Watched it when I was 13, made it my entire personality.

Pure cinematic chaos, a nightmarish road trip straight into the heart of 90s America and its sensationalist media appetite for violence. Not only a completely unique viewing experience more akin to a vicious assault, using its cinematic language as a kind of shock therapy, but a true reflection of a dawn of a new age; one where OJ Simpson and the Menendez brothers have the same cultural currency as McDonalds and Coca Cola. One of the most powerful, mesmerising pieces of cinema, truly of its time and forever one of my favourites.

So much to love about this. Bigelow’s ambitious but totally assured direction, messing with genre form from classic LA noir to techno thriller to political sci-fi, action sequences shot with pure force and brutality, Juliette Lewis’ electric PJ Harvey performance, the Y2K industrial apocalypse punk aesthetic, Fiennes and Bassett in their absolute prime… I could go on. What a trip.

What cinema has been missing for some time - a bold, audacious modern genre picture full of ferocious bite and bloody satire, unsubtle as a sledgehammer to the head in the best possible way. A gleefully excessive mix of campy, midnight movie thrills and sickeningly perverse gonzo body horror. You can’t escape from yourself.

A gloriously seedy, violent Hollywood noir riffing heavily on De Palma, smartly transplanting Maxine Minx’s murderous desire for stardom from Texas right into the belly of the beast; the horrifying yet mesmerising cultural decay of 1980s Los Angeles. With some ridiculously fun turns from Giancarlo Esposito and Kevin Bacon, it’s Mia Goth who once again kills it, proving herself to be one of the best genre actors out there. She’s got Bette Davis eyes.