Review: KIMI

Image courtesy of HBO Max.

Director Steven Soderbergh has been on a bit of a tear recently. His "Let Them All Talk" was an acting showcase for a great cast and last year's "No Sudden Move," a crime drama period piece with a little more than thrills up its sleeve, was his best in, perhaps, two decades. He's back already with another film, "KIMI," and it's the type of slow burn thriller that takes a little while - but at 86 minutes, not too long - to get where it's going, but pays off in a really entertaining way.

In terms of plot, it's somewhat simplistic, although I'm not exactly sure I can explain the various technological aspects of it. An agoraphobic young woman living in Seattle named Angela (Zoe Kravitz, very good) spends her days in front of a computer screen filtering through what could best be described as "errors in communication" for a tech company with a revolutionary product known as KIMI, which is essentially a voice-activated device that can do everything for you involving anything that can be controlled technologically.

From brief glimpses of her day-to-day existence, we know that Angela's mother (Robin Givens) wants her daughter to do more with her life (preferably outside of her apartment, which she has left infrequently; first, due to an "incident" that traumatized her, and then second because of COVID-19). Her shrink believes that she's slinking away from facing her problems, while her dentist is frustrated that she won't leave the house to have an abscessed tooth dealt with. She has somewhat of a fling going on with a guy (Byron Bowers) who lives in a building across the street, but they only see each other when he comes to her apartment.

While filtering through files one day, Angela stumbles upon what appears to be an audio clip of a woman accusing a man of rape, and him making threats toward her. She does some research with the aid of a Romanian computer whiz - in the film's one slightly unbelievable turn of plot - and discovers that the man involved in the audio had the woman killed by a pair of for-hire assassins.

As it turns out - and I don't believe this constitutes a spoiler warning - the man plays somewhat of a role in Angela's existence, and her attempts to bring this fact to the attention of a higher-up at the company where she works named Chowdury (Rita Wilson) has some frightening consequences.

As I'd mentioned, the film is a slow burn thriller. It's not until about a third of the film's short running time has passed that we get to the instigating incident that sets everything in motion. From there, it moves at a leisurely pace before becoming a fast-paced nail biter in the final third. There's some foreshadowing early in the picture when Angela has a conversation - on the phone, of course - with a guy who's renovating the apartment above her as to where Angela might turn in a pinch when being pursued by some corporate villains. All I can say is, the finale has some real payoff.

For a while, Soderbergh played the Hollywood game and made some big budget studio films that drew acclaim and made some money - most notably, his "Ocean's 11" series. But at heart, he's a director who likes to experiment. In recent years, he has made comedies ("Magic Mike"), heist films ("Logan Lucky") and horror movies ("Unsane") that include typical elements of their genre, while also giving them a spin that sets them apart from the expectations one might have for those genres. Some of his best films - "Traffic," "Out of Sight" and "No Sudden Move" especially - involve crime stories. "KIMI" involves a number of the various elements one might find in a Soderbergh film.

After an announced retirement from film some years back, Soderbergh returned and he's been cranking out films with a vengeance - although most of them have been on streaming platforms. His recent work has been of especially high quality. 

"KIMI" likely has something to say about corporate greed and the dangers of technology that can spy on you, but here they mostly play second fiddle to a Hitchcockian story of an ordinary - or, in this case, eccentric - character who has stumbled upon a conspiracy. And that's perfectly fine because the film is a lean, mean and very effective thriller.

Review: Bigbug

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Much like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a filmmaker whose pictures are often elaborate fantasies in which every frame is filled with images that couldn't be mistaken for the work of any other director. And much like those directors, Jeunet's body of work has seen its hits and misses. At his best, Jeunet's work can be bizarre concoctions like "Delicatessen" or "The City of Lost Children" or, his career high,  the dazzling romantic comedy "Amelie."

So, I'm disappointed to say that his latest and first feature in a decade, "Bigbug," is not in that same company. The film is bursting with the manic energy and quirks one might expect in a Jeunet film, but it's missing something - perhaps, a reason for being or characters to whom we can relate. Instead, it settles on broad farce and is strangely confined to a setting that becomes less compelling as time wears on.

