Cult Cinema: Volume 13:
Dear Internet,
I’m sorry that we don’t like the same movies. I’ve let you down. After all that you’ve given me, from the questionably legal pornography, to the gory photos of car crash victims and dead celebrities, to the endless hours spent trolling creationist message boards and acupuncture websites, I’ve done nothing but [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 12
It’s tough to be straight-edge. By virtue of being drug- and alcohol-free, the whole world thinks you’re some Christian hardcore kid from Boston who only speaks in Minor Threat lyrics. But on the other hand, you do get to picture the whole world as some sort of decadent, liverish imbecile, lounging about [...]
Cult Cinema:- Article #11
Cult of the Week: Volume 11
Art imitates life. Until art gets so thoroughly processed by focus groups and marketing departments that it wins an MTV Movie Award. Then, art turns into product, which is imitated by the single-brain-celled form of life that spends a small fortune of its parents’ money texting in [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 10
Horror fans are a mysterious, cultish bunch. Or at least, they like to think they are, imagining themselves the vanguard of the underground; Morlocks feeding off pampered, mainstream Eloi dandies with D&G sunglasses and designer perfume. But go to any horror film screening, and see if you’re not surrounded by Blackberry-toting shitheads [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 9
It’s common geek knowledge that Star Trek is a smarter version of Star Wars. However, this should not be the badge of honour that so many Trekkies wear with pride, since Star Wars is essentially what idiot kids dream about when they’ve eaten cotton candy instead of their Ritalin. Here’s the thing: musing on [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 8
At their best, horror films hold society up to a funhouse mirror, providing a grotesque yet revealing reflection of cultural concerns, values, and above all, fears. And then there’s torture porn, in which the only insights are gained from peering deep into the vivisected ruins of a woman’s genitals.
The term refers to [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 7
Good comedy is a mix of the familiar, the unexpected, and the shocking. Which is an elaborate way of saying that ending a knock-knock joke with a line about killing a baby is a sure way to get a laugh. Try it some time. At work.
So, it’s no surprise that censorship can [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 6
In the 1980s, author Clive Barker was dubbed the new face of horror. And what a face it was, one that looked like it should be fellating both Lord Byron and Aleister Crowley during a sex magic ritual, all arched eyebrows and smooth cheeks and smoky eyes.
Barker’s 1985 short story collection The [...]
Cult of the Week: Volume 5
Quentin Tarantino is every video store clerk’s idol, and every film critic’s nightmare. Venerated by midnight movie buffs and Blockbuster cashiers for his unadulterated love of cult cinema, Tarantino has proved that a film school education is no match for passion, creativity, and kinetic energy.
Unfortunately for film critics, this has [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 4
David Lynch films are a litmus test of intelligence. You don’t have to like them to prove that your cinematic IQ is above the level of a mouth-breather with a Vin Diesel DVD collection. But you do have to realize the films’ artistic merit. And then give lengthy interpretations of their leitmotifs [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 3
In the 1950s, a group of French writers revolutionized film criticism with the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. By re-evaluating the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and John Hughes, among others, the critics gave birth to a grand unified ‘auteur theory,’ which positions the director as the ultimate creative force behind a [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 2
In terms of cult cinema, anime, which encompasses a wide variety of genres within the blanket term of Japanese animation, can be difficult to categorize. Thankfully, its fans are not, because they all adopt the same high-pitched tone of indignation whenever you point out that jerking off to 14-year olds covered in [...]
Cult Cinema : Volume 1
Religion is a beautiful thing. Provided you’re a Paleolithic savage who needs fairy tales and a lumpy fertility idol in the shape of a BBW centerfold to explain where babies come from. Anyone else still believing in magic and wizards should read a book that wasn’t written before humanity invented paper.
Unless [...]
