BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Manthast Absolutely amazing

Claire Dunne One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

bregund Well, I tried watching it again over the weekend. As you get older, some films you tried earlier in your life, and didn't like, begin to make sense. Some, like Sunset Boulevard, get infinitely better. Some, like Time Bandits, get worse. You start to see flaws where you didn't before, or touches of brilliance that had been hidden from your perceptions. For me, Buckaroo Banzai wasn't that great when it came out and still remains so, so it's comforting to know that some films remain consistent across your life. I don't understand what I'm looking at, I don't get the story, or why the characters do what they do, I don't get their motivations. I don't understand what the aliens want or what their plan is. What is that thing circling the earth? Why is Jeff Goldblum dressed like a cowboy? As a fairly astute consumer of films for over forty years, I'm accustomed to a certain degree of lucidity, linear progression, and clear presentation of ideas in my entertainment, and at every turn this film zigs when you expect it to zag. It's indefinable, which is fine as a standalone film that embraces irreverence, but the cost is confusion. I couldn't be alone in my assessment of this train wreck, given hollywood's current lust to remake everything under the sun except for this film. It's not entirely awful, however, with John Lithgow and his outrageous Italian accent, or Christopher Lloyd's ice-cold ownership of every scene he appears in.In another twenty years I'll watch this film again, maybe it will finally make sense to me.

TheXeroXone Seriously. Take the current version of Doctor Who, give it guns, more eccentric companions and a tour bus instead of a police box and boom, you got Buckaroo Banzai and his band of Hong Kong Cavaliers. There is no doubt in my mind that the current Doctor Who series was almost entirely based on this film. The best part of this film are the trio of villains played expertly by John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd and the late Vincent Schiavelli. These guys are awesome. Vincent's dead, but goddamn it, we need more productions with John Lithgow and Christopher Lloyd together. The in- fighting between these characters is just a complete joy. Unfortunately the same can not be said for the good guys in this film. There is so little happiness to be found in this group as the tone is almost always somber despite the eccentricities of the main protagonists. Between Buckaroo Banzai trying to screw his dead wife's long lost twin sister, the gunplay (which just comes across as a letdown given the level of sophistication in the dialogue), the total nonchalance to which each team member performs their duty. Its just too dry for what this movie was attempting to create. Its worth a viewing, but not much afterthought.

Darragh Hickey What is a cult film? Is it a movie that failed at the box office yet found an audience on home video such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Office Space? Is it a film that's so bad it's good such as Troll 2 or The Room? Or is a cult film just a movie with a rabid fan base that will throw out dialogue after dialogue and adorn rooms with odd memorabilia?Really a cult film can be all these things; the phenomenon of cult cinema has been around since the 50's with the infamously bad films of Ed Wood and it doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. The purpose of these reviews is to bring the weird, wonderful and downright insanity of cult cinema to you. The reviews will be broken up into the main review itself as well as quotable lines and oddest moments. Many will choose The Rocky Horror Picture Show as the ultimate piece of cult cinema, but really it's become so mainstream it defies cult films. The real king of cult cinema is the 1984 film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.Film: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension Director: W.D Richter Cast: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd.The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is possibly the most nonsensical film ever to be put on celluloid. The majority of it doesn't make a lick of sense, the plot flies by without letting the audience really understand it, and we're just thrown into this world full of myth and science fiction and we just have to accept it. This is the beauty of the film, it just forces you to accept everything and enjoy it. Banzai is a melting pot of genres, a weird high-bred of action adventure, science fiction, comedy, satire, and romance and none of it makes sense yet it's a brilliantly original and enjoyable film.The plot follows the adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (Robocop himself, Peter Weller) a physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and rock star who, along with his rock band/assistants, The Hong Kong Cavaliers must stop a group of inter dimensional aliens, lead by John Lithgow's alien leader, Lord John Whorfin trapped inside the body of an Italian scientist, in order to save the world. The film just drops you into all of this, creating an incredible myth surrounding Buckaroo and his band and intrigue among the audience about what exactly is going on.The beauty of the film (much like many cult classic) is that its flaws are also its greatest strength. The dialogue can be incredibly heavy on the techno babble at times attempting to explain the science of the film, and it can confuse the audience, but within two seconds there's some great joke or dead pan delivery made and we're sucked right back in. The cinematography isn't really all that spectacular, its flat and very colourful and really isn't great, but in Buckaroo Banzai it works because it makes the whole film look like a comic book come to life. That's the best way to describe Buckaroo Banzai; it's an old 80's comic book that somehow jumped onto the silver screen.The performances are all very solid in that great cult cinema way. Peter Weller is believably charismatic as Banzai, who delivers his lines with a deadpan that would make Bill Murray jealous. Banzai's Hong Kong Cavaliers include great eccentric performances by such actors as Jeff Goldblum playing a New Jersey cowboy, and Clancy Brown as Banzai's own personal narrator, Rawhide. The crown jewel of the film in terms of performances however, goes to John Lithgow playing the villainous role of Lord John Whorfin in the most over the top, insane way possible throwing out lines with an Italian accent that makes Super-Mario seem legitimate. It's a performance that will be forever remembered as one of the most brilliantly funny portrayals in cult cinema history.If the film has any legitimate flaws it's that we don't get to see enough of Banzai working with his team as they all seem like brilliant characters that just don't get enough screen time. The love story between Banzai and Penny Pretty (Ellen Barkin) isn't given all that much time to develop and could have been more interesting, especially with her being the long lost twin sister of Banzai's murdered wife.The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension really is the ultimate cult classic, it bombed at the box office, at times it's so bad it's good and it has a rabid fan base that are still clamouring for a sequel. It's a must see film if you're a fan of cult cinema a truly brilliant piece of pop cinema that is so insane it works. Buckaroo Banzai is by far the weirdest film around and it's brilliant.

mcfly-31 Hate to start a review backward, but I must mention my absolute love of Big Trouble in Little China. Coming from W.D. Richter and hearing of his association with Buck Bonzai, I finally made time to check this one out and see what all the cult fuss was.So if I like BTILC, I can totally understand a rabid fans loyalty to an overlooked classic. Hence, I won't trash on the Buck Bonzai people who adore this, because it had completely the opposite impression on me. A directionless mash-up of chaotic scenes (mostly chase) that involve a multi-faceted nuerosurgeon, a race of reptilian space crusaders, a troubled woman, and a mad scientist. There's lots of action, and pretty pictures to look at, but most of its ambitions lie in intentionally being incoherent. Like, "Hey, this is kind of oddball, maybe the audience will take it for what it is."Now, many have. Buck Bonzai is an eccentric mess of indiscriminate themes and antics involving part space opera and half governmental schtick. But its focus changes too often for the goal to be taken seriously. Though I will agree with the diehards that the end credits sequence is one of the most catchy in film history.