The film is set at some point in the future, and people have become so accustomed to living with robots that when the androids begin to take over, they hardly seem to notice. In the film, Elsa Zylberstein is a woman who has invited her new boyfriend (Stephane De Groodt) and his teenage son (Helie Thonnat) for dinner, where they meet her teenage daughter (Marysole Fertard).

However, her ex-husband (Youssef Hajdi) and his new lover/secretary (Claire Chust) happen to drop by while on their way to a tropical vacation. Add to the mix a neighbor (Jeunet regular Isabelle Nanty) who comes searching for her cloned dog. Zylberstein's character has a live-in robotic maid (Claude Perron) and several other smaller robots who help with household chores.

Just as all of these characters have assembled in the home, it becomes apparent - via images seen on TV - that robots have taken over the government, and humans are being made to be subservient. To continuously emphasize this point, we witness clips of some type of vapid reality show in which humans must debase themselves at the behest of their robotic overlords.

For much of the film's running time, the stakes seem pretty low - the air conditioning won't come on, then once it does the humans suffer near Arctic temperatures; then, the various assortment of humans in the home bicker over their relationships and try to figure a way out of the home, which has locked them all in. The drama finally increases when a sinister male robot shows up to inspect their home, and the humans must use their wits to foil him.

Some of Jeunet's previous films were particularly involving, such as the wartime drama "A Very Long Engagement" or the lovely, bursting-with-energy romance "Amelie." One of the biggest problems with "Bigbug" is that the group of people who are all stuck in the house are various shades of irritating. In some cases - especially the ditzy secretary character - this is obviously intentional. Also, their various dramas aren't that compelling.

The one element that saves "Bigbug" slightly is Jeunet's frenetic visual style and occasional bursts of absurd humor, though as a farce the picture doesn't exactly say anything new about our enslavement to technology or tackle it in a manner that's particularly clever. 

While "Bigbug" may not be a bad film, it's merely an example of a filmmaker with singular abilities not using them on material that rises to his talent level. It's been a while since we've seen a Jeunet film - and, hopefully, we'll see another before long that's better than this one.

Review: Parallel Mothers

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

 

Pedro Almodovar's latest film, "Parallel Mothers," is the director's most overtly political film, and while it often plays like a thriller - in the way that "Bad Education" or "Volver" did - the characters end up in a place that surprised me. Almodovar utilizes elements that you've come to expect from his films - both melodrama and suspense revolving around a mystery - but in many ways his latest feels somewhat like a departure for the director.

The film's political subplot is what kicks the story into gear, and it's mostly left hanging for much of the film's running time, but then brought back into the foreground during the finale in a manner that feels organic. Janis (Penelope Cruz in one of her best performances) is a photographer who, when we first meet her, is photographing a forensic archaeologist named Arturo (Israel Elejalde). 

Janis enlists Arturo in a project to find and dig up the remains of her great grandfather, who was one of a group of men who went missing many years ago during the fascist Franco regime and was believed to be murdered and buried somewhere in her hometown. Arturo agrees to bring her proposal before the group for which he works, and the two end up having an affair.

But when Arturo tries to convince Janis to have an abortion after their affair - he's married, by the way - results in her pregnancy, she tells him that they should probably split up. In the maternity ward, Janis befriends Ana (Milena Smit), a 17-year-old girl who is also pregnant, but much less joyful about the prospect of being mother than Janis is.

Once these two strike up a friendship, it becomes the central focus of the picture. Janis is irritated by her current au-pair, who appears to be more interested in doing her schoolwork than caring for Janis's baby, so she fires the girl and asks Ana - whose child, we learn, was lost due to a "crib death" - to move in with her to take over the role.

It's hard to discuss the film's plot much further without giving away some key details and twists, so suffice it to say that an offhand comment from Arturo that angers Janis leads to some investigation - and a shocking discovery is made. The film's suspense during its second half is the manner in which we expect the story to pan out - and suffice it to say, it won't likely end well for some of the characters.

