30 Years Ago, Kathryn Bigelow And James Cameron Teamed Up For An Underrated, Prescient Sci-Fi Thriller

30 years ago, Katherine Bigelow made a sci-fi flop that changed her career for the better

But that wasn’t always Bigelow’s established style. Throughout the 1980s and into the early ‘90s, she made a name for herself with fun, frivolous genre flicks. Then, 30 years ago, the Point Break director released a movie that set her career on a new trajectory — and almost derailed it completely in the process.

30 Years Ago, Kathryn Bigelow And James Cameron Teamed Up For An Underrated, Prescient Sci-Fi Thriller

Merie W Wallace/Lightstorm/Kobal/ShutterstockYou slip a stocking over your head and check that your pistol’s loaded before bursting into the local Chinese restaurant and cleaning out the cash register, locking the staff into the freezer. As police cars approach the exit, you clamber onto the roof instead. In front of you, the chasm between buildings stretches out. Behind, the cops close in. You make the leap, then plummet horrifically to your de…

Gay cinema and the critic

It’s 1995; open the Independent and turn to the cinema listings page. In the right-hand corner between the showtimes for Brighton and Bristol is a three-paragraph review of Kathryn Bigelow’s dystopian thriller Strange Days, a film about a device that allows its user to experience the rape and murder of other people. Declaring that “cinema can’t stop punishing us for using our eyes”, the review examines the violent histories of cinematic style, p…