Dan Persons

Has the corporate subsidizing of charity gone too far? Well, when KFC strives to become the leading face in the battle against breast cancer, then, yeah, maybe. In the new documentary, Pink Ribbons, Inc, producer Ravida Din and director Léa Pool look...

Such a garden of delights for this Memorial Day weekend! First, we pay tribute to horror icon Christopher Lee on his 90th birthday, as Cinefantastique Online's Steve Biodrowski and Lawrence French highlight their favorite Lee films and Dan Persons chips in with a memorable TV moment.

Then we delve deeply...

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 and Hot-Rodding Robot Fireballs. Can...

Two hundred years is a long time to revive a vampire, but then again, 40 years is long time to revive the first horror soap opera (not counting an earlier, feature adaptation and a TV reboot in the '90s).

In Tim...

A comedy about dire consequences, Where Do We Go Now? takes a look at the ease with which humanity slips into war, and the sometimes insurmountable difficulties that arise as people struggle to avoid it. Setting the film in a small Lebanese...

I'd like to think humanity has advanced beyond the primal necessity of raw combat, but that doesn't mean there aren't a whole lot of people who are willing to pay good money to see a couple of guys get locked in...

There are so many ways a grand conglomeration of super heroes could turn into a car wreck (case in point: The Fantastic Four), that we should be grateful when a film manages just to clear that bar. Fortunately, and quite happily, The...

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 renders it shallow, pointless and silly. Included in its list of crimes: entrusting the Beatles' most innovative work to the likes of...

In the latest episode of my weekly radio show, I take a look at Citizen Gangster, director Nathan Morlando's directorial debut (he also scripted) that tells the true story of Canadian bank robber Edwin Boyd (Scott Speedman). A WWII vet, Boyd turned...

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 The Raven, a mad murderer has managed to engineer the deaths of his...

A young girl is forced to confront inconvenient truths both global and personal in the drama Future Weather. Making her Tribeca debut, director Jenny Deller has gathered a cast that includes Amy Madigan, Lili Taylor, and William Sadler to tell the story of a teenager (Perla Haney-Jardine) who's abandoned by...

Why let others torture you when you can cut out the middle man and do it yourself? In Nancy, Please, twenty-something Paul (Will Rogers) tries to retrieve a book from his former roommate, Nancy (Eléonore Hendricks), a task complicated both by the fact that the woman appears to be an...

Sometimes the '70s weren't about wide lapels and avocado-colored kitchen appliances. Sometimes they were about ignorance, fear, and bigotry. In Any Day Now, a gay couple (Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt) rescue a teen with Down syndrome (Isaac Leyva) from his abusive mother, but when they try to make their...

This week's episode of our movie review radio show takes a look at a documentary that focuses in on a curious little corner of the history of World War II. In Garbo the Spy, director Edmon Roch (producer, Barcelona & Perfume: The...

The drama of three young Cubans taking the not-inconsequential step of escaping their country to the (possibly) welcoming arms of the United States is traced in startling detail in Una Noche. Filming on-location, director Lucy Mulloy makes her feature film debut by capturing a compellingly credible portrayal of life in...

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...

The kids are telling tales out of school, and so are their parents. Set one restless night in the mid-seventies, The Playroom juxtaposes a quartet of siblings spinning a strange, heartbreaking tale of freedom in their attic sanctuary with the darker dynamics of a small, "neighborly" get-together between adults in...

The hitman's in trouble. During a political assassination gone wrong, he gets shot in the head, and wakes from a coma seeing everything upside down. On top of that, seems that everyone wants to kill him, for various and sundry reasons. Days like this make an exciting career in HVAC...

Yes, the Tribeca Film Festival brings the world to New York, but who knew the process could be so literal? In Babygirl, the very Irish director Macdara Vallely tells a very New York tale about Lena (Yanis Ynoa), a Nuyorican teen, who finds herself in the middle of a romantic...

Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll! Never gets tired, does it? Well, maybe if you're actually in the middle of it, it may get to wear a bit, yeah.

Which brings us to the subject of this week's episode of our...