However, and I don't believe this constitutes a spoiler, the film doesn't end up exactly where one might expect it would. The film's final scenes find the characters focusing on the future, but at the same time honoring the past. Each of the two women in the film are, at varying points, naive about one element of their lives, but correct about other things.

The subplot involving the remains of the villagers murdered by the Franco regime is mostly missing during the film's middle half when the story about Janis and Ana's relationship takes over, but it pops back up at the ending in a manner that works well within the confines of the story - especially in terms of how it views the concept of lingering on the past vs. looking toward the future - and the result is quite moving.

Cruz gives one of her finest performances, and her work here is a reminder that many of her best moments have been through her collaboration with Almodovar, who has long been Spain's greatest living filmmaker. His previous film, "Pain and Glory," was his best in more than a decade, and while "Parallel Mothers" doesn't, perhaps, quite reach those heights, it's also better than most of his decade-worth of films prior to "Pain and Glory." "Parallel Mothers" may, at first, appear to have the trappings of a typical Almodovar melodrama, but it has a lot more on its mind and is often full of surprises.

Review: Flee

Image courtesy of Participant.

Written and directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen and animated in a style that is simple yet effective, the documentary "Flee" is a powerful story about the concept of finding a place one can call home and what it means to belong somewhere.

The film is based upon a friendship between Rasmussen and an Afghani man named Amin whom he met when he was young and riding a train. Amin has a refugee story that is often terrifying and - sadly - fairly standard, and up until the making of the film, so we're told, he has been reluctant to tell anyone this story for reasons that later become apparent.

The film has the style of a documentary in that its characters wander around the frame as if they're doing mundane tasks - sitting at a table or washing a dish in the sink - but those sequences have then been animated after the fact. At least, that's how it appears. Often, Amin is seen shot from above, lying on a couch as if he's telling his woes to a shrink.

Amin grew up in Afghanistan in the 1980s. His father disappeared one day after some soldiers showed up at their home, and he was never seen again. Amin lived with his mother, a brother and two sisters, and made plans to flee their home country when the mujahideen took over in the 1980s. On top of the fact that they'd be considered enemies of the new Afghan government, Amin also has a secret that would certainly endanger his life - he's gay.

Amin's refugee story involves being crammed into the bottom of dangerous boats with leaks; being smuggled various places by traffickers; living without a visa in Russia and being terrorized there by corrupt police; and finally making it to Denmark, although the rest of his family has congregated in Sweden, where an older brother had previously made it after fleeing Afghanistan.

Although this is technically a documentary - and the director often guides the conversation with his subject in the typical style of the format - the film employs flashback sequences to Amin's youth in Afghanistan, the family's travails in Russia and the moment when Amin finally told his family his secret. The blending together of these factual elements with recreated sequences - and animation - in one film make for a unique viewing experience. "Flee" is sort of a documentary, mostly an animated film and often a harrowing refugee story.

The film explores what the word home means - is it the place where we were born or where our family's home is located, or does it mean the place where we come to identify as feeling safe and belonging? Rasmussen's film explores this concept with powerful results, and its visual style will likely make it among the more unique documentaries you've likely seen.

The Best Movies Of 2021

Image courtesy of MGM.

 

The future of the film industry - one that appears will be dominated by the production of large-scale comic book movies, reboots and sequels to known properties, with some pocket change left over for more serious endeavors - was again given a bleak outlook in 2021, partially due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but also as a result of audiences mostly giving the cold shoulder to anything other than existing "properties" (the top 10 grossing films including five from Marvel, four other sequels and a movie that was set inside of a video game).

That being said, there was much to recommend this year. Against all odds, some great independent and foreign films made their way to movie theaters, and a handful of filmmakers released their best work in over 20 years. My top two of the year could technically have been in a tie for first place.

However, this Best of 2021 list is, most likely, incomplete. I have yet to see Rade Jude's "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn" or Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Memoria," which has a release schedule that involves the film playing in one theater at a time indefinitely across the United States, so who knows when I'll get to see that one. Regardless, this list will be updated (if necessary) once I've seen those or any others that crack the top 20.

