The New Cult Canon is a movie list and critical project authored by Scott Tobias — beginning in 2008 at The A.V. Club and revived in 2021 at The Reveal.
(Links to all New Cult Canon article pages can be found under Read Notes on this list.)
The list contains more than 160 entries, which have been catalogued in the order the articles were originally published. The first article of the 'new' edition of the New Cult Canon made the case for Ridley Scott's The Counselor (2013), published on November 17, 2021. In the piece, Tobias writes:
From 2008 to 2013, starting with Donnie Darko and ending with The Rapture, I wrote a column for The A.V. Club called The…
The New Cult Canon is a movie list and critical project authored by Scott Tobias — beginning in 2008 at The A.V. Club and revived in 2021 at The Reveal.
(Links to all New Cult Canon article pages can be found under Read Notes on this list.)
The list contains more than 160 entries, which have been catalogued in the order the articles were originally published. The first article of the 'new' edition of the New Cult Canon made the case for Ridley Scott's The Counselor (2013), published on November 17, 2021. In the piece, Tobias writes:
From 2008 to 2013, starting with Donnie Darko and ending with The Rapture, I wrote a column for The A.V. Club called The New Cult Canon, my homage to Danny Peary’s three Cult Movies books, which were a huge influence on my moviegoing habits as a young cinephile. My idea was to pick up where Peary’s last book left off, in 1987, and explore “The Classics, The Sleepers, The Weird and the Wonderful” — films that have inspired mad obsession since. With The Reveal, I finally have the opportunity to bring it back.
What defines The New Cult Canon? In his original introduction to the column, Scott describes the idea thusly:
In the 20 years since Peary’s last Cult Movies book was published, I’ve often pined for him to resurface and write another one, because we need him now more than ever. In the post-Tarantino age, we’ve seen not just a flowering of cult movies, but of cult filmmakers who consciously play to audiences that thirst for a certain offbeat sensibility. With apologies to Peary, the idea behind The New Cult Canon is to take a fresh look at the new generation of cult movies that have sprung up in the last two decades.
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THE NEW CULT CANON ARCHIVE
Now: The New Cult Canon at The Reveal (Subscribe on Substack)
Then: The New Cult Canon at The A.V. Club
WRITTEN BY SCOTT TOBIAS
* The A.V. Club
* The Guardian
* The New York Times
* Vulture
* Scott Tobias on Metacritic
WRITTEN BY KEITH PHIPPS
* The Age of Cage (Coming March 29, 2022!)
* The Ringer
* Uproxx
* The A.V. Club
* Vulture
* Keith Phipps on Metacritic
THEIR PODCAST TOGETHER
* The Next Picture Show (Subscribe on Patreon)
