Post by Dracula on Apr 2, 2022 13:06:35 GMT -5
Kimi(3/8/2022)
Steven Soderbergh is truly a guy whose career bucks most trends and simultaneously feels like something from an earlier era with his “movie or two a year” pace but perhaps feels like a not overly optimistic look at what being an auteur could look like in the future in which he must make films of fairly modest size and scope and outside a lot of the usual distribution paths in order to create anything outside of the world of franchise filmmaking. These movies are called “experimental” but most of them aren’t movies that are trying to radically change the way you view cinema so much as they’re trying to find new small scale ways to make what are otherwise conventionally entertaining stories. Case in point is his latest film Kimi which is probably one of his most successful movies in this mode in a while. It stars Zoe Kravitz in a sort of modern take on the paranoid thriller. Kravitz plays a shut-in working a remote job fixing audio detection bugs in an Alexa-like home voice interface called Kimi and while listening to bugged voice communications she hears what sounds to her like a murder happening and tries to report this to authorities but soon finds herself being pursued by paid thugs trying to silence her. The film is notable for being one of the first films to reference and acknowledge the pandemic, something that is said to have increased the protagonist’s agoraphobic anxiety but is otherwise mostly a background element but is probably part and parcel of of the intense topicality and modernity Soderbergh tends to seek in his experimental films (something made possible by how quickly they’re made). Out of all the movies Soderbergh has made in this mode I’d say Kimi is probably one of the more successful and straightforwardly enjoyable of the lot, though I’m not sure it’s something that will be wildly memorable going forward. Kravitz (who’s having a GREAT month) is quite compelling as the lead and the story is clearly a deconstruction of other past films like Rear Window, Blow-Up, and The Conversation but certainly doesn’t exceed any of those classics or even try to. It’s a satisfying little snack from Soderbergh, but I still miss the days when he would try to make larger meals for us.
***1/2 out of Five
Steven Soderbergh is truly a guy whose career bucks most trends and simultaneously feels like something from an earlier era with his “movie or two a year” pace but perhaps feels like a not overly optimistic look at what being an auteur could look like in the future in which he must make films of fairly modest size and scope and outside a lot of the usual distribution paths in order to create anything outside of the world of franchise filmmaking. These movies are called “experimental” but most of them aren’t movies that are trying to radically change the way you view cinema so much as they’re trying to find new small scale ways to make what are otherwise conventionally entertaining stories. Case in point is his latest film Kimi which is probably one of his most successful movies in this mode in a while. It stars Zoe Kravitz in a sort of modern take on the paranoid thriller. Kravitz plays a shut-in working a remote job fixing audio detection bugs in an Alexa-like home voice interface called Kimi and while listening to bugged voice communications she hears what sounds to her like a murder happening and tries to report this to authorities but soon finds herself being pursued by paid thugs trying to silence her. The film is notable for being one of the first films to reference and acknowledge the pandemic, something that is said to have increased the protagonist’s agoraphobic anxiety but is otherwise mostly a background element but is probably part and parcel of of the intense topicality and modernity Soderbergh tends to seek in his experimental films (something made possible by how quickly they’re made). Out of all the movies Soderbergh has made in this mode I’d say Kimi is probably one of the more successful and straightforwardly enjoyable of the lot, though I’m not sure it’s something that will be wildly memorable going forward. Kravitz (who’s having a GREAT month) is quite compelling as the lead and the story is clearly a deconstruction of other past films like Rear Window, Blow-Up, and The Conversation but certainly doesn’t exceed any of those classics or even try to. It’s a satisfying little snack from Soderbergh, but I still miss the days when he would try to make larger meals for us.
***1/2 out of Five
