Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #68: Dead Sushi (2012).

Keiko (Rina Takeda) is a black-belt karateka and the daughter of a celebrated sushi chef (Kentaro Shimizu), who considers her an embarrassment. He is so disappointed in her that she runs away from home and takes a job at a rural holiday inn where her colleagues treat her like shit, as do a team from Komatsu Pharmaceuticals who are staying there. Then an embittered former Komatsu employee (Takashi Nishima) arrives with a clandestine revenge plan: a serum that turns sushi fish into mutant killers! And when this sushi is consumed, customers are mutated themselves into ravenous, rice-vomiting zombies. Now, after discovering the first signs of an outbreak, Keiko must bury her insecurities and become an unstoppable mutant-sushi-destroying heroine. By her side is Sawada (Shigeru Matsazaki), a kitchenhand terrified of knives after a kitchen tragedy, sympathetic Komatsu representative Nosaka (Takamasa Suga), and an acid-squirting egg sushi whom all the other sushi bully.

Japanese writer-director Noboru Iguchi is evidently one unabashedly strange and trashy filmmaker. But you tell me: if you were browsing your local rental store and saw a movie called Dead Sushi with a fighting girl on the poster, would you be able to ignore it? He clearly knows how to provoke and to grab attention. And this movie certainly isn't for all tastes or demographics, but it's memorable in its own (intentionally) ridiculous way. Iguchi's dialogue actually feels rather overwritten occasionally, but only occasionally, and with action director Masai Suzumura's help he directs it all with such rhythm and vibrancy that it just becomes infectious. It's like through the film he's saying "I'm taking you on a ride which won't make a shred of sense, but doesn't even have to." In less confident, thickskinned hands this movie would feel like it tries too hard, but Iguchi rolls it all up into a very delicious treat. He even also provides layered characters with resonant arcs, and gets natural performances from his cast. With Dead Sushi, Noboru Iguchi has cooked up a winner.

Oh, and did I mention it also features a giant mutant tuna man and a man with a squid attached to his face, slowly tearing it off from either side?

A Rhyme for Festive Fever.

If you believe, it started in a manger,
With the birth of a child who sought to end all danger.
But even if you don't it can bring real magic,
Connection and presents, and nothing ever tragic.

Even if you've outgrown the man with the sack,
The day can still bring that childlike mindset back.
Because while its sentiments may come and go,
They always return just like Rudolph's red nose.

As you might've guessed I've always loved December,
It's a month for celebration and to fondly remember.
And at lunch with your family it's okay to be a hog,
And if you're old enough, even to have some eggnog.

Christmas in Australia is in the middle of summer,
But not even hot weather can make it a bummer.
And however this finds you, sweating or seeing snow fall,
I wish a merry Christmas to one and to all.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #67: Dope (2015).

Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is a geeky black high school senior living in suburban LA with his single mother. Obsessed with '90s hip hop and punk rock, he plays in a garage band with his two best friends, Diggy (Kiersey Clemons) and Jib (Tony Revolori). The object of his affections is feisty but loving Nikki (Zoe Kravitz), from whom he learns how intimacy works, and why it's meaningful. It's all going okay, until he and the gang accidentally intercept a gun and two bags of marijuana at school, not knowing who from. Now the local 'hood gangs hit the scene to retrieve what's theirs, and Malcolm's pubescent navigations and college aspirations are respectively put on hold and in jeopardy.

Dope deservedly closed the 2015 Cannes Film Festival's Directors Fortnight for writer-director Rick Famuyiwa, whose vision for this coming-of-age dramedy is like Boyz N the Hood meets a modern-day Dazed and Confused. It makes Dope a thoroughly original, wise and entertaining entry in the genre, and it does resonate beyond racial lines. Malcolm is an endearingly awkward, bookish boy who still somehow doesn't act white or feel like a Steve Urkel clone, and Shameik Moore's performance is smartly observed. Also, Kravitz shows she's a much better actor than her father (stick to the tunes, Lenny) and Revolori (aka the bellboy from The Grand Budapest Hotel) gives a very funny and layered turn.

But most importantly, Dope reinforces timely questions of race (and even class relations), both profound and thought-provoking, and never in a pontificating way. And even in these moments, it absolutely exudes a coolness, charm and swagger all of its own.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #66: Bad Santa (2003).

