Cinefantastique Online

Cinefantastique’s Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction Film Podcasts include the Round Table (a weekly round-up of horror, fantasy, and science fiction cinema news and capsule comments), the Spotlight (in-depth reviews of recent horror, fantasy, and science fiction films, with occasional classics thrown into the mix), and the Post-Mortem (a casual, free-ranging, after-show discussion, now on hiatus). Subscribe to the feed here.

We Blame Slytherin: Daniel Radcliffe unearths the secret of a hostile spirit in THE WOMAN IN BLACK.
The balmy days of February have triggered an uncommon sense of renewal, nowhere more so than in the cinema, where, after a customarily dismal January (we’re looking at you, THE DEVIL INSIDE), there now come glimmers of hope in [...]

You May Feel a Burning Sensation: Brittania Nicol discovers the secrets of THE WICKER TREE.
A story as relevant as yesterday’s headlines, or too late a tale? Some thirty years ago, Cinefantastique hailed Robin Hardy’s THE WICKER MAN as “the CITIZEN KANE of horror,” lauding the Anthony Shaffer-scripted story of a god-fearing police detective trying  to [...]

Deal Me Some Death, Baby: Kate Beckinsale does even more of what she does in 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 [...]

The Romance Will Poke Yer Eyes Out!: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is now enhanced with 3D.
Does Disney’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST need to undergo digital conversion to the 3D format in order to lure audiences back into the theater? It shouldn’t, not really. BEAUTY is a certified classic, the first animated film to net a [...]

Mother and Child Reunion?: Fernanda Andrade (top) learns the risks of reconnecting with Suzan Crowley in THE DEVIL INSIDE.
What kind of film is worthy of the sacrificial lamb slot that is the first release of January? What sort of slipshod storytelling does it take for audience members to start hurling epithets at the screen as [...]

Ghost Protocol in the Machine: Tom Cruise (falling) shows Michael Nyqvist (demonstrating the wrong way to order at the McDonald's drive-thru) how to keep things moving in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL.
What says Christmas Spirit more than nuclear holocaust, life-or-death chases in an automated car park, and scaling the world’s tallest building? Maybe that’s why [...]

Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Just in time for Christmas, the Cinefantastique Laserblast crew – that would be Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski – offer up their recommendations for  DVDs and Blu-ray discs that would make perfect stocking stuffers for the horror, fantasy, and science fiction fan in your life. Suggestions range from the 1932 [...]

A Justified War: Robert Downey Jr. (right) faces down Jared Harris in 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 [...]

The Christmas season is upon us, and as we have had occasion to mention, that means ghosts and spirits. And what greater Christmas ghost story is there than Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL? That is the subject of this week’s Cinefantastique Round Table Podcast: Dan Persons, guest John W. Morehead (of Theofantastique.com), and Steve Biodrowski [...]

The Great Bird Has Landed: Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett in a candid moment from 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 [...]

This week’s special edition of the Cinefantastique Laserblast podcast forgoes the usual rundown of recent horror, fantasy, and science fiction releases on home video, instead offering a 50th anniversary tribute to a beloved genre classic. Back in 1961, producer Charles H. Schneer and special effects supervisor Ray Harryhausen brought Jules Verne’s novel MYSTERIOUS ISLAND to [...]

2011: Definitely a good year for aliens. They waylaid a couple of fanboys, staged a showdown with cowboys, wrecked a tween’s film project, invaded LA, twice (must be the universal lure of In-N-Out Burger) — yessir, if you had more than four limbs and a palate for human flesh, you had a home in theaters [...]

Following up on the previous CFQ Spotlight Podcast devoted to Martin Scorcese’s HUGO, the Cinefantastique crew of Dan Persons, Lawrence French, and Steve Biodrowski – joined by special guest Andrea Lipinski – blast off into the fabulous fantasy world of George Melies. The special effects pioneer and cinema magician of the early silent era was the first to realize the potential of movies imbued with a Sense of Wonder, using the camera not to capture reality but to create dreams writ large on the silver screen.