KIMI: Uneasy Listening

Jeremy BeckReviews
Zoë Kravitz in KIMI

Steven Soderbergh routinely turns his camera into a bullhorn, using the crispness of his images (which he photographs himself, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews) to voice his displeasure with the ugliness of modern society. His latest picture, KIMI, gestures toward any number of topical themes: the physical and emotional aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dystopian possibilities of the encroaching surveillance state, the venality and brutality of the corporate aristocracy. Yet despite glimpses of social-justice protests and hints of conspiratorial malfeasance, KIMI isn’t really a message movie. It is instead a lean and efficient thriller: 89 precisely calibrated minutes of setup, tension, and payoff.

The economy is often one of Soderbergh’s narrative preoccupations, but drop the article, and it becomes one of his artistic strengths. It’s a gift shared by KIMI’s hero, Angela (Zoë Kravitz), an adept computer programmer who spends her work-from-home days scrolling through audio streams and slicing her way through lines of code. In essence, she’s an interpreter for KIMI, the Echo-like smart device that Angela is paid to make even smarter, updating its software to recognize that “peckerwood” is an insult and “ME!” is a Taylor Swift song. Sleek and tastefully designed, KIMI is shaped like an eggshell-white cone, and she’s all ears; whenever you say her name, her base glows neon-pink and she cheerfully announces, “I’m here.” (Her soothing voice, supplied by Betsy Brantley, is virtually indistinguishable from Siri or Alexa.) Her purpose is service, and her persistent monitoring of her environment—she is, quite simply, always listening—is merely a method of continually enhancing her performance. Surely there are no downsides to this sort of thing. Read More

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Oscars 2021: Nomination Prediction Results

Jeremy BeckOscars
A scene from Drive My Car

When it comes to this year’s Oscars, we can agree to disagree. Or maybe we can disagree about what we agree on. From my particular vantage on Film Twitter, it was hard to tell whether this year’s slate of nominations constituted a triumph or a travesty. Did the Academy make some brave and unexpected choices? Or were its curveballs simply, to quote a certain aesthete, a sly declaration of new classic status slipped into a list of old safe ones?

As is ever the case, it’s hard to get too excited about this year’s Oscar nominees, but it’s also silly to be too disappointed by them. By and large, the Academy highlighted some pretty good movies and artisans, even if their picks rarely aligned with my own. The day our respective selections do match perfectly will be cause for trepidation rather than celebration. After all, what am I without my own weird, idiosyncratic, inimitable taste? Read More

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Oscars 2021: Nomination Predictions

Jeremy BeckOscars
Emilia Jones in CODA

Hey, the Oscars are back to normal this year, right? Well, sort of. Following last year’s ill-advised, pandemic-influenced decision to extend the 2020 eligibility window by two months, this year’s period is correspondingly shorter, spanning from March through December of 2021. Of course, release date is really just a state of mind for the Academy; how else to explain the qualifying run, that ubiquitous, noxious trend in which buzzy contenders—including Cyrano, Petite Maman, and The Worst Person in the World—receive invisible one-week December releases in New York and L.A. in order to be deemed “2021” films, even though the vast majority of American audiences can’t see them for months later?

It’s annoying, but release-schedule and eligibility-fudging shenanigans aside, the good news is that the compressed ten-month window hasn’t yielded a shortage of strong candidates. I’ll wait until next month before unveiling my official top 10 list, but despite the routine prophecies of the death of cinema, there were still plenty of good movies to watch in 2021. Now, whether that sustained quality will actually translate to this year’s nominations is anyone’s guess, though widening the inevitable gap between personal darlings and populist favorites is arguably part of the Academy’s function. Put differently: What’s the point of the Oscars if not to complain about them? Read More

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The 10 Best TV Shows of 2021

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists, TV Rankings
Heléne Yorke in The Other Two; Jeremy Strong in Succession; Mackenzie Davis in Station Eleven; Reneé Rapp in The Sex Lives of College Girls; Margaret Qualley in Maid

And here we are. We’ve spent the week ranking all 108 TV shows that we watched in 2021. At long last, we’ve arrived at the top 10. If you missed the previous pieces, you can find them at the following links:

#s 108-95 (tiers 11 and 10)
#s 94-84 (tier 9)
#s 83-61 (tiers 8 and 7)
#s 60-41 (tiers 6 and 5)
#s 40-31 (tier 4)
#s 30-21 (tier 3)
#s 20-11 (tier 2)


Tier 1: The top 10
10. Midnight Mass (Netflix, Season 1). A literalistic description of Midnight Mass might make it sound silly. Here is a series about a small, quiet island town whose peaceful tranquility is severely interrupted when it suddenly becomes a haven for—spoiler alert!—vampires. It’s a faintly absurd show that risks growing even more absurd because it takes itself absolutely seriously. Yet it’s that sincerity—the willingness to contemplate themes of faith, forgiveness, and salvation with frankness and without irony—which makes it so powerful. As is ever the case with the work of Mike Flanagan (both of whose prior Netflix series also made their respective year’s top 10 on this site), it’s superlatively crafted, with fluid camerawork and unnerving patience. But despite delivering some startling jolts, Midnight Mass isn’t as pound-for-pound scary as either of his Haunting shows, because cultivating fear isn’t its primary goal. It’s more interested in fusing familiar horror tropes with genuine theological examination, and it explores the inherent paradoxes of religion with uncommon candor, and without corresponding judgment. It also features gratifyingly complex characters, most notably Hamish Linklater’s morally conflicted priest. Samantha Sloyan, meanwhile, is unforgettable as one of the most deliciously vile villains ever created. Midnight Mass has the decency to imagine a dark world that’s nonetheless lit by hope. But when Sloyan is on screen, it recognizes that evil is very real, and all too human. Read More

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