So, I posted a similar thread a year ago, but never got to keep up with it, explore all the possibilities… so, this. Also, now, a year later, there may be even more movies that could make a list. And discussing movies never gets old.
There must be a movie that isn’t too popular with the critics, or that famous, maybe it’s even obscure, but you like it, and likely know other people who like it too. And/or you think that they may be some more people, out there, who feel the same.
This thread is for you to discuss that, and connect. Maybe some posters can watch the movies that you suggest and make up their mind, if, in exchange, you follow up on their suggestions. Who knows, this can lead to certain cult following(s).
I’ll start: “Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage”, a great movie, though the best to watch around Christmas time, even though it’s not a feel-good movie.
My son had me watch “the room” which is horrifically bad. I guess it does have a cult following for how bad it is. This is the movie that James Franco and Seth Rogan are making a movie about making the movie. (punctuation needs to be in there someplace)
Every year, around New Year’s Eve, I’ll watch, “Get Crazy”. Cheap sight gags and drug humor, lots of the usual suspects you’d expect to find in an early 80’s B-movie, plenty of music. . .It’s so bad it’s good. It helps if you first saw it when you were an immature teen, I expect.
One of my favorite Christmas movies is, “Night of the Comet”. Zombies, teen girls with guns, TEMPIST? Another is, “Better Off Dead”, but that already has a cult following.
The documentary Tom Dowd: The Language of Music is about a deep music insider who touched so much music we care about. Ray Charles, Cream, Aretha, Lynyrd Skynyrd and so many more. A fascinating life and lens through which to walk through the history of recorded music in the 20th century. I mean, the man is the guy who first installed the slider switches on a mixing board so he could live-mix a recording and access more tone controls. Engaging from start to finish if you have the least bit of interest in music. Must-view in my book.
As a documentary, it should be held up amongst the best. As a music doc, it makes me frustrated that stuff like It Might Get Loud is more well known. It’s fine, but nothing compared to Tom Dowd. At least as good as Twenty Feet From Stardom, and a better-made doc vs. Standing in the Shadows of Motown and The Wrecking Crew and Muscle Shoals.
Perhaps the greatest film ever made (well, my favourite, anyway) is an incredibly obscure 1976 BBC “teleplay” (early Mike Leigh!) called Nuts In May that no one’s ever liked for whom I’ve shown it to, usually with complaints about it being nothing more than a boring travelogue featuring Kieth and Candace-Marie Pratt, perhaps the most annoying couple ever filmed.
Ok - I might not be selling this too well so far, especially taking into consideration Kieth, played by the very able Roger Sloman, who, only three minutes into the film, you will want to punch, squarely, right through his face, and continue to feel that way with increasing, exponential intensity as the film wears on.
You have to be a masochist to enjoy this film, and accordingly I hope that on several levels it will be embraced, venerated, and elevated to a sacrosanct level of hipster idolatry that hasn’t been seen since anything with Bob and Ray* in it.
*Of which I can only think of one flick - Between Time and Timbuktu.
Dark City should have a cult following.
I would second this, unfortunately “the Matrix” stole its thunder, as well as a lot of its premise and the use of the CGI (which was novel then, not so much any more.) Also, that silent episode of “Buffy” stole the look of the bad guys: overcoats and bowler hats, floating just above the ground. So, it’d be a hard sell, even though it was the original inspiration for other cult stuff.
How about “the Reflecting Skin”? A very odd, cultish movie from the early 1980s. It stars a young Viggo Mortensen. I think he also wrote and/or directed, and it has a very David Lynch-like feel to it.
Joining the cult on this one, this is high art.
It would be funnier if we just picked something random, with no interesting features whatsoever, and see how far we can take that.
But if we are going with real cult movies, the Japanese “Fish Story” (2009) is one of the most memorable movies I’ve ever seen.