The New Cult Canon

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  The New Cult Canon New Cult Canon ends with the end times of Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture

  Judgment Day may be coming, but this apocalypse drama poses some tough questions.

  April 11, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon My Own Private Idaho is a personal statement and a River Phoenix memorial

  Director Gus Van Sant put a great deal of himself into the film, then went on to less intimate filmmaking.

  March 21, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon John Woo’s Hard Target added signature flair to a generic Hollywood premise

  Maybe it isn’t a great John Woo movie, but it’s a transcendent Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

  February 28, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Zoolander refuses to let satire interfere with its inspired silliness

  Rather than eviscerating its broad target, this fashion-industry comedy wanders down more eccentric comedic paths.

  February 7, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Pump Up The Volume offers a punk twist on the John Hughes formula

  Allan Moyle's 1990 film gave voice to solitary teenage angst before the days of blogs and podcasts.

  January 17, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon [REC]’s use of confinement makes it a paragon of the found-footage genre

  When the camera is the Final Girl.

  December 20, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon The New World?reshaped an American origin story in the style of its creator

  The history of Jamestown gets filtered through one director’s abiding concerns.

  November 29, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Memento’s puzzle structure hides big twists and bigger profundities?

  Buried under the clever, gimmicky design is a fundamental reveal about human nature.

  November 8, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon The People Under The Stairs attempts horror-satire but fails in its execution

  Wes Craven’s film wants to be a metaphor for the ’80s class war and ends up being Home Alone in reverse.

  October 18, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon How the Wachowskis’ craft saves Bound from being a sexploitation film

  A neo-noir debut offers lesbianism as more than lurid window-dressing.

  September 27, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon 12 Monkeys is hard sci-fi with a soft center?

  In between the action beats, Terry Gilliam’s film approaches the past with an intoxicating mix of romanticism and dread. 

  September 6, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Lonely Island’s Hot Rod is strangely funny (and often just strange)?

  The Lonely Island movie that pushed the digital shorts approach to feature length. 

  August 16, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon A critical movement saved Margaret from burial; here’s why it deserved a second chance

  Kenneth Lonergan’s film became a battleground between supportive critics and a displeased studio.

  July 26, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon The Korean horror movie The Host finds humor among mayhem?

  In Bong Joon-ho’s terrific monster movie, horror and humor are equal partners in provoking audience response. 

  July 5, 2012 | 11:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Weird Al’s UHF is uneven, but that just made it ahead of its time?

  Revisting Spatula City. 

  June 14, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Vampire’s Kiss features one of Nicolas Cage’s best, most out-of-control performances

  Nicolas Cage gets an appropriately weird home in this ’80s “vampire” movie. 

  May 24, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon The horrible, hilarious violence of Ichi The Killer

  Takashi Miike takes violence to the limit, and beyond. 

  May 3, 2012 | 12:00pm -

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  The New Cult Canon Hackers may have been of its time, but it was also ahead of it

  This mid-’90s cyberthriller looks both incredibly dated and weirdly prescient.

  April 12, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Cabin Boy

   Can a fancy lad survive the high seas? 

  March 22, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Dead Alive?

  Long before Mordor, Peter Jackson was fascinated with special effects. They just used to be more grotesque and bloody. 

  March 1, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Observe And Report

  Jody Hill’s hilarious, uncomfortable, puzzling riff on Taxi Driver plants a dangerous obsessive in the middle of a shopping mall.

  February 9, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Dazed And Confused?

  Texas, 1976: Booze, dope, paddling, and other rites of passage 

  January 26, 2012 | 12:01am -

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  The New Cult Canon The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover

  A visionary crank’s most accessible movie is also one of his meanest.

  January 5, 2012 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Diggstown

  The heroes of this movie are bad. But, compared to the world around them, they could be worse. 

  December 8, 2011 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Anaconda

  Rediscovering the trashy charms of a basic-cable favorite.

  November 10, 2011 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

  The Human Centipede earned immediate infamy with its ass-sewn-to-mouth premise. But is it more dare than movie?

  October 20, 2011 | 12:01am -

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  The New Cult Canon Black Dynamite

  Who’s the soulful Vietnam vet/former CIA agent/master detective who’s a sex machine to all the chicks? (And also really good at kung fu.) 

  September 29, 2011 | 12:01am -

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  The New Cult Canon Shaun Of The Dead?

  Zombies fill this breakthrough horror comedy, and not all of them are undead. 

  September 8, 2011 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Inside

  How much is too much? An unborn-child-in-peril slasher film from France might provide the answer.

  August 18, 2011 | 12:00am -

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  The New Cult Canon Zodiac?

  Clues, patterns, and determined men, yet the killer slips away in an obsessive director’s study of obsession. 

  July 28, 2011 | 12:00am -