Did someone say Venom?

Strange Days, 1995, dir: Kathryn Bigelow

Plot: It's December 1999 and Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), a self-styled seller of fantasy, lives a largely miserable existence pining after his ex-lover Faith (Juliette Lewis). He deals in dreams: illegally allowing his clients to 'jack in' and experience emotions and memories of desire, lust, greed or as he puts it "the forbidden fruit". When Faith becomes entangled in a web of blackmail and murder, it's up to Lenny, reluctant sidekick Macey (Angela Bassett), and best friend Max (Tom Sizemore) to save the day, uncover conspiracy, and hopefully see out the new year.

Why I like it: Kathryn Bigelow has consistently made engaging and thoroughly entertaining movies her entire career (scratching K-19 and most of Blue Steel) and she continually goes without due credit. All her films explore extremities in human emotion, while underpinning and repackaging them in a more accessable fashion. In Near Dark we had a band of unhinged vampires roaming the countryside, killing at will, despite being a tenderly fierce surrogate family unto themselves; and the film itself being set against a sporadic love story. In Point Break she blatantly mocked machismo whilst channelling it into a seductively flagrant action movie. What then is she up to with Strange Days?

In short, quite a bit. The film works not only as an exposé on human corruption -racism, voyeurism- but couples this with a dystopian tale of love and violence in the closing days of the 20th Century. The murder of a hooker and the ensuing events are pure MacGuffin, James Cameron's screenplay reliant on the bigger picture and the underlying Y2K hysteria to add urgency and potency to the movie, though still unafraid to exercise style and crucially enjoyment at the right times. This is why I enjoy Bigelow so much as a director. She'll let Juliette Lewis writhe onstage for a good five minutes just because it looks good. Because it's cinematic. And because of this her movies are free of pretension: keeping things lucid but at the same time insistent.

Point in fact, Bigelow's hyper-reality doesn't form a tangible plotline until we're about an hour in, when we're subject to a brutal rape from the rapist's literal perspective. From here on in, the film is less hung up on being a parable for our own troubled times (Lenny's 'clips' only a chance to extrapolate this further) and treads more familiar, if superior, genre-bending territory. Despite a muddled, albeit magnificently frustrating, third act Strange Days remains chewable brain candy, a "skull-fuck" brushed in an unscrupulous world. It also helps that the cast is onboard, Fiennes' embodiment of a redemption-seeking low-life is particularly charming and Bassett is quite the badass. Brimming with confidence, free of the usual Hollywood qualms, Strange Days is cerebral and relevant diversion, and what's best the result is effortless. Are we impressed yet?

See if you like: Collateral, The Terminator, The Last Boy Scout

P.S Fatboy Slim's 'Right Here, Right Now' is directly sampled from this movie. The immortal words are uttered when Mace pins Lenny up against a wall toward the end of the film. Just a titbit for you.

The Girl:

#2 Xander Berkeley

Forever lumbered as 'that guy' or perhaps more precisely 'that evil guy', Xander Berkeley is the definiton of a hard-working character actor. Chances are you've seen him in a bunch of things, you just didn't realise it. His smattering of impressive -if hardly showcasing- roles throughout the 80s and 90s range from the sublime (Heat) to the dire (Poison Ivy II), but always maintaining a trademark swagger with unmitigated cool. He very much reminds me of Lee Van Cleef before Sergio Leone broke him into the mainstream with For a Few Dollars More. Pre- spaghetti western Van Cleef was always the second bad guy from the right, the one who always got shot half-way through the picture. It's not much different for Berkeley.

However at the age of 51 (and with a huge body of work behind him) I can't really see him being thrust into the limelight any time soon. Which is a crying shame because the guy is capable of so much more. Take a look at him in Terminator 2. He takes to the role of John Connor's foster parent with such confidence, right up until the point he's blitzed through the head by Jenette Goldstein. Likewise in Andrew Niccol's glorious Gattaca where he draws on subtleties to carry his performance. The role itself is deliberately underwritten and Berkeley is relied on to bring immediate but not overt clarity to the film's iambic climax.

Of course when he needs to be he can play anything from inquisitive cabbie (Leaving Las Vegas), dirty agent (Air Force One) or Pacino wife-stealer in Heat. He's frequently summonsed upon to liven up these one dimensional roles, and does so time and time again. When he's actually given something to do, the result is unprecedented. As George Mason in 24 -undoubtedly his crowning achievement- he not only brought about a new dynamic in the show (levying up the show's humour, which would continue to snowball with characters like Chloe O'Brian and Edgar Stiles) he also animated Mason's progression throughout 24 hours with a touching, imperfect humanity. He may have strolled on in the show's pilot as a stock bastard, but by day two this was all "background noise". The makers saw Berkeley's potential and ran with it; producing some of the series' most poignant scenes. It's a shame by season 3 he was discarded -the same has just happpened to Reiko Aylesworth- and fans consistently rank him as the character they would most like to see return, no matter how amazingly skewed in logic it would be.