Films that think about what we build
A curated selection of films, documentaries and series connected to the themes of this site — technology, organisations, language, complexity.
Three Days of the Condor
Joe Turner's job description is one of the most precise metaphors for knowledge work ever put on screen. He works for the CIA, but not in the way anyone imagines working for the CIA. His office is a brownstone in New Yor…
Prince of the City
Prince of the City opens with a question that most films about police corruption never ask: not whether a man will cooperate with investigators, but under what terms, and what those terms reveal about how he understands…
The Big Short
The film's opening gambit is also its thesis. It puts a quotation on the screen — it ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so — and then spends two hours demons…
Sneakers
The MacGuffin in Sneakers is a small black box that decrypts everything. Plug it into the Federal Reserve and the accounts open. Plug it into air traffic control and the system is legible. Plug it into the power grid, mi…
The Truman Show
The Truman Show is the first film about a platform product, made a few years before anyone needed the word. The economics are stated plainly and are worth restating because they have become the default arrangement of the…
Videodrome
Brian O'Blivion is the first character in cinema to understand that a medium is not a delivery mechanism but an environment, and to draw the conclusion that an environment, given enough time and exposure, does not merely…