CULT MOVIE: BOOGIE NIGHTS (1992)

Wahlberg is the porn star (Dirk Diggler) who is so blessed by nature that if he hung around Newmarket when a race was going off he'd be dragged into a paddock. After a prolonged build up, we finally get see the organ known as Mr Torpedo Area at the end of this dazzling memoir of the 1970s porn business. Reynolds is excellent as a sleazy but sincere porn baron. Anderson shows off with the camera to good effect, especially in the scene around Reynolds' swimming pool which is worthy of Altman. Sadly by the end of the movie, Diggler is shouting: "I'm ready to shoot my scene right now!" A reminder that those who live by Mr Torpedo Area, may die by it too.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore

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CULT MOVIE: ED WOOD (1994)

Two cheers for Burton for not making this a camp classic but instead an affectionately amusing piece about the man who has posthumously been dubbed the worst film director in the world. It would have been easy to camp it up: Wood (Depp) was a director, after all, who claimed to have gone to war wearimg panties and bra underneath his uniform. A director whose cast, as girlfriend Parker says in the film, consists of "the usual gang of misfits and dope addicts". Burton gets one more cheer for giving the film some emotional depth, with its depiction of Wood's relationship, with Lugosi (brilliantly played by Landau) who is his co-star, friend and patient. A very funny, affectionate movie. Bill Condon's Gods And Monsters (1998), with Ian McKellen as the openly gay horror movie director James Whale, may also appeal if you enjoyed this.
Director: Tim Burton Cast: Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker

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CULT MOVIE: BARTON FINK (1991)

This Coen brothers film works as a very sharply observed black comedy complete with their favourite vignette of a leader with a Hitler complex: a tyrant behind a desk at the other end of the room from the viewer and the central character. Goodman is a joy to behold in the kind of ( the smoothtalking, unreasonably affable psycho) he would reprise in their later work O Brother, Where Art Thou? And in the title role Turturo does, as one critic who seriously disliked the film said, offer the most "fanatically detailed caricature of a nerd since the heyday of Jerry Lewis". But for all that it is very funny indeed. Fink is loosely based on Clifford Odets, a playwright whose dream of theatre for the common man evaporated in the swimming pools of Beverly Hills, but this is not an attack on Odets or anyone else. You could even argue that it's a warning by the Coen to themselves not to lose their own individuality in the smooth path to hell that Hollywood can be.
Director: Joel Coen Cast: John Turturo, John Goodman, Judy Davis, John Mahoney

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