Blue Steel (1990)

I like Kathryn Bigelow's gripping Blue Steel about a rookie cop who just 24 hours into the job blasts away a supermarket robber, has her badge taken away and ends up the object of a gun-fetishist's psychopathy, and I like it so much I've watched it three times now, but full of awful policework and characters' really dumb decisions, it is best considered a slice of throwaway psychosexual horror (with horror stalwart Jamie Lee Curtis really just terrorised by another nightmarish Michael or Fog) than a more meaningful thriller/drama - there's nothing intelligent said, for instance, about gun violence or female cops or male violence.

★★★☆☆

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Invaders From Mars (1986)

In filling his movie with wooden acting, stilted dialogue, several benign sideplots that add nothing except length to the runtime, and garish monster puppetry of a distinctly 80s horror variety, director Tobe Hooper pretty much nails the look and feel of a B-movie sci-fi classic of the 40s and 50s, and in fact this IS a remake of the 1953 movie of the same name, about a schoolkid who first witnesses a flash in the sky, then notices his parents acting strangely, then becomes alarmed as more and more people from town wander up and over the hill near his house and come back as monotone weirdos with welts on their necks.

★★★☆☆

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