Cinefantastique Online

You are browsing the archives of 2009 January.

[ January 23, 2009; ] The film is already out on home video, but on January 23, last year’s biggest blockbuster returns to the big screen. And we do mean big: the film will be playing in IMAX engagements. If you only saw the film at your local multiplex before, now is your chance to be overwhelmed by the action. Perhaps, [...]

MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D got some pretty decent reviews for a slasher film, but that was not enough to boost it to the top of the box office. Instead, the lame-looking comedy PAUL BLART: MALL COP took first place, beating out last week’s winner GRAN TORINO, which roared into second. That left MBV to make its [...]

Akshay Kumar in FROM CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA
Okay, so let me see if I understand the principles that govern a Bollywood film like CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA. On-screen kissing is offensive, but action star Akshay Kumar’s mugging, eye-bulging, splay-limbed performance as a hapless vegetable cutter turned kick-ass, reincarnated Chinese warrior is perfectly okay. It’s also [...]

[ October 2, 2009 1:00 pm to October 4, 2009 1:00 pm. ] Woody Harrelson and Jesse Elsenberg star as a two survivors of a zombie holocaust. Directed by Ruben Fleischer from a script by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. According to Variety, the story “centers on the most frightened guy on Earth, who leads a motley crew of survivors in a world overrun by zombies.” Columbia Pictures.

[ October 16, 2009; ] Dylan Walsh, Sela Ward, and Penn Badgleystar in this horror-thriller about a military student whose mother takes up with a mysterious man – a normal looking guy who goes a bit crazy when his new family fails to live up to his ideal of perfection. Nelson McCormick directs. J. S. Cardone wrote the new screenplay, [...]

[ September 11, 2009; ] Stop me if you’ve heard this one: some girls are being killed because they were involved in a prank that accidentally killed one of their sorority sisters. Well, it should sound familiar: this is a remake of 1983’s HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW – although why anyone would bother securing the rights is a mystery. Although [...]

[ July 24, 2009; ] Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman and CCH Pounder star in this tale of a young couple who lose their own child and end up adopting another one, whose angelic appearance may disguise her true nature. Script by David Leslie Johnson. Direction by Jaume Collet-Serra, who inflicted the HOUSE OF WAX remake on an unfortunate [...]

[ January 24, 2009; ] Stage 6 films opens this movie in a few limited one-week engagements on January 23 before sending it to DVD on February 10. This re-roasting of the old chestnut about a mysterious lodger who schedule coincides with a series of grizzly murders (previously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock and John Brahm) updates the action to modern times, telling the [...]

[ September 18, 2009 to September 20, 2009. ] Megan Fox (TRANSFORMERS) stars in this horror flick about a hot high school chick possessed by a demon that kills off her male classmates. (Sounds like MANDY LANE meets THE EXORCIST, with maybe a little TEETH thrown in.) Amanda Seyfriend, Adam Brody, and J.K. Simmons co-star. Karyn Kusama directs from a script by Diablo Cody, [...]

[ April 17, 2009 to April 19, 2009. ] Michael Caine, Bill Milner, and Anne-Marie Duff star in this film about a ten-year-old boy obsessed with death, who tapes records the elderly residents ina retirement home in hope of finding out whether there is life after death. Eventually, he befriends the newest resident, a retired magician.

Strictly speaking, this does not quite sound like a genre [...]

[ March 27, 2009 to March 29, 2009. ] After originally announcing a June release, Lionsgate has moved this one up to March 27. Scripted by Adam Simon and Tim Metcalfe, here is another one of those “true” ghost stories, a la THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. A family moves nearby to a clinic where there son can be treated for cancer, but they discover that [...]

There is obviously nothing “final” about this destination. This time out, a kid has a premonition of a fatal accident on the race track, which allows him and his friends to escape death – but only for a while. (One wonders what power is causing these premonitions, which ultimately do no good for those who [...]

[ August 13, 2009; ] Paramount has delayed its previously announced August release of this horror-thriller in the U.S. Instead CASE 39 will makes it debut in New Zealand on August 13, followed by Australia on August 27. After opening in Russia and Europe, the film will make its way to Britain on September 25. As for the U.S., no [...]