"83"

I have an ongoing love affair with New York, the city that formed me. I was born here, and though I’ve left occasionally, it was never for very long. The pace, color, and excitement of this amazing town always drew me back like a magnet, and holds me still. No surprise then that I love experiencing the potent nostalgia of great films that recall the New York City of my early years.

I will always remember the pure exhilaration I felt watching Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” for the first time in a theater thirty years ago. The memory is so clear of first realizing that I was experiencing an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, deliriously entertaining but also completely fresh and unique. What made “Pulp” so exciting and distinctive?

What would summer be without at least one trip to the beach? Truthfully, for me one trip is about enough. I have way too many childhood memories of sandy sandwiches and horrific sunburns. And from a swimming perspective, ever since I first saw “Jaws,” I’m strictly a pool man.

Film scholars may differ on the top Bogart-Bacall outing, but for me it’s their second film, “The Big Sleep” (1946), directed by the inimitable Howard Hawks. It is, first and foremost, the quintessential private eye picture, along with the earlier Bogart classic, “The Maltese Falcon” (1941). The film succeeds in spite of the fact that its dense, twisty plot leaves most viewers slightly bewildered at the closing credits.

Here we go. The holiday parties are over, and once again those of us in northern climes heave an inward sigh and steel ourselves for four months of cold, snow and ice.

Like me, Frances McDormand is not a big fan of the Academy Awards. As she put it in her characteristically wry, plainspoken way: “I don't like award shows. At our house we call this time of year 'the convention'. It's too bad we haven't figured out how to stop it. But I think…because of the Internet… it will naturally go away. We'll have other ways to gather; it's not going to be this stuff. The shoes hurt too much.”

Cult films encompass a range of quality, genres, and periods, but share one thing: a devoted fan base that returns to them again and again. Many cult fans know the scripts of the movies they worship by heart. Good or bad, cult films also tend to be offbeat or even over-the-top. With so many cookie-cutter, formulaic movies out there, that “quirk” factor is an essential part of what keeps those viewers coming back.