and explosions — lots and lots of explosions. Awakened into a (nominally) …
Dec
18
Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS
Abandon all propriety, ye who enter here. Once again, under the direction of Guy Ritchie and as embodied by Robert Downey Jr, the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes shakes off his tweedy cobwebs and gets down, dirty, and flat-out physical in SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS. Centered around the inevitable confrontation between Holmes and the …
Dec
12
Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: TREK NATION
A son goes in search of the father he never quite knew, and the CFQ crew gets introspective enough to take a nostalgic trip back to explore one of the formative influences on their sense of wonder, Gene Roddenberry’s STAR TREK. Come join our special guest, theofantastique.com’s John W. Morehead, as he joins Cinefantastique Online’s …
Dec
08
Tomas Alfredson on TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
Long for the heady, Cold War days of espionage, when spies were spies, ideologies were economics-based, and there wasn’t all this religious brouhaha muddying up the motivations? (Enhanced interrogation, though, was still pretty much the same thing.) Well, director Tomas Alfredson (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN) takes us back to that furtive, paranoia-laced era in …
Nov
25
Edmon Roch on GARBO THE SPY
Of all the film clips director Edmon Roch uses to compose his WW II documentary, GARBO THE SPY — and they include such eclectic sources as documentaries, dramas, both Allied and Nazi propaganda, and cartoons — the ones that he seems to rely on most come from Carol Reed’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA, the film …
Nov
14
Cinefantastique Spotlight Podcast: IMMORTALS (Capsule: MELANCHOLIA)
It’s a good week for lush, exquisite cinematography and vividly stylized worlds; maybe not so good a week for compelling narratives. In IMMORTALS, director Tarsem Singh Dhandwar uses Greek mythology as the raw material upon which to invest his skill with staging beautiful, beautiful actors in elaborate tableaux, all in the service of the tale …
Oct
21
Cinefantastique’s New York Comic Con 2011: ATTACK THE BLOCK’s Joe Cornish
You gotta love an alien invasion film where the aliens make the serious mistake of trying to invade some council estates (read, “projects”) in London and discover that the street-tough kids there are not going to yield the territory without racking up a body count. That’s the idea behind ATTACK THE BLOCK, Joe Cornish’s directorial …
