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Sure, it may be a time when affection and admiration are in the air and the world may seem to revolve around romance. However, it is also important to recognize an underrated aspect of human connection: platonic relationships. Without further ado, a movie critic (avid Letterboxd user) and a film scholar (undergraduate with a Cinema Studies minor), presents the eleventh issue of this column: FRIENDSHIPS IN FILMS.  

NICKEL BOYS 

(2024) Dir. RaMell Ross

“What happened to that one kid you used to hang with all the time?”

An adaptation of the 2019 novel and 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner by Colson Whitehead of the same name, Nickel Boys follows chronicles inspired by the abusive and brutal Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a historic reformatory. Meet Elwood, whose college dreams are collapsed once he is sentenced to a cruel penal institution in the Jim Crow South named Nickel Academy, where he builds a powerful friendship with Turner—a fellow Black teenager—as the two traverse the trials and tribulations of reform school together in Florida. Strikingly shot mostly in first-person point-of-view to tell the tale, Nickel Boys is transcendentally bold and radical in everything it attempts and achieves, through brilliant and delicate tackling and blending of perspective with time. 

 Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN/AND YOUR MOTHER, TOO 

(2001) Dir. Alfonso Cuarón

“Life is like the foam, so give yourself away like the sea.”

TRAINSPOTTING

(1996) Dir. Danny Boyle

“After all, we’re not fucking stupid. At least, we’re not that fucking stupid.” 

THELMA & LOUISE

(1991) Dir. Ridley Scott

“Let’s keep goin’.” “What d’you mean?” 

THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

(2019) Dir. Joe Talbot

“Let us give each other the courage to see beyond the stories we were born into!”

SEDMIKRÁSKY/DAISIES 

(1966) Dir. Věra Chytilová

“So, what can you do?” “Nothing, really.”A surrealist arthouse comedy hailed as a Czechoslovak New Wave cult classic and an experimental landmark of feminist filmmaking, Daisies follows two young women who believe the whole world is spoiled and decide to also become entirely consumed by hedonism. Meet Marie I and Marie II who team up together to construct a friendship centering on playing tricks on and rebelling against both men in public and materialism in society, as the duo willingly drown themselves in debauched destruction and cheerfully partake in gladful gluttony. Anarchic in style and intense through performance, Sedmikrásky is a visually enthralling bizarre social commentary that is bright, bold, colourful, and chaotic.