This was one of those years when it was difficult to narrow down the top 20, so a number of movies I really liked didn't end up landing on the list, but still deserve some recognition. They include: Maggie Gylenhaal's "The Lost Daughter" (reviewed here), Jonas Poher Rasmussen's "Flee" (reviewed here), Asghar Farhadi's "A Hero" (reviewed here), Questlove's "Summer of Soul (or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)" (reviewed here), Edgar Wright's "The Sparks Brothers," Reinaldo Marcus Green's "King Richard" (reviewed here), Mike Mills' "C'mon, C'mon" (reviewed here), Ridley Scott's "The Last Duel (reviewed here), Florian Zeller's "The Father" (reviewed here) and Potsy Ponciroli's "Old Henry."

Also, a special mention is in order for Barry Jenkins' extraordinary Amazon miniseries "The Underground Railroad," which is based on the novel by Colson Whitehead. It compares favorably to some of the year's best films.

As usual, I've ranked not just a top 10 of the year, but also a list of 10 runners up (11-20). Here they are:

Ten Runners Up

20. Pig (Michael Sarnoski)
19. Passing (Rebecca Hall) - reviewed here. 

18. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg) - reviewed here.

17. Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Love) - reviewed here.

16. Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro) - reviewed here.

15. The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes) - reviewed here.

14. Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King) - reviewed here.
13. Red Rocket (Sean Baker) - reviewed here. 

12. In the Heights (Jon M. Chu) - reviewed here.
11. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader) - reviewed here.

Top Ten
10. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen) - reviewed here.
  9. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodovar) - reviewed here.

  8. Belfast (Kenneth Branagh) - reviewed here. 

  7. CODA (Sian Heder) - reviewed here. 

  6. No Sudden Move (Steven Soderbergh) - reviewed here. 

  5. The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson) - reviewed here. 

  4. Titane (Julia Ducournau) - reviewed here. 

  3. Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi) - reviewed here. 

  2. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion) - reviewed here.

  1. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson) - reviewed here.

Review: The Whaler Boy

Image courtesy of Film Movement.

Philipp Yuryev's strange coming-of-age odyssey "The Whaler Boy" is an example of atmosphere and locale going a long way to make up for the deficiencies of a film. This is a picture that is interesting by nature due to the place where it's set - Chukokta, a remote whaling village in the easternmost part of Russia - even when its story just sort of ambles along to the place where you figure it's going.

In the film, Indigenous teen Lyoshka (Vladimir Onokhov) lives in a village that is just under 90 miles to Alaska, and dreams of going to the United States. His dream is heightened when his village gets internet access, and the men there all flock to a web site featuring camgirls, or web cam models, who make money by engaging in sexual acts via web cam.

Lyoshka and his best pal, Kolyan (Vladimir Lyubimtsev), are both instantly taken with a blonde camgirl dressed in pink, and think that she is communicating (well, sort of), with them, although she never actually speaks to them. Lyoshka gets the idea that he should go to America to seek her out, while at the same time a rivalry begins with his friend, who also expresses a wish to meet the girl.

The film's remotely exotic locale, coupled with strange imagery - such as gigantic bones that Lyoshka stumbles upon during his journey to America or the ocean drenched in blood after the whalers kill a whale - and music that would seem at home in a David Lynch movie (Julee Cruise's "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart" pops up frequently) give the film an almost surreal vibe.

But the film stumbles a little as Lyoshka makes his journey to the United States. There's a scene that exudes some warmth when a U.S. border agent and Lyoshka nearly shoot one another after the former discovers the latter and then the two find a way to communicate, although it's particularly unbelievable how that plot thread ends.

There's also, most likely, something to be said about the corrupting effects of the internet on the isolated - both literally and figuratively - characters who come across it, but that is mostly left undeveloped. Also, a scene that provides the film with its most tension is later resolved easily - perhaps, too much so -in the picture's final moments. Ultimately, "The Whaler Boy" has a haunting visual quality to it, but the film's other elements don't compliment it as well as one might hope. 

