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Spies spying on spies spying on spies: Gary Oldman explores an elaborate conspiracy in 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 TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY, the big-screen adaptation of John le Carré’s celebrated novel.

Set in the early 70′s and centered on the search for a mole in Britain’s MI6, otherwise known as the Circus, Alfredson rallies a stellar cast — including Gary Oldman as le Carré’s canny spy George Smiley, John Hurt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, and Tom Hardy — to tell a tale deception and conspiracy, where friends may not be what they seem and secret masterminds may not be as secret as you might expect. It’s dark, it’s tense, it makes James Bond look like Maxwell Smart’s less-incisive brother.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Alfredson.

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY
Trailer

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Official Website:
www.tinkertailorsoldierspy.com

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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Wagner Moura in ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN.

Like DIRTY HARRY with a social conscience, the Brazilian film ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN manages to kick all kinds of righteous ass while delving into the pernicious effect of corruption on those allegedly pledged with looking after the public welfare. The follow-up to 2007′s ELITE SQUAD, ENEMY WITHIN picks up Rio de Janeiro’s hard-line Special Operations Captain Nascimento as he’s kicked upstairs to become the city’s Sub-Secretary of Intelligence and committed to upending the city’s cycle of crime by waging all-out war on the gangs who rule the slums.  Problem is: the war is too successful, and Nascimento finds his victory has released a wave of official corruption that puts him into conflict with his own colleagues.

Director José Padilha built his reputation with the incredible hostage documentary BUS 174, and here demonstrates that the skills that turned news footage into riveting drama are well suited to telling a fictional story that delves into the dark corners of Brazilian society while keeping the audience riveted with intense action.

Click on the player to hear my conversation with Padilha.

ELITE SQUAD: THE ENEMY WITHIN
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The Blank Generation Gets Filled In: NOFX's Fat Mike confronts the responsibilities of fatherhood in THE OTHER F WORD.

It’s a curious path that takes one from rock outcast to full fatherhood, yet many of the practitioners of that most confrontational of  musical forms, punk, find themselves following it. In THE OTHER F WORD, filmmakers Andrea Blaugrund Nevins and Cristan Reilly have tracked down the men who built lives upon artistic rebellion — prime amongst them their main subject, Pennywise’s Jim Lindberg, but also Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath, Blink-182′s Mark Hoppus, Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea, Everclear’s Art Alexakis, and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, among others — and explored the effort that goes into reconciling one’s creative soul with shopping for school supplies.

The final result is a fascinating and occasionally moving exploration of men who confront not only careers that demand increasing amounts of time away from home just when it’s least advantageous, but who also have to face how their own rebellious and sometimes tortured youths might affect how they approach their responsibilities as fathers.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Nevins and Reilly.

THE OTHER F WORD
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE
theotherfwordmovie.com

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Street Tougher: Adult Swim's BLACK DYNAMITE.

Come 2012, Adult Swim is going to get bad-ass. In honor of the grand and sometimes delirious world of blaxploitation, they’ve latched onto the 2009 feature satire, BLACK DYNAMITE, and are bringing it to the video screen as half-hour, animated series.

With the film’s Michael Jai White and Byron Minns continuing their roles as producers, writers, and stars — White as ex-CIA agent Black Dynamite; Minns as compatriot Bull Horn — plus the feature’s director Scott Sanders helming the episodes and THE BOONDOCKS’ Carl Jones backing them up as exec producer, the show promises to carry forward with the movie’s vision of a world where the hair is big, the lapels are wide and the action is nonstop.

Adult Swim brought in White, Minns, Jones, and Sanders — plus Kim Whitley, who plays Honey Bee — for their roundtables, and we got to speak with all of them. Click on the player to hear the show.

Continue reading »]]> The lunatics have taken over the Gotham, and fans of the Dark Knight are all asking, “Why didn’t this happen sooner?” Their patience has been paid off in BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY, a new video game that takes the mayhem first encountered in BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM and spreads it out into Gotham City proper, to considerable praise (and probably some orgasmic moans) from gameplayers everywhere. We got a few minutes with a representative from game designer Rocksteady Studios to find out what motivated the new game’s broader canvas, and explore what happens when chaos reigns in the Caped Crusader’s home turf (as if it doesn’t always).

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Don't Believe Everything You See, Especially in the Trailer: A scene NOT from PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3.

And so the story of two sisters vexed by supernatural forces — as captured by conveniently located video cameras — continues, or begins, or ends depending on how you want to look at it, in PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3. Another prequel set in 1988 and purportedly recorded on VHS equipment — which doesn’t really account for the broadcast-quality image — the film purports to show how sisters Katie and Kristi Ray were first courted as children by forces malevolent, leading to the chaos depicted in the previous entries.

Those who are acquainted with the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise will know what to expect (although maybe not when to expect it), but is more of the same enough? Join Cinefantastique Online’s Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French, and Dan Persons as they patiently await the manifestations and debate whether this strung-out origin tale fills in narrative gaps or just restates already established history with more ungainly video equipment.

Also: A discussion of the Wachowski’s imminent return to genre and Bryan Singer’s bid to retell the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA legend once more. Plus: what’s coming in theatrical and home video releases.

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Kids Strike Back: The cast of ATTACK THE BLOCK faces down an alien incursion.

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 debut that was exec produced by SHAUN OF THE DEAD’s Edgar Wright. It’s neatly pulled off with a surprising bit of depth, and worth checking out when it’s released on homevid on October 25th.

So a bunch of us were gathered in a room in New York Comic Con’s press warren, and got to throw questions indiscriminately (but incisively) at Joe. I managed to capture the session for this podcast.

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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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Ryan Gosling (right) in DRIVE.

Somehow, it seems like it was only a matter of time before director Nicolas Winding Refn hitched his camera to a hurtling piece of American metal and did a full-on car chase film. In DRIVE, Ryan Gosling plays a guy named… wait for it… Driver, a stunt man with a freelance career in piloting getaway cars and dreams of breaking into the racing world. That is, if his dedicated agent (Bryan Cranston) can swing the breaks, and he isn’t waylaid by gangsters Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks or distracted by his beautiful next-door neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and her young son. It’s Refn, so moral ambiguities will abound, not to mention some incredibly mounted chases and unrestrained violence. Sum total: Action goodness with both brains and balls. Fine, fine stuff.

Click on the player to hear my interview with Refn.

DRIVE
Trailer

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OFFICIAL WEBSITE: drive-movie.com

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