KIMI: They're listening to us!

KIMI (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, profanity and brief nudity

Available via: HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

This seems to be the month for unusual takes on Alfred Hitchcock classics.

 

I Want You Back is a rom-com riff on Strangers on a Train, while director Steven Soderbergh’s new little thriller is Rear Window by way of the “Internet of Everything,” along with a soupçon of 2002’s Panic Room.

 

Angela (Zoë Kravitz) has just heard something disturbing, while searching user logs for
virtual assistant comprehension parameters that need fine-tuning. But as an
agoraphobe unable to leave the safety of her apartment, what can she do about it?

No surprise about the latter, since this film’s scripter — David Koepp — also wrote that Jody Foster nail-biter. And, as was the case with Panic Room, Koepp’s carefully calculated script for KIMI doesn’t waste a single detail. I admire writers who follow the “Chekhov’s gun” principle: Any seemingly innocuous detail introduced in the first act, needs to be employed by the third act.

I also admire directors who know when to get off the stage. Given the number of overly long, needlessly bloated films that we’ve endured recently, it’s refreshing to watch a tight, taut thriller that clocks in at a just-right 89 minutes.

 

This also may be the first mainstream film that acknowledges Covid as a major part of its narrative.

 

The setting is Seattle, the time now. Angela (Zoë Kravitz) is an agoraphobe also saddled with a healthy dose of OCD; the pandemic has further amplified the fear of leaving her comfortably appointed loft apartment. She paces nervously during bouts of anxiety, hands twitching at her sides: not randomly, but always in specific patterns.

 

She has managed a flirty, window-to-window relationship with Terry (Byron Bowers), who lives in the apartment across the street. Alas, her best-intentioned efforts to meet him at a food truck, on the sidewalk below her place, always go awry when she’s unable to make it through her own front door.

 

All this aside, Angela is a talented tech worker with The Amygdala Corp, tasked with fine-tuning the comprehension parameters of its just-released, “life-changing” Siri/Alexa-esque gizmo, dubbed KIMI. She analyzes other users’ communication data, helping the KIMIs better understand colloquial phrases and alternate definitions: teaching it, for example, that one user’s request to order “kitchen paper” means “paper towels.”

 

Which obviously means that everybody with a KIMI is being monitored, at all times, by a device that’s recording every word and action. And all of that data is subject to additional review by employees such as Angela … and God knows who else, further up the corporate ladder. Or for what purpose.

 

During a brief prologue, we’ve learned that Amygdala’s CEO, Bradley Hasling (Derek DelGaudio), is about to take his company public; thanks to the explosive interest in KIMIs, he expects a hefty payday. But all isn’t quite copacetic, given his troubled reaction to a certain phone call.

Gloria Bell: A toneless ring

Gloria Bell (2019) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for nudity, sexuality, profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang

Director Alfred Hitchcock famously observed that “drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

This film is nothing but life’s dull bits.

When Arnold (John Turturro) and Gloria (Julianne Moore) check into a fancy Las Vegas
hotel/casino, she expects they're about to enjoy a romantic weekend. She really should
know better, by this point in her own movie...

As therefore should be expected, it’s slow, tedious, monotonous and unrelentingly boring.

Director/co-scripter Sebastián Lelio’s approach is no-frills cinéma vérité: We essentially eavesdrop on a fiftysomething woman going about a longstanding routine involving work, family, down time and all the other minutia of a (more or less) average life. Singing to the car radio, while driving to and from work. Efficiently doing her job. Enduring an upstairs neighbor from hell. And so forth.

It feels very much like real life. Indeed, totally feels like real life. Which is rather silly, because most folks go to the movies to escape real life. Why spend money to endure 102 insufferable minutes of stuff that confronts us on a daily basis?

Nor does it help much, that our character — Gloria Bell — is portrayed by an actress as incandescent as Julianne Moore. The subtleties of her performance are sublime; numerous little moments convey a stunning wealth of emotions. Even so, it’s hard to do more than admire her talent and craft: “Wow, that’s a terrific bit of acting from Julianne Moore.”

