Set in a dystopian Los Angeles on the eve of the new millennium, Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995) is one of the rare gems of the ’90s. The film imagines a world where SQUID technology lets people record and experience someone else’s memories. Creating its visceral first-person sequences required nearly a year of work on a custom 35mm camera. Weighing about eight pounds, it was designed to move like the human eye. The production was also almost entirely nocturnal, with 77 of its 80 shooting days taking place at night. The film’s volatile vision of Los Angeles was partly shaped by the 1992 riots, whose aftermath Bigelow witnessed while helping with the cleanup. James Cameron had conceived the story years earlier, while Bigelow and screenwriter developed it into the darker, more political film that reached theaters. Critics were divided upon release. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, calling it “a technical tour de force” and praising Bigelow for using SQUID to make viewers confront the action rather than simply consume it as spectacle. Despite its $42 million budget, the film was a commercial failure upon release, but it gained much more appreciation over the years.