The Perfect Pandemic-Era Thriller Now Streaming
Happy Thursday! Happy to be back after a bit of a hiatus. What’d I miss?
In today’s newsletter: A recommendation of Steven Soderbergh’s terrific new thriller, my thoughts on the Oscar nominations & more.
Thank you for being here! Love, Karl.
🍿 Now streaming: Kimi
Angela (Zoë Kravitz), whose agoraphobia due to a prior trauma — and now exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic — confines her to her apartment, works for a tech company monitoring the data from their smart speaker product Kimi (like an Alexa) for quality assurance. However, when one of the files she’s listening to sounds like a crime she’s faced with corporate red tape, conspiracy, and, her worst fear, going outside. Here’s the trailer.
Why you should watch it: Kimi tells a story we’ve seen before — Rear Window and The Girl on the Train immediately come to mind. But Soderbergh throws in these tiny details that make it feel so relevant to our place and time.
Like many people watching movies stuck at home, I had headphones on. In one scene, Angela puts on her AirPods to drown out the sound around her. When she puts her right earbud in, our right earbud goes silent. When she puts the left in, our left goes silent. It’s something that you might miss, but that small choice immerses you in this world that is so familiar.
When Angela goes outside for the first time, masked up with packets of hand sanitizer in her pockets, the camera switches from steady and deliberate to frenetic and chaotic as she’s faced with the anxiety of being around people. It elevates Kimi far past its thriller roots.
And sure, you can probably call many of the plot twists. But what Soderbergh constructed is a lean, mean, perfectly-paced thriller that recognizes the time that we’re in. Too many movies being made today ignore the pandemic and the past two years we’ve experienced. Instead, Soderbergh embraces it and uses it to his advantage to not reinvent the wheel but spin it at a different speed.
🍷 More movies like Kimi
You Were Never Really Here | Joe (Joaquin Phoenix), an army veteran, is a hired gun who tracks down kidnapped children. His handler John McCleary (John Doman) delivers him a new job to track down the kidnapped daughter (Ekaterina Samsonov) of a New York State Senator. However, the job quickly spirals out of control. Streaming on Prime Video.
You Were Never Really Here | One night, after witnessing stringers — freelance video journalists—recording footage from a car accident, Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal), on an endless pursuit for success, finds his new line of work. As he dives deeper into the L.A. underbelly of crime, he becomes a little too involved in getting the story. Streaming on Prime Video.
🥇 Every Performance Nominated at the Oscars this Year Ranked
The Oscar nominations are here and they’re not terrible! Trust me, we dodged a bullet with some of these potential nominations (*cough* Jared Leto). In particular, the acting nominations were a strong group. So, I took a wild stab at ranking all twenty performances nominated from worst to best. Here is my top five:
5. Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson in tick, tick… BOOM!
Best Actor | Andrew Garfield performs the role of Jonathan Larson like he’s on a stage. Well, he’s literally on a stage for some parts of the movie, but it’s that type of big, play-to-the-back-row performance that we don’t see much anymore. However, the heightened over-stylization of his performance is grounded in a deep understanding of a character that he, even more than writer-director Lin Manuel-Miranda, understands the weaknesses of.
4. Penélope Cruz as Janis Martínez Moreno in Parallel Mothers
Best Actress | The tone that Pedro Almodóvar strikes with his film Parallel Mothers is so distinct that it could only take an actress like Penélope Cruz to meet him exactly where he is. It’s no wonder she does her best work with him — her first Oscar nomination was for his film Volver. While the movie’s plot goes pure telenovela, both Almodóvar and Cruz have to find something authentic in Janis to deliver the film’s message. Not only does she succeed, but she’s also effortlessly entertaining and holds the screen like the star she is.
3. Troy Kotsur as Frank Rossi in CODA
Best Supporting Actor | Acting is reacting, and first-time nominee Troy Kotsur’s “Oscar scene” in CODA is a masterclass. With no words (signed or otherwise) he goes on a full emotional journey with his daughter (portrayed by the equally great Emilia Jones) that has the hefty job of moving every one of our characters further along on their journey of growth. However, what has been underrated is the pure joy he brings to the role of Frank, a man in a world not made for him, but that he found love in every corner of.
2. Ariana DeBose as Anita in West Side Story
Best Supporting Actress | To play a character as iconic (and Oscar-winning) as Anita in West Side Story takes nerve — and Ariana DeBose has the nerve. Rita Moreno, the original Anita, plays the role with a feisty energy that acts as a foil to the subdued energy of the central love story. DeBose’s version is just as bombastic, but with an even darker tinge to match the energy of the movie. While her signature number “America” is as impressive as ever, it’s the scenes of pure dramatic tension that set her apart.
1. Kristen Stewart as Diana, Princess of Wales in Spencer
Best Actress | There’s a fine line between performing as a real-life person and impersonating them (see further down the list), and Kristen Stewart finds the exact avenue to evoke the spirit of Diana, Princess of Wales while making her completely singular — like a servant to the story director Pablo Larraín is trying to tell. Every movement, line reading, and facial expression is studied to the point that Stewart completely disappears into the role. Spencer is a difficult movie that treads a narrow path between genres, and Stewart is right there with it every step of the way.
Read the full list here.
🔗 More movies, less problems
Some links from around the internet:
The Worst Person in the World, my favorite movie of the year, is finally in theaters. Nominated for two Oscars: Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay. Here’s my review and analysis where I give love to the “I don’t know” period of adulthood.
The trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s (Moulin Rouge!, The Great Gatsby) Elvis biopic starring Austin Butler in the title role and Tom Hanks… doing an accent. What do you think?
📽 P.S. You can see every movie I’ve ever recommended right here.
🍅 I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes! You can find new movie reviews here and here.