Cinefantastique Online

News, reviews, interviews, retrospectives, and editorials that take you behind the scenes of horror, fantasy, and science fiction films

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

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

Cinefantastique’s homevideo podcast looks at this week’s horror, fantasy and science fiction titles on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD, including a quartet of classic and cult items: GREMLINS, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH, GANJA & HESS, and the 1959 version of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, starring James Mason.
The GREMLINS films, directed by [...]

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.
There are so many ways a grand conglomeration of super heroes could turn into a car wreck (case in point: THE [...]

They're Magical! They're Muscial! They're So Very, Very Wrong!: Peter Frampton (right) joins forces with the Bee Gees (left) in SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND.
Like a black velvet reproduction of Guernica, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the movie, takes one of the landmark works of art of the twentieth century and [...]

Tom Jones' Fans Just Throw Their Underwear on the Stage: An admirer takes his love of Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack, right) too far in THE RAVEN.
If truth is stranger than fiction, then can a serial killer inspired by the eminently strange writings of Edgar Allan Poe be said to be even stranger still? In [...]

Clockwise: Gorgo, Mothra, Konga, Reptilicus
Host Steve Biodrowski is joined by Steve Ryfle, Ted Newsom, and Mark Thomas McGee for a fond look back at box office behemoths GORGO, MOTHRA, KONGA, and REPTILICUS.
It was 50 years ago today! Er, well, 51 years ago. This Cinefantastique Roundtable Retrospective Podcast was originally recorded last year, as part of [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

Crossing Generations and Genres in COMIC-CON EPISODE IV: A FAN'S HOPE.
For some, it is Valhalla; for others, it is a seething, roiling, chaotic pit of humanity. For many, I suspect, it’s a phenomenon just slightly more indecipherable than Naked Lunch. It is San Diego Comic-Con, and documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, with the help of Stan [...]

FUUUUNNNNNGUUUUSSSS!!!: Sam Worthington's gonna need to bathe in a vatful of Purell after this moment from WRATH OF THE TITANS.
In the curious ecology that is Hollywood, a film that’s best known as a poster child for what not to do when converting 2D to 3D and for a declarative that become something of a pop-culture [...]

Fear Has a New Name, and It's BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR.
It’s the rare film that comes along and totally redefines the medium, but such a film is BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR. From its striking visual style to its Oscar-worthy performances to its dazzling special effects to its powerful, environmental subtext, this tale of a small, [...]