Review: Drive My Car

Image courtesy of Janus Films.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car" may be based on a short story - one by the great Haruki Murakami - but it plays like a novel, not just in its expansive three-hour running time, but also how it teases out its themes and secrets gradually at an unhurried pace. This is the type of film that will take some patience from the casual moviegoer, but its payoff is huge.

The film takes its time to get where it's going - in fact, its credits don't roll until about 40 minutes after an extended prologue - but the film makes every minute count. The opening sequence involves theater director/actor Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) having a post-coital discussion with his wife about a story she's developing for a screenplay she's writing. It involves a young woman who often sneaks into the home of a boy with whom she's smitten, often leaving a memento in her wake and taking something of his. The story has a mysterious element to it, and we learn over time that Yusuke's wife had her own share of secrets.

At one point Yusuke stumbles upon something unpleasant involving his wife - although we later question whether he already knew about it - and she suggests they talk about it that night when he returns home from work. But when he gets home, he discovers her dead from an aneurysm. 

We jump ahead two years, and Yusuke has been hired by a cultural organization in Hiroshima to cast and direct a performance of "Uncle Vanya," a play with which Yusuke is intimately familiar. In years past, he frequently played the titular role in Anton Chekhov's play. This time around, he's decided to forego playing the character himself, telling another actor that Chekhov's play has a way of forcing the truth out of those who confront it, and it seems clear that Yusuke isn't in the right place mentally for such things.

One element that makes Yusuke's version of the play interesting is that his cast doesn't all speak Japanese - there's a Taiwanese actress and another who only speaks sign language - so the performance has all of the actors speaking in their native tongues with subtitles on a screen above them. 

During the rehearsal process, he realizes that he'd met an auditioning actor, Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), through his wife some years before. The actor has since gone on to become a TV star - and was involved in some sort of controversy - and Yusuke gives him the leading role, but seemingly for the purpose of hounding him during auditions.

Meanwhile, the most important plot thread in the film involves the theater company's insistence that he have a driver during his time putting the play together. Yusuke drives a red Saab back and forth to work, and intentionally stays in a hotel far away, so that he can run lines with an audio recording of his late wife that he listens to while in transit. His driver is Misaki (Toko Miura), a taciturn but agreeable young woman who has her own tragic backstory that is only gradually revealed.

Both Yusuke and Misaki are hiding from their pasts and bear a burden of guilt for tragedies that weren't their fault, but which they somehow believe they could have prevented. At first, Yusuke only grudgingly accepts having Misaki as his driver - and even gives her the equivalent of a try-out - but eventually the two begin to click. For example, she understands how his rides in the Saab to and from work are important to him, so she aims to make them as smooth as possible - and holds her cigarette out the window so as not to disturb him.

Meanwhile, after an amusing plot twist involving a dinner invitation, Yusuke tells one of the theater group's organizers that he admires Misaki's flawless driving and is glad to have her escorting him places. She takes his compliment to heart, and the two begin a friendship, of sorts, despite the fact that she has to cart him around everywhere, from rehearsals to drinks with Takatsuki, who works overtime to attempt to impress Yusuke.

I'm familiar with Hamaguchi's previous work, but I've never seen any of his other films - something that I guarantee will be corrected forthwith. "Drive My Car" is a beautifully acted and made film about dealing with loss and, in the case of both of the film's lead characters, how this is transformed into a sense of purpose, Misaki with her driving and Yusuke with his work. Scenes are often reenacted from "Uncle Vayna" and it's uncanny how many of them provide commentary on what is going on in with the characters in Hamaguchi's film.

There are a number of very long scenes in which characters carry on conversations in Yusuke's car, but they are mostly spellbinding, especially one in which Takatsuki and Yusuke compare their versions of a story that Oto, Yusuke's wife, told them both. And after three hours of watching the film's various characters deal with their losses, the lovely final scene hints at the possibility of hope.

Due to its epic running time and leisurely pace, "Drive My Car" is the type of picture that makes you work a little for your rewards, but it's well worth it. It may be simple in terms of narrative, but what it says about loss and the necessity to continue moving forward are impactful and moving. This is one of 2021's best movies.