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Descending Into the Depths: Neil Maskell (left) and Michael Smiley get in over their heads in KILL LIST.

What starts out as common, garden-variety crime thriller turns… bizarre, and then frightening, in director Ben Wheatley’s twisty new film, KILL LIST. The tale of middle class hit-man Jay (Neil Maskell), who with colleague Gal (Michael Smiley) goes out for one more job and discovers blood oaths, strange rites, and disturbingly grateful targets have been thrown into the bargain, the film allows Wheatley to hook the rough-edged shooting style he explored in his debut effort, DOWN TERRACE, to a world that has room for both examinations of a tempestuous home life and the graphic shocks of classic horror. Think IN BRUGES meets THE WICKER MAN, then forget about all that and prepare to get righteously freaked-out.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Wheatley.

UNFORTUNATE TECHNICAL NOTE: Our usual podcast host has started giving us agita, apparently because we are just that popular, so we’ve temporarily switched to another service and had to downgrade our audio quality as a result. We’ll get this snag patched up and be back to the rich, beautiful sound you expect from MMP as soon as possible.

KILL LIST
Trailer

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Facebook Page
www.facebook.com/KillList

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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 even more chases, gunplay, and explosions — lots and lots of explosions. Awakened into a (nominally) future world where humanity has decimated the vampire covens and their natural enemy, the werewolf-like lycans, Selene finds herself protecting the fate of the young vamp/lycan hybrid Eve (India Eisley), and on the run from a sinister pharmaceutical corporation, all in glorious 3D. You will believe a metal-barbed whip can poke your eye out.

Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski and Dan Persons set their logic centers to neutral and debate what’s fun (i.e. Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight leather) and what’s not (plot) in this fourth installment, and whether there’s any future to UNDERWORLD’s future. They also discuss their gut-reactions to the latest crop of genre trailers, and Steve talks a little about a safe-driving film with a surprising production credit. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

GOING TO SEE THE WICKER TREE THIS WEEKEND?
TWEET YOUR #WalkAwayReview TO @cfqspotlight
(Please don’t tweet during the movie!)

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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 the credits crawl? How disposable is the project when the host of a podcast devoted to genre film repeatedly gets the title wrong? Why, that would be THE DEVIL WITHI… ’scuse us… THE DEVIL INSIDE, yet another attempt to recast horror through the blurry lens of the mockumentary.

Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski and Dan Persons ring in the New Year by exploring DEVIL’s flawed theology, shallow characterizations, and ambiguous narrative gambits. And, with the help of input from theofantastique.com’s John W. Morehead, they discuss whether the recent rebirth of the exorcism genre is an accurate reflection of these anxious times. What’s revealed in discussion may surprise you — maybe even more than the film itself.

Also: Steve gives his capsule thoughts on the alien-invasion-in-Moscow flick, THE DARKEST HOUR, and Dan provides takes on THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN and the imaginative fantasy short,  A GOBLIN’S TALE. Plus: What’s coming in theaters.

Continue reading »]]> 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 over the past twelve months.

But the extraterrestrial infestation wasn’t really the big news in genre film for 2011. With an open couple of weeks before the final onslaught of major science-fiction, fantasy, and horror releases, Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons decided to look back over the year and pick out their favorites in ten categories*, including Best Performance, Best Use of 3D, and Best Film, among others. The selection they’ve come up with may well surprise you. (Hint: A certain film featuring big-ass robots does better than expected.)

Click on the player to hear the show.

*And yes, we acknowledge that this is a provisional list, given that such titles as TINTIN, THE DARKEST HOUR, AND MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL have yet to screen.

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We're Getting the Atrocity Back Together: Ashlynn Yennie (left) lives the nightmare perpetrated by Laurence R. Harvey in THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE).

The tag line for Tom Six’s new THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE) is “100% Medically Inaccurate,” tipping those who witnessed the merciless onslaught that was THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) that the follow-up is, if anything, going to be a further affront to everything that is pure, good, and sanitary in this world.

The tale of a mentally deranged parking attendant (Laurence R. Harvey), who is transported by repeated, obsessive viewings of the first HUMAN CENTIPEDE film — in which a mad, German doctor (is there any other kind?) stitches three unfortunate people together, mouth-to-anus, with the expected, alimentary repercussions — and decides to make his own, twelve-person (“full sequence”) version with the crude tools available to him, FULL SEQUENCE is an unstinting assault of gritty, black and white photography, and grotty gore effects, not to mention crowbar assaults, ball-peen hammer dentistry, staple-gun surgery, and live centipedes inserted in orifices where live centipedes should not go.  THE BLIND SIDE it ain’t, but that’s all to the good, in my humble opinion. If you’re the type who can get into Six’s “You think that’s too much? Try THIS!” aesthetic, you’ll no doubt find it an intense and weirdly gratifying ninety minutes. You sick little monkey, you.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Tom Six and Laurence R. Harvey.

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE 2 (FULL SEQUENCE)
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE

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Fresh Meet: Sara Paxton is the deep blue plate special in SHARK KNIGHT... 'scuse us, SHARK NIGHT 3D.

