Define Cult Cinema

John Landis posed this question at a cult film conference, “Back in the day, when someone called your film cult it meant it had bombed. Why study failures?” (qtd. in Mathjis Sexton, 2011, 26). I can think of a few reasons. Instead of making everything "go viral" and being banished to obscurity (Dayummm Daniel!), why not go cult? While I do not tackle using cult cinema techniques for marketing in this essay (perhaps one day...), I do take on what it means to be a cult movie. I wrote this essay as a final paper for a grad level class in May of 2013. You can read the full essay here.

Revolver: an incoherent mess of powder and chess

One of these things... 

Revolver (2007)

...Is not...

Snatch (2000)

...Like the other.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

If a film is bad, who do you blame? Chances are you blame the director because we believe he is the leader on set and that it is his vision behind the camera. Before the success of Sherlock Holmes, British director and screenwriter Guy Ritchie was first known for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000). In examining his older films, I have seen how his earlier works have influenced what some claim to be his second worst film Revolver. Revolver is hard to understand because it is filled with a lot of details such as subtext, cluttered scenes, and multiple storylines. Using film noir and auteur theory, I examine Guy Ritchie’s film Revolver.

See the full essay written March 26, 2013 here.