Willies Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton, in a role even Jack Nicholson reportedly declined) is a department store Santa Claus who actually could fit down your chimney. But you do not want him to: he's an obscene, lecherous, kid-hating drunk who's only taken the job so he and his equally unrefined "elf" Marcus (Tony Cox) can rob the store on Christmas Eve so they can spend all year in Florida giving themselves cirrhosis and fucking anything that moves. But this year they encounter roadblocks in the form of the prissy mall manager (John Ritter in his last live-action film role) and his wise-cracking security chief (Bernie Mac), a bartender with a Santa fetish (Lauren Graham) and primarily Thurman (Brett Kelly) a chubby, bullied kid to whom Willie's appearance isn't deceiving.

Obviously, Bad Santa is no Miracle on 34th Street, and naturally it pushed many buttons with right-wing US commentators. But if, like me, you like your comedies provocative, Bad Santa will jingle your bells. Director Terry Zwigoff and writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are merciless in turning holiday wholesomeness into something so proudly subversive, and besides the huge laughs they also pack it with energy. The cast are all a riot also, most of all Tony Cox as dwarf Marcus, who's weary of Willie even when he's not getting hotter than the colour of Rudolph's nose.

For better or worse, this Bad Santa has a permanent place on my "Nice" list. But 2016's sequel is a buzzkill.

The Wonderful World of Disney Pixar!

On 22 November 1995, a cultural and generational touchstone was born. After the Oscar-winning 1988 short Tin Toy, the instant classic Toy Story, the world's first feature-length animated film and no part one of a celebrated trilogy (continued in 1999 and concluded - at least for now - in 2010), Pixar Animation Studios have revolutionised cinema and global pop culture.

Since that first game-changing adventure with Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang, Disney Pixar, under the guidance of founders Ed Catmull, the late Steve Jobs and most especially John Lasseter, have delivered a nearly freakish number of movie masterpieces. From their sophomore effort A Bug's Life (1998) to Monsters, Inc. (2001) and its prequel Monsters University (2013), Finding Nemo (2003, which for me makes it an honorary Aussie company) and its 2016 sequel Finding Dory, The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007) and WALL-E (2008), through to Brave (2012) and Inside Out (2015) for this decade, they've dazzled and nourished me so frequently I can forgive them for the disappointing Cars series (2006, 2011 and 2017) and Up (2009). Now, their gift for us this Christmas is Coco. I had the pleasure of catching an advance screening on Sunday and it is glorious; God, I cried buckets. It could be my top movie of 2017.

If genius was illegal (and thank God it's not), everybody at Disney Pixar would be on death row. But what really keeps them ahead of the pack is how even as each successive film becomes more technologically sophisticated, they have never strayed from trying to tell a great story and make us care for the characters. In the Toy Story 10th anniversary DVD liner notes, Lasseter says that has always been their first priority. There is heaps more solid contemporary animations out there, but Pixar remains the yardstick for me.

Another thing I champion them for is how with every flick, in the credits they name the "production babies": employees' children who were born during production. That emphasises just how much sincere affection they have for their target audience. Also, they consistently try to appeal also to adults, with certain themes and jokes.

Disney Pixar's work has now defined two generations, and I fully doubt I'm the only male Millennial for whom visiting their Studios would be just like visiting the North Pole on Christmas Eve. I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for them and their work, and they just keep outdoing themselves. They have published for the Magic Kingdom their own, powerful book of spells.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #65: My Own Private Idaho (1991).

In Portland, Oregon live Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves). They're homeless, enjoy drugs and sell their bodies to get by. Mike is a taciturn gay narcoleptic obsessed with finding his mother after having been abandoned during childhood. Scott's from an affluent family but has chosen to slum it until he can receive his inheritance; neither gets along with his father.

After meeting and instantly clicking, they embark on a road trip from Oregon to Idaho in search of Mike's mum, encountering and falling under the spell of numerous fellow misfits on their way across a barren American landscape.

Although it wasn't his debut, before writer-director Gus Van Sant recreated Harvey Milk's story, turned Nicole Kidman into a scheming, adulterous TV weather-girl in To Die For and gave Matt Damon his breakthrough in Good Will Hunting, he had his own with this lauded 1991 beauty. Openly gay himself, Van Sant delicately turns the standard coming-of-age road movie into a sympathetic juxtaposition of sexualities as well as empathetically exploring the pain of disaffected youth, and by including overt references to Shakespeare's Henry IV and V he adds a bohemian feel without it becoming pretentious.

And the acting is just exquisite. The late River Phoenix (RIP) here had his bravest role ever and he fills Mike with such expert nuances and layers that it became his finest hour (particularly in the campfire scene, where he expresses his unrequited love for the straight Scott), and Reeves, for all his usual woodenness on screen, actually holds his own.

Gus Van Sant is one of modern cinema's finest artists, and he's made so many films about troubled young males. But very few have been this successful.