Category: Videodrome

Rollerball’s current reevaluation is mainly due to its prophetic look at the future — a future that doesn’t seem too far off from where we may be headed, sans roller-skates and leather pants.

In its examination of aspirations, complacency, and the fine line between talent and persistence, few documentaries have come close to capturing the pursuit of artistic ambitions with as much raw sincerity as American Movie.

While being a low-budget exploitation film, Race With The Devil transcends its genre trappings and sets itself apart from other drive-in movies of the 1970s. It understands that true horror — the kind that gets under your skin and lingers with you long after the credits roll — doesn’t come from blood and guts, but from the universal fear of the unknown: not knowing who to trust or who is out to get you.

Following the success of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda tried his hand at directing with two wildly different films. Both feature a score by the influential musician Bruce Langhorne, and one is a minor masterpiece that attempts to rewrite the rules of the western genre.

Thief has been hailed as a Marxist neo-noir classic, a cinematic bridge between the gritty realism of the crime-dramas of the 1970s and the hyper-stylized action films of the 1980s. But besides being a genre bedrock, Thief is a nuanced character study that serves as an allegory for the trappings of capitalism.

For the latest installment of the VIDEODROME column, we sat down with writer and screenwriter, Kim Morgan, to discuss Frank Perry’s Play It As It Lays (1972), Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins, and driving in Los Angeles.

The Seventh Continent is classified as a family drama, but it’s undoubtedly a horror film, perhaps one of the most horrifying films ever made. It’s nihilism as an aesthetic, misanthropy as a philosophy, and construction as deconstruction.

Like its lead character, Sling Blade walks a fine line between mishandling sentimentality and portraying somber reality. But its characters are never caricatures, transcending tropes with an often excruciating amount of empathy and depth, none more so than Billy Bob Thornton as the tortured Karl Childers.

The violence and bleakness at the end of Over The Edge sets it apart from other like-minded coming-of-age/juvenile delinquent films; it chooses to resolve itself as a cautionary tale for adults instead of a celebration of youth for teenagers.

For the latest installment of Aquarium Drunkard’s VIDEODROME column, we sat down with writer and cinephile, Matthew Specktor, to discuss Shoot The Moon (1982), the Hollywood cycle of divorce films from the eighties, and his upcoming book.

If Lady In A Cage presents a worldview, it’s decidedly misanthropic. Footage of baseball games and fighter jets are juxtaposed with heinous news reports and acts of savagery. This is America in decline, blissfully aware of its ignorance but unwilling to confront the nightmares its pacification has spawned.