Yes, we’re deliberately misspelling SHARK KNIGHT. Why? Well, because it’s Labor Day weekend, and also because it amuses us to think of an insatiable predator of the deep leering in towards a nubile, young twenty-something, unleashing his awful, toothy grin, and saying, “Why sssso sssserioussss?”

As for SHARK NIGHT 3D itself, listen in as Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski and Dan Persons discuss what merits and demerits they can locate in this latest entry in the body-count genre of horror film. Then Steve will give his take on APOLLO 18, the found footage thriller about a secret mission to the moon where two astronauts discover that They Are Not Alone.

Plus: What’s coming in theaters and home video.

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Please Watch the Video – It’s Fun!

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Road Rage Bites: Anton Yelchin (left) courts the wrath of Colin Farrell in FRIGHT NIGHT.

There goes the neighborhood. Charismatically feral vampire Jerry (Colin Farrell) moves into a struggling Las Vegas suburb, and it’s up to teen lovers Charley (Anton Yelchin) and Amy (Imogen Poots) to keep property values from seriously bottoming out by curtailing his ongoing recruitment campaign. Enter indifferent magician Peter Vincent (David Tennant) and screenwriter Marti Noxon (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) and you’ve got FRIGHT NIGHT, a retelling of the 1985 tongue-in-cheek mini-classic, modernized with CG effects and goosed with 3D gimmicks. Special guest Judith Furnari joins Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons (yes, the band is back together!) as they explore whether the outer reaches of Las Vegas carry more than a little whiff of Sunnydale, and if this remake is worth the literal and figurative blood that was spilled in its making.

Also: A discussion of Ridley Scott’s announced return to the BLADE RUNNER universe, and what’s coming in theaters and on home video.

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Sick Transit Glori-AHHHH!: Death opens a can of whoopass in FINAL DESTINATION 5.

Okay, so they called the previous installment THE FINAL DESTINATION, as if that was going to be the last chapter of the franchise. So what? Like you never said, “This one’s the last French fry,” and then went on shoveling the spuds down your gullet like there was no tomorrow. Given the success of that 2009 entry, no one really should be surprised that we’re now looking at FINAL DESTINATION 5 — which may or may not be the actual, final encore/curtain call for the series — or that at this point the producers have honed to a fine… art, let’s say… the formula of twenty-somethings escaping an horrendous fate only to be subsequently stalked and dispatched by death in various, Rube Goldbergian ways. One plus: Even at this late date, a franchise that’s essentially a more morbid envisioning of Road Runner cartoons (and is once again rendered in appropriately poke-your-eye-out 3D) is still pretty amusing. Come join our special guest, Cashiers du Cinemart’s Mike White, as he joins Cinefantastique Online’s Dan Persons in examining the delights and the demerits of one of the most formulaic, yet oddly entertaining, of film franchises.

Also in this episode: A discussion of director Rupert Wyatt’s plans for the sequel to his hit film, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, plus what’s coming in theatrical releases and home video.

Be sure to check out Cashiers du Cinemart!

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Uncomfortably Numb: John Carpenter directs Amber Heard in THE WARD.

How does a review show handle the situation where two, exciting, soon-to-be-classic films are released on the same weekend? We don’t know, but this weekend saw the release of JOHN CARPENTER’S THE WARD and the Kevin James comedy, ZOOKEEPER, so we decided to cover both of those instead. Granted, there’s not much of a correlation between a horror film in which a young woman (Amber Heard), having been involuntarily imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital, must protect herself and her fellow inmates from the malevolent force seeking their destruction, and an Adam-Sandler-backed laugher in which James is schooled in the ways of love by a clutch of chatty zoo animals, but Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons are game lot, and always ready for a challenge. At the very least, they consider whether John Carpenter’s long absence from the feature screen is one of the more regrettable flaws of the present film industry, and whether James might want to consider his own extended hiatus.

PRODUCTION NOTE: Larry was having some problems with his microphone, which we attempted to fix — not particularly seamlessly — in post. We hope to have this patched up by next week’s show.

Click on the player to hear the show.

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Perils of Ambition: Patsha Bay Mukuna in VIVA RIVA!

Sex, violence and… gasoline? Yeah, that’s the blend you get when your setting is Kinshasa and limited fuel supplies make the stuff as good as gold. Riva (Patsha Bay Mukuna) knows: He’s just snuck into the Congo with a healthy supply of the stuff and plans to leverage it into a handsome payday. The problems: He’s being pursued by the Angolan crime lord (Hoji Fortuna) he stole the gas from; and he’s fallen hard for the sexy Nora (Manie Malone), who’s already been claimed by the local crime boss.
 
VIVA RIVA! is the first film out of the Congo to get U.S. distribution, and director Djo Tunda Wa Munga has made it a hell of an intro: an electric noir with graphic violence, a compulsive soundtrack, and no shortage of startling bouts of sex (however you feel about SCARFACE, you can’t argue that there’s nothing about that film that couldn’t have been improved with a lesbian hook-up between a hooker and the local commander of the military police). It’s a gripping glimpse into a world — and its underworld — we’re still getting to know.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Munga.

Trailer
VIVA RIVA!

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vivariva.com