Welcome, dear reader, to a place I hope you will keep coming back to. Let’s get the formalities out of the way, and then I’ll go into the juicy details. We’ll first talk about the main idea behind Subversive Rabbit before moving on to two mini-bios and plans for the future. So, without further ado, here we go.
Subversive Rabbit is not your usual movie review site as all movies featured here are the ones I consider worth watching. I think that every movie, no matter how bad, clumsy, or commercial it is, has a certain intrinsic value. Moreover, I don’t want to put people down and give this place a negative vibe. Here, you’ll find both movies others might have missed or deemed inconsequential. And I’m talking about all kinds of movies here, If you’re looking for raunchy comedies, you’ll find them here. And if you’re looking for juicy hard science fiction movies you’ll also find them here. The same goes for brutal horror movies and difficult dramas. If I think that movie is worth watching, I’m going to review it and recommend it, it’s as simple as that.
My main goal is to publish at least one movie recommendation per day. On top of that, I’ll also add at least one big blog post per month along with smaller news articles. And I have been doing that for the last fifteen years, so you know I’ve got a good track record. This is how I’ve got to that magical number of 2000 movie reviews. If you’re wondering if I have a day job, the answer is yes, yes I do. Subversive Rabbit is something I do in my free time, during weekends. Although I’m hoping I can somehow quit my day job and just do this. write about stuff I love. One day, one day…
You can browse these movie recommendations by decade, genre, or a specific subgenre. For example, Subversive Rabbit features a list of Heist Movies, Single Location Movies, Cyberpunk Movies, and so forth. In an effort to make this huge list even more user-friendly, I’ve created a single page The Archive that can be your starting point. From there, you can browse these lists to your heart’s content. If you’re like me, you’re soon going to find a specific decade, genre, or subgenre that you want to binge-watch. Maybe you’ll want to watch all of the French action thrillers worth watching. And you’ll be able to find each and every one of them on Subversive Rabbit.
The History of Subversive Rabbit Website
Our journey began back in early 2009 when one young Rabbit decided to share his passion for the movies with the world. I will get back to this idea in a little bit but I just wanted to say that my main idea was to recommend you good movies worth watching. You might remember a little movie recommendation site Rabbit Reviews, well that was it. After many years, I decided it was time to start fresh, and so Subversive Rabbit was born in the year of our lord Cthulhu 2024.
If you’re wondering how I came up with the name, well, the domain was available and pretty cheap. Joking aside, I noticed a couple of months ago that I constantly used that word, subversive, to describe movies that I loved the most. So, when I was thinking about the new name, it just naturally appeared in my brain and was actually my first choice. You would be surprised how limited your options are if you want to have a website featuring the word rabbit.
Mostly because of the real rabbits but also the whole Playboy thing that has since taken off in many different directions. My other choices were Stoned, Hedonistic, Nihilistic, Misanthropic, Reclusive, and Restless. All of these are fine but they’re just not it. And I’m saying all of this like I know what’s “it”. What I didn’t want to do was to be dishonest or misleading. On that note, don’t think that every movie review here will be “subversive” or something like it. I like to keep things nice and loose.
The Man Behind The Website, Rabbit
Subversive Rabbit is a one-man website, run by me, Rabbit. Okay, okay, my girlfriend does all the graphic design stuff. Although, at this point, that statement sounds more like a lie than a stone-cold truth. I was born in the early eighties and I fell in love with movies pretty early on. It’s kind of hard to describe just mystical they were for me back then. Remember, this was a time when the Internet was still in its infancy. And mobile phones were the size of a brick.
At first, I was just a kid who liked movies for their entertainment value. However, as I got older, I started to view them more as a means to escape my dreary everyday life. Something that started to escalate as I hit puberty and the lack of money and self-esteem started to pound my ass. This is about the time I fell in love with horror and especially science fiction. And if you could combine those two like in The Thing or Alien, well… I’ll add to this short list Predator and be done with it.
“I think this will surprise you but growing up I had no VCR or anything like that. We were that poor but still cohesive and I have to say that my parents did their absolute best. So, I was reduced to basically two or three television channels that were showing relatively good movies.
And I was in charge of a great task of figuring out if the movie is worth it within the first few minutes. Mostly because if it was shit, I could see what else is on. Perhaps these are the roots of my whole fascination with picking good movies.”
Maybe I’m still that impoverished kid trying to make the most of life. Hell, who am I kidding, that’s definitely me. During that time I had a series of movie revelations…
Revelations of Subversive Rabbit
Do you know that when I first saw Leslie Nielsen, he completely changed my worldview? Before that moment, I thought that all seniors had to act and behave in a certain way. They were just “old people waiting to die.” And I wasn’t that young, mind you although I was kind of naive. Abel Ferrarra’s Bad Lieutenant did the same thing for cops and so forth. So, if I provide just one of you with a similar kind of revelation, all of this would be worth it. If you build it, they will come.
The next big revelation came just as I hit 18 and saw Dazed and Confused. Up until that point, I was still quite depressed, withdrawn, and generally awkward. However, that movie gave me a sliver of hope for some reason that my life might actually get better. And, oddly enough, it did. This, of course, coincides with my first experiences with weed. And from that moment on, I’m kind of on a good path with all the usual life’s ups and downs. I know it sounds kind of depressing, limited, and juvenile to reduce your life philosophy to “I know I’ll get high in the future and things will be okay” but that’s just how it was with me.
To get back to the movies, my next big break came somewhere around 2010 or 2012, I’m not quite sure. All I know is that I’ve watched Slavoj Zizek’s Pervert’s Guide to Cinematography and never looked at the movies the same way. Again, maybe this coincided with some other things but this fascinating documentary definitely made a big impact. I simply could not stop thinking about not just Carpenter’s They Live but, more importantly, Jaws. This is why the first “subversive blog post” I wrote is about that Spielberg’s masterpiece.
I simply have to mention Adam Curtis and his documentaries HyperNormalization and The Century of Self as they were just as life-changing.