High Plains Drifter (1973)

Like a lot of Westerns it begins with a lone stranger riding into a frontier town accompanied by wind and dust. In HPD the town is named Lago, which, in truth, is less of a town and more a collection of lonely buildings situated at the edge of nowhere. Fearing for their lives the residents of Lago ask the newcomer for aid and, for a price, the stranger obliges.
What's different about HPD is the offbeat tone that follows Clint as he sets things in motion. As we watch him prepare the cowardly townspeople, in essence helping them to help themselves, we're aware of a deeper motivation at work, one that ticks like clockwork just beneath the surface of the familiar setting, helped along by some occasional spaghetti influences. HPD gets overlooked by a lot of people in favour of Clint's more famous works, but it absolutely holds its own even when placed next to the best of them.

5 tits on a boar out of 5

Night of the Comet (1984)

Red skies in the morning serve as a warning to all in Night of the Comet. The flying space-rock of the title last passed by Earth around 65 million years ago, right about the time the dinosaurs died out. Ding!
As the human race suffers the effects, Regina and her sister go shopping for clothes and shoes, accompanied by the sounds of the eighties.
The girls are spirited and entertaining enough, but the script rarely capitalises on the potential contained within it. Maybe I'm at fault for wanting it to do so; perhaps it really was supposed to be little more than it is.
In retrospect it was kind of fun seeing a post-apocalyptic world that wasn't completely depressing, even if it did have a youthful Chakotay in it.

2½ calcium dust bunnies out of 5

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Kick a dog enough times and it’ll eventually turn and bite you in the ass and you’ll deserve it. Jobe is like that dog. Born with learning difficulties, he’s a simple man who enjoys simple pleasures. Science can change what nature gave him. Commerce can shaft him in every other way.
TLM is sci-fi that’s very much a product of its time, despite stealing a large portion of its premise from an older Daniel Keyes story. As such, even though the CGI is dated it’s not a problem within the context. What's more problematic is how the sympathy cultivated in the first half isn't maintained well enough in the second half, so by the end it’s difficult to care if anyone survives the threat. It's flawed but I enjoy it regardless.

2½ cold calls out of 5