We still don’t give a damn about Gloria Bell.

Particularly since this slice of her life — an American remake of Lelio’s 2013 Chilean film, Gloria — manipulates her in a manner that seems wholly inconsistent with how she’s introduced.

Gloria, 12 years divorced, lives alone in an apartment beneath the unit occupied by the landlady’s clearly unstable adult son, who shrieks incoherently at all hours of the day and night. (Nothing ever gets done about him.) Gloria occasionally returns home to find that a cat — always the same cat, of unknown origin — has somehow sneaked inside again. (We never learn how.)

She works as an insurance claims adjuster; her phone manner is calm, soothing and helpful. We imagine she gets terrific customer service ratings. She has a co-worker (Barbara Sukowa, as Melinda) who frets about their company’s meager retirement plan, and worries that she’ll have to work until she’s 80. Late in the film, Gloria helps Melinda exit the office. (Has she been fired? Departed of her own volition? We never know.)

The Art of Getting By: Does just fine

The Art of Getting By (2011) • View trailer for The Art of Getting By
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for sexual content, profanity, teen drinking and smoking, and thematic elements
By Derrick Bang


Motivation is an odd and elusive presence in our lives, and I often wonder why more people don’t suffer its absence.

Sure, we can cite personal drive and/or an awareness of responsibility — to family, friends and self — but what really makes us get up each morning with a willingness to tackle the new day?

The shy and withdrawn George (Freddie Highmore) doesn't understand why
Sally (Emma Roberts) suddenly is willing to hang out with him, but that's not
a bad thing. The trouble is, George hasn't the faintest notion of what to do next
with a pretty girl, just as he hasn't a clue how to handle life itself. And such
protracted inactivity can only lead to heartbreak...

George (Freddie Highmore), a New York high school senior, can’t find that intangible get-up-and-go. Part of the problem is fatalism: an awareness of overwhelmingly bad world events that render trigonometry homework rather insignificant by comparison. Additionally, George is crushingly lonely and has turned this isolation into a pose that rebuffs all meaningful contact, whether with peers at school or his mother and step-father at home.

In a word, George is the ultimate slacker, but with a twist: He clearly isn’t enjoying his indolence.

Writer/director Gavin Wiesen’s The Art of Getting By — which George has perfected — is a quiet, quirky little film: a sober character study of a lost soul who appears to have surrendered any willingness to seize his own self and give it a good shake. A diagnosis of clinical depression seems screamingly obvious, but Wiesen’s script never goes there; we simply wait for the moment when somewhere, somehow, George will experience the epiphany that will kick-start his enthusiasm for life, the universe and everything.

To be sure, at times Wiesen’s script plays like a lite version of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and suffers a bit for the comparison. Salinger’s book, although focused on Holden Caulfield, offered shrewd observations on the human condition; Wiesen’s film doesn’t explore much further than George’s condition.

It’s an odd role that could be off-putting if not handled properly. Lucky for us, then, that Highmore delivers just the right blend of earnest sensitivity and contrite resignation. Although he can’t be bothered to do his schoolwork, much to the growing vexation of his various teachers, George is always polite about his refusals. He’s not a “bad” kid in the usual sense; he’s simply ... lost.

Highmore, now a mature 19 years old, will be remembered as the engaging young actor who delivered such memorable performances in Finding Neverland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, August Rush and The Spiderwick Chronicles. Highmore grew up somewhere along the way; he still was a kid in 2008’s Spiderwick, yet here he is now, with the height and gangliness of near-adulthood.

With his acting chops quite intact, rest assured.

That’s crucial, because a single mis-step would transform George into an unlikable parasite: somebody wasting the very air he breathes. And yet this never happens; we sense an artistic soul waiting to burst forth, thanks to the complex and often provocative doodles with which he fills all his textbooks and classroom worksheets.

Cool, we think; art class must be a cathartic release each day. But even here, George can’t muster the enthusiasm to complete an actual assignment. His doodles may suggest talent — even his crusty art teacher senses this — but George hasn’t yet found his muse.