That won’t do at all. I hereby nominate “The Voices” (directed by Marjane Satrapi and starring Ryan Reynolds) to join this list!
5 Likes
That’s a valid criticism. Two films I would expect to see on any such list are Malcolm (Nadia Tass) and Swept Away (Wertmüller).
5 Likes
OK, I’ll happily throw in Tank Girl (Rachel Talalay dir).
6 Likes
Where’s Withnail and I?
Surely the most cult of all cult films.
6 Likes
I mentioned Near Dark, which is a Kathryn Bigelow film. It’s very notable that after her separation with James Cameron, his films took quite a steep dive in quality. Kathryn’s? Not a bit.
Another of mine Raw, was by Julia Ducournau.
Prevenge was a great film, directed by Alice Lowe. Lords of Dogtown (Catherine Hardwicke, tho I prefer the original that it is dramatising), Whip It (Drew Barrymore’s directoral debut), Messiah of Evil (Gloria Katz), The Babadook (Jennifer Kent), You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)…
In the article American Psycho is by Mary Harron. Although it doesn’t get an entry, Booksmart (Olivia Wilde) gets a mention in the entry for Dazed and Confused.
While not by a woman director, Korean film Thirst is also great.
5 Likes
Pretty much no cultural/gender diversity at all… started responding with a list:
(only one Japanese, no Hong Kong, no Indian, no Taiwanese, no Korean, no Australian, no New Zealand, no South African etc. etc.)
Kinda makes me wonder how clickbait like this (yes I clicked) represents how ‘white’ and myopic the Web has become, aided by one dominant search engine and a handful of social network platforms that propagate this content… looking at you the Googles to the Youtubes to the Facebooks.
If a ‘Cult’ is a subset of ‘Culture’ then diversity should be the start… Cinema has many cults.
1 Like
I picked up Crispin Glover’s album on vinyl back in 2019 hoping it would be very weird. It wasn’t 
Wow, it is a great list of movies, thanks for that 
1 Like
I think cult films vary in degree in what makes them culty. “The Big Lebowski” for instance is a well crafted Coen Brother film, it got pretty decent reviews and is well received by critics. On the other hand there’s “The Room” which is so bad that people like it. When I was a kid it was “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”. I think there’s a subcategory of cult film where a significant number of people don’t like it, that is genuinely bad but some people will flock to see it, but then there are other cult films that are liked by the general audience but there’s a niche audience who likes those movies even more.
2 Likes
I’d be a bit surprised as I think Wertmüller has been gradually slipping from the public consciousness, although I guess that does make her more cultish.
1 Like
Heh.
I love Maddin’s My Winnipeg, but the funny thing is, while I’ve had it on 4 or 5 times now, I’ve never finished it. I think that’s because it’s like a dream, and my dreams never seem complete either?
1 Like
Only us um, Freaks!
6 Likes
I think this is obligatory:
8 Likes
Thanks, I knew I could rely on the bbs cult to cough that up. 
6 Likes
I wandered into an arthouse showing a double feature back in the 70’s of Freaks and Night of the Living Dead with a friend of mine. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we had just dropped acid.
It was, I would say, a very strange night, but memorable.
7 Likes
I’m a super fan of Event Horizon as I mentioned earlier. Heck, even my username here is a reference to it but when I first went to see it I wasn’t expecting much. I saw it because a TV spot called it “the scariest film since The Exorcist” which I thought was a bold and arrogant claim. But the theater I went to was brand new and had really loud sound and with a few good jump scares within the first twelve minutes I realized I was in for a ride. Been a mega fan ever since. I even own one of Fishburne’s costumes used in the film and can recite the entire movie from memory with ease.
That being said, movies are of course subjective and while I genuinely adore a number of the other films on the list, there are a few that just didn’t do it for me. The Big Lebowski, Oldboy, and The Room just don’t do it for me. I just thought Big Lebowski was dumb and overrated. I thought Oldboy was a victim of the hype train as I found it fairly boring, and The Room, well let’s just say I agree it’s a bad movie but not the sort I’d want to see again. My idea of a good bad movie? Check out the Turkish Star Wars (easy to find on YouTube) and you can thank me later!
1 Like
Here are a few off the top of my head that are less common:
- Head (The Monkees)
- Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard)
- The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has)
- Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin)
- The Congress (Ari Folman)
- The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel)
- The Wild Boys (Bertrand Mandico)
- The Hourglass Sanatorium (Wojciech Has)
- The Love Witch (Anna Biller)
- Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
7 Likes
Should Come and See be on a cult film list? Or maybe Battleship Potemkin?
3 Likes
Depends on how you want to use the word cult, I suppose. Since Potemkin is very comfortably part of the “canon” and doesn’t seem to have a big or rabid following, I’m inclined to say it doesn’t fit. Maybe Come and See though.
3 Likes
