Vetting the canon

Looking at The AV Club's "New Cult Canon"...


Flicks I've seen (with comments)

• Napoleon Dynamite - Hate this flick.  The awkwardness does seem funny to me, just pathetic.  I get that it's a cult thing because the people who love it think it's the funniest thing out there.  In spite of my hatred, though, I want to see Gentlemen Broncos.
• Beetlejuice - Classic, hilarious Michael Keaton.  One of his finest humor roles out there.  Great musical numbers, great special effects, early Burton.  Quality entry.
• Darkman - Only saw this as a kid in the theater, and I didn't get it.  Thought it was dumb and poorly made.  Doubt I'll give itanother chance just because of this list.
• I Heart Huckabees - I found it interesting, but not interesting enough to watch a second time through.
• Team America: World Police - Okay, this one I get.  I could watch this time and time again.  Hilarious through and through.  The humor is so broad, so over the top, so offensive to everyone that it's hilarious.
• Brick - If you watch this movie and try to make sense of it, it doesn't work - no adults in the world, nobody notices that the teens are killing and beating each other senseless - but if you let that one fact go, it's genius. The writing and dialogue are so tight as to be almost impenetrable.  One to pay attention to and one you get more of with a second watching.  High quality stuff.
• The Big Lebowski - Rarely has there been a more quotable movie.  Hilarious, vulgar, funniest flick of the past couple of decades.  One, however, that many people wouldn't get.  Perfect cult classic - but growing in scope.
• Triplets of Belleville - Almost wordless, French, musical cartoon.  I own it, and that's high praise from me.  I couldn't see myself watching it very often, however.  There's no quotability, so the cult value is tough for me to see.
• Spirited Away - Another that I own (three so far, with Lebowski and Belleville) and another that I've seen a dozen times.  Calen's younger watched this a dozen times at our house.  It's beautiful and haunting and marvelous.  To me, it's not light-hearted enough for cult.
• Eyes Wide Shut - I found it boring and repulsive at times.  Blech.
• The Limey filmmaker commentary track - Enjoyable film.  I'm suddenly interested in hearing the commentary track.
• Reservoir Dogs - Tarantino's first directorial debut is, I think, one of his weakest.  It's clearly the work of an early filmmaker who hasn't learned to move beyond his ticks.  It's a cult classic, though.
• Rounders - Seen it twice.  Enjoyed it less the second time.  There are guys (cough-Bill Simmons-cough) who have built their entire life around being these two kids.
• Oldboy - I've only seen it to the 1:45 mark.  Two copies of the DVD at PLCH died on us at exactly the same point.  Now that I know the ending, though, I'm kind of happy about that.
• Fight Club - Ok, here we go.  Marvelous movie.  So well written, perfectly directd.  Acting superb.  This is a cult classic because so many people can't get past that it's a movie about guys fighting (which it so very much is not).
• Sexy Beast - The analogy of the rock crashing into the pool is a little heavy-handed, but Ben Kingsley owns the screen.  Great choice.
• The Devil's Advocate - Love it.  Horrible film that is so much fun to watch, with Pacino chewing scenery like a man who hasn't acted in decades.  Total cult.
• Road House - Now you're just lobbing softballs here.  This is right in my wheelhouse.  I don't know that I can possibly ever turn this film off when it's on tv.
• Wild Things - How can this be a cult film?  Every guy I know has half of it memorized (or at least imprinted on their eyeballs.)  It's surprisingly intelligent, but it's tough to get past the scenes of pure trashy manly fantasizes to get to that.  You have to watch the credits here to figure out what the heck happened.
• Punch Drunk Love - Saw this in the theater and actually had the other couple apologize for it not being a typical Adam Sandler movie.  No, it's far better.  It's his best work by far, by the way.  Quirky, wonderful love story.  Another that I struggle to turn off when I catch it on tv.
  
• The Boondock Saints - Shut up, Murraveener.  I thought it was obvious from twenty minutes in.  Yes, the Defoe character is entertaining, and the boys are lucky, but the eventual revelation is so anticlimactic as to be boring.  And they're making a sequel?  Why?
• Pi - It's not for everyone.  There might not be a better definition of a cult film.  It's so dense, so hard to follow, so artistic through much of the movie that it's almost as thoough it were designed to turn people away so they wouldn't find that Aranofsky's debut was actually intelligent and haunting.
• Primer - Okay, there is a better definition of cult than Pi, but only because it's even more off-putting and harder to follow than Pi is.  Joey recently saw this, and the discussion over there proved how tough this it to sell to anybody - engineers build a box that they can't explain that does things they never dreamed of.  Blech.  But it's not blech at all.  It's intelligent and demands full attention, but there's genius there beneath the fluorescent glare.
• Clerks - This on, on the other hand, looks even lower budget (it wasn't) but is so open, low-brow, and vulgar that every college kid who's ever dropped the f-bomb should give it a chance.  I own it, and it lead me down a very bent path of Kevin Smith adoration (a path which seems to be peetering out, by the way).
• Donnie Darko - I've seen it.  I think I might have understood it (it's about girls, right?).  I know I didn't get what the heck was happening as it happened.  I'll probably watch it again, but I don't know that it'll be a bunch more times.  Definite cult classic, though.

So, which movie on the list that I haven't seen should I absolutely get out and see this weekend?