Tag: comedy
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Cult Classics: Cabin Boy
Chris Elliott’s comedy is not for everybody. Having first launched his career as a writer and performer on David Letterman’s old late night show in the 1980s as an absurdist figure who would do bits playing odd characters with names like “The Panicky Guy” and “The Guy Under The Seats,” usually ineffectual characters who had…
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Cult Classics: Big Trouble in Little China
“You know what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like this?” “Who?” “Jack Burton. Me!” Jack Burton and his truck, The Pork Chop Express, barrel into San Francisco’s Chinatown with a delivery while he gives a monologue over the CB airwaves that summarizes his character and general attitude: “When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac…
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Perfect Movies: Blazing Saddles
There are great films that change the landscape of cinema: your Citizen Kanes and Godfathers and Days of Heavens and such and such. Then you have films that are moving depictions of the human condition and of overcoming adversity to find one’s place in the world: The Color Purple, for example, and another film I’m…
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Cult Classics: Better Off Dead
Lane Meyer wishes he were dead. He tries over and over – self-immolation, carbon monoxide poisoning, jumping from a bridge, even hanging. But like most things in his life, it never quite goes his way. Did I mention this is a major plot point in an 80’s teen comedy? Better Off Dead isn’t just another…
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Cult Classics: UHF
Who doesn’t love Weird Al? I know I do: the first record I ever independently bought was In 3-D in 1988 from a flea market when I was 6. I’ve lost a lot of great vinyl albums over the years due to either lending them out or as break-up casualties, but there is no vinyl…
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Perfect Movies: Monkey Business
There was no more perfect comedy configuration on film than the Marx Brothers. I have had some dark days (and wow, who hasn’t?) and despite hardships or emotional upset, I can turn on a Marx Brothers movie and it lifts my soul completely for at least a short while – and hopefully for a while…
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Cult Classics: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Upon its release, a movie about a rock star-surgeon-physicist-adventurer battling aliens from the 8th dimension, was a gigantic hit. Of course, that’s a lie: the rather insane film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is a film with an extremely narrow built-in appeal. But its approach to sci-fi–creating an outrageous protagonist that lives…
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The Greasy Strangler
I enjoy weird films. If it’s cult, obscure, transgressive, shocking, or just plain bizarre, I’ll seek it out and consume it like it’s garmonbozia. But why this sort of fare? I don’t have particularly bizarre habits, behaviors, or even interests (unless you think nerdy obsessions with rhetorical theory and critical discourse as weird, which OK…
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The Ghost of Frankenstein
Here comes the the horror classic(?) The Ghost of Frankenstein. I’m not very familiar with the original Universal horror film library in general, but since Frankie’s story has been made over and over again literally hundreds of times, due to cultural osmosis its tropes, basic story outline, and visual rhetoric is well-known enough to be…
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Perfect Movies: Back to the Future
Is this yet another Gen Y/early “Millenial” (ugh) article about the movies people of my age watched as children back in the 1980s? Of course it is. To clarify: I do not identify as a Millenial. I have previously written on this site about my dislike of how people of my generation have been conflated…
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10 Great Weird Cult Films To Watch
Weird, bizarre, or just plain odd: many films have been made in history that push the boundaries of normalcy and present an utterly unique vision to audiences seeking outre cinema. But for every acclaimed Eraserhead or El Topo, there are dozens of films that slip through the cracks and fall into the often difficult-to-find realm…
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Perfect Movies: The Princess Bride
Who would we, as a collective spirit, be without our stories? Fiction is one of the most complex and influential inventions in human history: our ability to create entire worlds, characters, and plots that have never been nor ever will be–and make it seem like real life–is an incredible feat of the imagination that the…
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