426: Kimi

[00:00:00] 133. Let's get to the last, the seventh Steven Soderbergh film I'm talking about in this group which is Kimi, which is now on Max. It is written by David Koepp which I didn't know going in who wrote Jurassic Park, the first Spider-Man film,

[00:00:18] Secret Window and many others. He's a very big screenwriter. It stars Zoe Kravitz, Byron Bowers, Rita Wilson, Erica Christensen. Not really a big cast and the synopsis is an agoraphobic Seattle tech worker uncovers evidence of a crime.

[00:00:38] So this is one that I've been meaning to get around to for a while like some of these others. I just had a big Soderbergh marathon recently and I really like Zoe Kravitz a lot. She's grown on me

[00:00:47] a lot over the years and the fact that this one also takes place actually during COVID. I think it was shot shortly after the major part of the pandemic ended. But this one follows

[00:01:01] someone in the world of COVID which is interesting and what I really, really liked about it is it's not like contagion but in COVID. It's really just setting a story within the world of COVID.

[00:01:13] That's it. And to give more backstory to this movie, it is about this girl who is working as a tech worker as the synopsis says for this big company sort of in the same vein as Amazon's Alexa.

[00:01:28] These self-help tech things you can have in your house and she's recently been assaulted, sexually assaulted and she's developed a major case of agoraphobia as well as just being very hesitant to go outside to talk to anyone, to be around anyone. She can't go

[00:01:48] to the doctor's office because she's so scared. She can't go meet someone for drinks. Nothing. She's really contained totally to her home and she can't really pull herself out. And so her whole

[00:01:59] life takes place in this apartment which I think the look of the apartment and that part of the movie is probably my favorite sequence in the movie where it's maybe the first act, first half.

[00:02:08] I think the look of the apartment is awesome. Her design like the blue hair is great. I think Zoe Kravitz is just, I don't know, she has a very interesting look overall and it definitely has a bit of a

[00:02:21] rear window, dysturbia kind of vibe to it but a little bit more modern you know and more COVID-19 centric for sure. But she listens to all these recordings from the Kimmy system

[00:02:38] and then she hears, she thinks she hears a violent crime that happens and she relays this to her company and they're like oh no we don't want to deal with this. We could get in trouble if we told

[00:02:50] people we could hear things or you know blah blah blah blah blah just saying nope doesn't matter. You are crazy. Don't worry about it. And then she forces herself to follow up on it, get out of the

[00:03:03] apartment, go find this woman's place and see if she's okay and then the company gets involved and gets air of this and tries to take her down because it's going to expose the whole company and people

[00:03:15] lose you know millions billions of dollars and so she's this sort of loose end that the company needs to eliminate and it becomes a bit of a thriller in the last half. And I really didn't

[00:03:26] know anything about the movie aside from it just being a girl like this tech girl who has agoraphobia and overall I thought it was very very solid. Of all the movies that I've talked about this past

[00:03:39] week I think Logan Lucky is the one you should start with if you haven't seen any of them but I think this is probably the second most accessible sort of normal quote-unquote movie where

[00:03:50] there's more time spent with these characters, the pacing is a little bit slower, there's more of a world building and there's more of a plot as well and so I was really engaged through this

[00:04:00] whole thing. Very in and out meat and potatoes kind of thriller, the commentary on big companies like tech companies who are listening to people's conversations without them knowing like cell phone microphones, laptop cameras, that sort of thing. I think that's interesting there's nothing crazy

[00:04:19] deep about it but it's very entertaining. The way Soderbergh shoots this movie is one of his best as of late probably one of the best in this whole group. There's a lot of really great use

[00:04:31] of Dutch angles and it's like it's done really fluidly, really creatively much more than any others that I've seen like it recently. The final 20 minutes or so where things come together and it really becomes a real thriller it's fairly conventional in how it plays out but it's still

[00:04:50] interesting. I don't think there's anything I was ever like this sucks or this is lame and I really liked her as well being out on the streets and how that shot it's very in your face and it

[00:05:01] feels like you're actually with her as opposed to it feeling more staged and so I really liked how they shot the city, her in the city and these cat and mouse games she's playing with these

[00:05:14] sort of thugs for this tech company. So I was really really pleasantly surprised would highly recommend it. Wouldn't be best of the year or some you know best of Soderbergh even but a very solid watch and I think anyone could really enjoy it. It's easy to get into,

[00:05:31] breezes along and so yeah I would would give it a look for sure. So that one is a heavy four out of five.