The Quiet Ones – Spotlight Podcast 5:17.1

A professor and his students perform experiments on a young subject, trying to prove that the paranormal experiences she claims to undergo are actually psychologically motivated. But the more they delve into the case, the more it seems that what’s going on is driven by powers not even the subconscious mind could imagine. What could …

Transcendence – Spotlight Podcast 5:16.1

It’s some kind of irony that the experience of watching a film called TRANSCENDENCE is far from transcendent. Not that director Wally Pfister doesn’t try: The story of a scientist working in A.I. research (Johnny Depp) who has his own consciousness transferred to the Web is lushly mounted (as befits a big-studio production from the …

OCULUS – Spotlight Podcast 5:15.1

How frustrating is it when a film has all the stuff it needs — promising premise, good production values, decent cast, director who can twist filmic reality in imaginative ways — and just… doesn’t … grab… you? Pretty damn frustrating, it turns out. OCULUS tells the tale of an orphaned brother and sister who reunite …

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER: Spotlight Podcast 5-14.1

And so commences the Marvel Onslaught of 2014. Four movies, three studios, and more opportunities for the true believers to nudge each other knowingly when Stan Lee makes his expected cameos, even though your great-great-grandmother could probably recognize him by now. That said, there are far worse ways to kick off this flood than CAPTAIN …

Noah: Spotlight Podcast 5-13.1

Sooner or later, it had to happen. Three months into 2014, we finally move beyond the execrable and the mediocre, to something imaginative, exciting, and just flat-out worthy of praise. NOAH allows director Darren Arnofosky to apply his characteristically iconoclastic vision to the classic Bible tale, transforming the historic setting into a fantastic world where …

Divergent: Spotlight Podcast 5-12.1

In the future, humanity will achieve peace and prosperity by being divided into five factions. When you’re sixteen, you get tested to see which faction you belong in, and that determines your station in life for the rest of your existence. Unless you decide to join another faction, which you’re totally free to do. But …

Blood and Black Lace: Spotlight Podcast 5-11.2

A fashion institute becomes a charnel house of death when a masked madman stalks a sextette of glamorous models, each of whom has come in contact with a diary containing a secret that the killer must – at any cost – keep from prying eyes… It’s time for a 50th Anniversary Podcast celebration of Mario …

The Masque of the Red Death: Spotlight Podcast 5:9

Nope, no big openings this weekend, and everybody is too busy talking Oscars right now (we’ll get to that later in the week). So while waiting for the awards ceremony to begin, the Cinefantastique Online team of the Steve Biodrowski, Lawrence French and Dan Persons got together to celebrate another film having its fiftieth anniversary …

ROBOCOP: Spotlight Podcast 5:7.1

And so, shouldering our backpacks and steeling ourselves against the urge to look back, we leave the doldrums of the start-of-2014 release schedule. Farewell, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES! Farewell, I, FRANKENSTEIN! Farewell, (ugh) VAMPIRE ACADEMY! May our paths never cross again. (A fruitless wish in the case of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY — the next installment …

THE LEGO MOVIE; VAMPIRE ACADEMY; & AFTER THE DARK: Spotlight Podcast 5:6

“They suck at school,” the posters for VAMPIRE ACADEMY proudly proclaim, and let it now be said that they aren’t any better at movies, either. A lackluster production whose only reason for existing is to try to snag the TWILIGHT SAGA demo with as minimal effort as possible (to paraphrase W.C. Fields: “We want to …