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.

In & Of Itself: Marvelous sleight-of-film

In & Of Itself (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Not rated, but contains profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.12.21 

Back in 1996, director/playwright David Mamet helmed one of magician Ricky Jay’s stage performances, which gave the resulting 60-minute film its title: Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants.

 

A brick seemingly frozen in mid-throw, halfway through a shattered window, is disturbing
by its very nature. What Derek DelGaudio eventually does with that brick, is
simply astonishing.

(The two had been friends since Jay co-starred in 1987’s House of Games, and from then on he often popped up in Mamet’s films.)

 

Flash-forward a quarter-century, and director Frank Oz (Little Shop of Horrors, The Score, etc.) has just helmed this sorta-kinda documentary about conceptual magician Derek DelGaudio, and his one-man stage performance. It’s available exclusively via Hulu.

 

“Documentary” isn’t quite accurate, and I’m frankly not sure how to label this whatever-it-is. It’s part filmed stage production, part performance art, part social commentary, part confessional memoir, part head trip, and — oh, absolutely — part magic act.

 

But however we designate it, this is a must-see experience. (Actually, “experience” is an apt descriptor.)

 

Oz also directed DelGaudio’s theater show, which debuted in Los Angeles in May 2016, then moved to an Off-Broadway opening that sold out the 150-seat Daryl Roth Theater every night of its initial 10-week run. When the dust finally settled, In & Of Itself had run 72 weeks and 560 performances — becoming one of the most successful shows in Off-Broadway history — at which point DelGaudio folded his tent, cryptically stating, “I feel like I’ve said what I wanted to say.”

 

And left the public begging for more: an artistic void happily filled by this film.

 

“Cryptic” is another good descriptor, and you’ll likely spend the initial 10-15 minutes wondering whether this will be worth your time. Patience, grasshopper … because yes, it is.

 

At its core, DelGaudio’s performance revolves around identity. The film opens as, pre-show, each audience member selects one card — from the hundreds arranged on a wall — that reflects his/her sense of self. (“I am a geologist.” “I am an opponent.” “I am a drag queen.” “I am a grandfather.” “I am a drummer.” “I am a master of the universe.” And so forth.)

 

Oz, who’d never before directed a stage show, is perfectly suited to this material. He is, after all, an identity illusionist himself, having become famous for transforming inanimate constructs into fully fleshed characters such as Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and Yoda.