Strange Days (1995)

It's the last day of the century, but it looks like the end of the world in L.A., with rioting, fires in the streets, and the hottest commodity being illegal wiretaps into the sensations recorded from other people's brains. Director Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark) captures this near-future chaos with a stylized sprawl verging on sensory overload. Ironically, video's confining dimensions give Strange Days a tighter focus than it had on the big screen — or is it that a second viewing is needed to take everything in? Either way, the movie has a striking vision, marred only by a forced happy ending.