Cult

  • Rachel Talalay – Tank Girl (1995)

    1991-2000CultRachel TalalaySci-FiUSA

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    Quote:
    Based on a popular British cult comic book, this film is the story of a futuristic feminist superhero and her fight to preserve the environment against an evil government bureaucracy. The action is set in the year 2033, after an ecological disaster of drought and pollution has ravaged the countryside, and water is scarce. Tank Girl (Lori Petty) is a sassy punker who has her own vintage tank in tow, along with other high-tech weapons. Her mutant friends join her in bizarre battles against the corporate-statist Department of Water and Power and its villainous chief, Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell). At stake is the world’s water supply, which the Department is hoarding and which the rebels frequently raid. Rock star Iggy Pop has a cameo as Rat Face, one of the half-human, half-kangaroo Rippers. Courtney Love coordinated the post-punk soundtrack.Read More »

  • Robert Fischer – The Cinema and its Double – Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s ‘Despair’ Revisited (2011)

    2011-2020CultDocumentaryGermanyRainer Werner FassbinderRobert Fischer

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    Quote:
    This absolutely top-notch documentary by Robert Fischer is a fascinating look back at not just the film in question, but Fassbinder’s meteoric career which ended all too soon with his untimely death. Archival footage of Fassbinder is utilized (including several fascinating snippets culled from interviews he did at the disastrous Cannes premiere of Despair), as well as many others involved in the film and its release. Even if you’re not a particular fan of Despair, or even in fact of Fassbinder, this is stellar documentary filmmaking and is an intriguing look at one of the most enigmatic masters of the New German Cinema.Read More »

  • Marguerite Duras – Jaune le soleil (1971)

    1971-1980ArthouseCultFranceMarguerite Duras

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    Quote:
    Adapted from Duras’ Abahn Sabana David.

    Jaune le soleil est un film de Marguerite Duras sorti en 1972, adapté de son roman Abahn Sabana David.

    Tout le film se passe dans une seule pièce où sont réunis les représentants des deux forces politiques et leur ennemi “le juif”. Un personnage féminin établit le dialogue entre ces individus et commente l’idéologie de chacun ; ceci jusqu’à la scène finale où chacun semble se rallier à une idée commune.

    Note de tournage :
    “Il faudrait que le film donne l’impression d’avoir été tourné sans électricité, que tout effet de lumière en soit complètement banni. Que tout le film baigne dans une lumière uniforme qui n’avantage aucun personnage. Que ce soit la même lumière pour tous. C’est un film sur la parole, l’image ici sert à porter la parole. .(…) Ici c’est la parole qui tient lieu de contact corporel, ainsi que les bruits, les cris des chiens, le bruit des mots….” Cahiers du cinéma n° 400 Octobre 1987Read More »

  • Russ Meyer – Beyond the Valley of the Dolls [+Extras] (1970)

    1961-1970CampCultQueer Cinema(s)Russ MeyerUSA

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    This film is a sequel in name only to Valley of the Dolls (1967). An all-girl rock band goes to Hollywood to make it big. There they find success, but luckily for us, they sink into a cesspool of decadence. This film has a sleeping woman performing on a gun which is in her mouth. It has women posing as men. It has lesbian sex scenes. It is also written by Roger Ebert, who had become friends with Russ Meyer after writing favorable reviews of several of his films.

    Quote:
    It’s deadpan-droll throughout (with at least as many highly quotable lines as Rocky Horror), cod-moralistic, carefully balanced between satire and melodrama, gratuitously focused on women with outsize breasts, and shot and edited with astonishing mastery. Much of Meyer’s film language, as Ebert points out, is redolent of ‘pure’ silent cinema: to-the-point storytelling and earnestly expressive performances, plus montage sequences worthy of Slavko Vorkapich.

    — Tony Ryans, Sight & SoundRead More »

  • John Waters – Mondo Trasho (1969)

    1961-1970ComedyCultJohn WatersUSA

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    Mondo Trasho is a 1969 16mm mondo black comedy film by John Waters. The film stars Divine, Mary Vivian Pearce, David Lochary and Mink Stole. It contains very little dialogue, the story being told mostly through musical cues.

    A few excerpts from 1000misspenthours.com:
    ” In the meantime, what we can do is to revisit the moment of transition between Waters essentially making movies on a lark with his reprobate friends and the Dreamland Studios team (as they called themselves) becoming serious about building careers in cinema on their own eccentric terms. That transition came with Mondo Trasho, Waters’s first feature-length film, and his first to receive any approximation of professional distribution. Mondo Trasho premiered, as usual, with a nine-showing engagement at the Emmanuel Church rental hall, but it was quickly picked up by the New York-based Film-Makers Cooperative as part of their fledgling effort to break into the distro business. The coop never managed to secure a booking in their home city, ironically enough, but they did send Mondo Trasho to Los Angeles. Read More »

  • Manoel de Oliveira – Aniki Bóbó (1942)

    1941-1950ArthouseCultManoel de OliveiraPortugal

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    Quote:
    The story takes place in the old streets of Porto and by the banks of the Douro River. A gang of very young kids has just accepted a new member, Carlitos, a shy boy who has “played it tough” by stealing a doll in a shop. Carlitos soon develops a crush on Terezinha,the only girl of the group. The trouble is that Eduardo, the “boss”, is also in love with the pretty little girl. And he will not allow any rival to challenge him…Read More »

  • Bill Plympton – Hitler’s Folly (2016)

    2011-2020Bill PlymptonCultDocumentaryUSA

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    “Hitler’s Folly” explores what might have happened if Adolf Hitler’s art career had been more successful and instead of becoming an evil dictator, he was inspired to become an animator like Walt Disney.Read More »

  • Franz Novotny – Exit… nur keine Panik AKA Exit… But No Panic (1980)

    1971-1980AustriaCrimeCultFranz Novotny

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    Quote:
    The Year is 1980 and it’s Summer in Vienna

    Most people outside of Austria will rarely get a chance to see this movie, but if you get a chance like this, don’t let it pass as you as you’re on for a real treat. ‘Exit’ is not just an Austrian cult movie, it’s a funny and at the same time disturbing and at times depressing look into Vienna in the 80’s. This is “the” movie parents in 1980’s Austria did not want their kids to see.

    Viennese crook and would-be playboy Kirchhoff dreams of owning his own coffee house and having lots of beautiful women. In order to reach his goal, he is sometimes compelled to leave the straight and narrow.

    Comedy, violence, sex and vandalism are the ingredients of this Austrian cult classic.Read More »

  • Manoel de Oliveira – Francisca (1981)

    1981-1990ArthouseCultManoel de OliveiraPortugal

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    Quote:
    Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira made this amazing film in 1981, at the age of 72; as powerful as it is stark, it suggests a blending of the modernist, minimalist techniques of Jean-Marie Straub with the elusive spiritual subject matter of Max Ophuls. In 19th-century Portugal, a rising young novelist falls in love with the daughter of an English army officer, provoking the obscure envy of an aristocratic friend, who resolves to marry the girl himself and make her suffer for her betrayal. The baroque plot is presented in a series of single-take tableaux, which do not attempt to embody the drama as much as allude to it, leaving the dense and passionate feelings to take shape entirely in the spectator’s mind. Oliveira limits himself to showing only what can truly be shown: not the story but a representation of the story, not the emotions but their material manifestations as they have crossed the decades. A masterpiece of the modern cinema, difficult but extremely rewarding.

    Review by Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader:Read More »

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