RICKS REEL RECOMMENDATIONS | COLUMN | MATIHIKO / TECH
Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickylaitheokperson | Contributing Columnist
Edited by Liam Hansen (they/them) | @liamhanse.n | Editor-in-Chief
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These films are in a Letterboxd list here: https://boxd.it/F9aQE/detail
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Remember that the camera is a good thing. Take solace in the fact that amid all this technofascist noise — of market interests, censorship, ahistorical and apolitical narratives, computers, PR stunts, and AI-generative monstrosities among other things — that the primary technological innovation at the centre of the form has always been the camera; the perspective it embodies, what it depicts, and also what it
conceals from us. Innovation in filmmaking is often appraised as the cutting-edge, high-concept and grand-scale conceptions — see the simulation of the Trinity Test and up-close particle effects in Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023), or the mo-cap world-building of James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) franchise; you may even lump in with them the soulless, suburban enterprise of Rob Zemeckis’ Here (2024). But in this colonial-minded pursuit of evolving tech to achieve the impossible, I remain concerned that artistically we are learning to fly before we’ve mastered running — we’re too soon searching for beauty in CGI sunsets when we’ve barely wrung the complete, existential potential out of capturing one in real life. I don’t mean to clutch my pearls. It’s just that, at this late stage, we all have access to a camera of our own, and the art of film may benefit from circling back on what it means to wield one.
Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, 2024)
Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel The Nickel Boys was based on the true story of the Arthur G. Dozier reform school for boys in Florida, open between 1900-2011 and reputed for repeat torturings, abuses and murders of its students, three times as many black as white buried on grounds. RaMell Ross’s film adaptation of Whitehead’s novel is shot mostly in first-person perspective. It doesn’t just sensitively depict this terror by inhabiting the eyes of two of the young boys, Elwood and Turner, but it’s also — hear me out — a film that ruminates on the act of adapting a story into the visual medium. The two boys are empowered to break free of their fates through recognition; on one level by being seen by each other, but also by being seen by a camera that telegraphs their suffering in a way that wasn’t afforded to them in 1962. While so much viscera in Nickel Boys comes from our sharing of Elwood and Turner’s eyes, its true, moving power comes from what happens when the camera occasionally leaves their bodies.
Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)
In case my opening spiel gave you the impression that I don’t sometimes rock with James Cameron, let me tell you about the second-best thing he worked on in the nineties. (Guess the first — clue: it’s not Titanic.) Strange Days, inspired partly by the ‘92 L.A. riots, is a dystopian tech-thriller about a new black-market trade: selling virtual-reality recordings of other peoples’ memories that its users can plug into in order to feel its exact emotions and physical sensations. A dealer of this new drug discovers a brutal murder in his supply. A few hysteric cop-outs will remind you that it is a shameless product of Hollywood after all, but for those who can brush past that for kinetic first-person action, themes of death-drive and voyeurism strained to their limits, smoky neo-noir atmosphere, an acid-soaked soundtrack featuring Tricky and Lords of Acid… you have Kathryn Bigelow to thank (Point Break, The Hurt Locker), and a long-haired Ralph Fiennes to look forward to.
Real Life (Albert Brooks, 1979)
The one about a vain and obnoxious filmmaker trying to conduct a documentary on the everyday lives of an American family. The one that predicted the fabrications of reality television. The one where Albert Brooks loses his mind and Charles Grodin tries doing surgery on a horse. The one where the crew wear stupid-looking camera-mounted helmets to walk around in, showing up in the background of serious scenes like clueless astronauts. The one that must’ve inspired Nathan For You and The Curse (2023). The one where this ‘real life’ begins to progressively feel like a fever dream.
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