Jackass Forever (2022)

Direction: Jack Tremaine
Country: USA 

Insanely introduced and episodically mounted, Jackass Forever, the fourth installment in the Jackass film series, really lacks taste. Two decades after the original’s release, director/producer Jack Tremaine captures the known Jackass troupe of masochists - led by co-producer Johnny Knoxville and augmented here with some new cast members - performing their deranged acts. This film, being as boring as the previous, insists on disorderly sequences of silly calculated pranks, nonsensical staged situations and dangerous games. However, in addition to nasty farts, animal bites, electric shocks, and a nauseating collective puke, the worst of the film lies in a fatiguing persistence for damaging testicles.

It's all very obvious, gross and repellent in its deplorable show off. Thus, it’s sad that anyone can claim any type of cleverness or even good entertainment to what is offered here. These men seem to have balls of steel and tough skin, but I'm not giving them enough credit for that. The most appealing character in the film? A brown bear.

Sweat (2021)

Direction: Magnus von Horn
Country: Poland / Sweden

In Sweat, Magnus von Horn’s uptight psychological drama, a fitness influencer goes through an emotionally vulnerable phase, exposing her yearning for a true relationship on the social media, where she reigns with 600k followers. Hyper energetic while working out in public but melancholic while by herself, the motivator Silwia Zajac (Magdalena Koleśnik) just wants to be herself and show the world she’s a real person in a world of artificiality. She sulks at her mother’s birthday party and gets agitated with the stalker (Tomasz Orpinski) who is daily parked in front of her building. Once her lifestyle starts to overwhelm, pressure comes from fans, sponsors, media, and even the ones around her. 

The film sets off in a throbbing, irritating way but then suddenly grows in emotion, expanding toward an unexpected direction that will make you sympathize with the central character regardless of her flaws. Some of the film's observations about societal expectations and loneliness are more on-the-mark than any vigorous body moves it puts on display.

Sweat survives its glossy production varnish due to the emotional stakes of the plot and a confident performance by Koleśnik, who doesn’t vacillate when it comes to choosing between honesty and hypocrisy. The tension sometimes wanes along the way, but the final stretch ensures that the film ends on a fairly compelling note.

Immersion (2022)

Direction: Nic Postiglione
Country: Chile 

Immersion is a qualified low budget thriller that focuses on unfounded fear, class gaps and bourgeois prejudice. The debut feature of Chilean Nic Postiglione benefits from a simple but intelligent script as well as an effective direction, but couldn’t have been taken to an above-the-average level without the stunning actor Alfredo Castro. The latter, who showed superior acting skills in the past through films such as Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010) and White on White (2019), plays a biased middle-class man whose attitudes of superiority and mistrust - typical of a cultural zeitgeist in Chile that discriminates against the indigenous Mapuche people - lead to implacable consequences.

Ricardo (Castro) takes his two daughters - Tere (Consuelo Carreño) and Claudia (Mariela Mignot) - in his yacht to spend the day in the remote lake house where he spent his youth. While navigating the calm waters of the lake, he spotted three men on a small boat that appears to be sinking. He ignores their pleas for help at first but then goes back and agrees to help them.

The constantly tense atmosphere and dark tones of the film are stressed by the unfailingly rigorous lens of cinematographer Sergio Armstrong (a regular choice of the acclaimed director Pablo Larraín), and the sometimes unsettling, sometimes sad sound design of Mauricio López. Being discerning and direct to the point, the film is also measured in form, but it comes with an important message about fear and prejudice.

Compartment No. 6 (2022)

Direction: Juho Kuosmanen
Country: Finland / Russia / other

Helsinki-based writer-director Juho Kuosmanen made his directorial feature debut in 2016 with The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, a memorable black-and-white drama inspired by the true story of an amateur boxer. In his second move, Compartment No. 6, he changes style and mood, but his talent remains intact. The film is charged with resonant beauty and keen-eyed focus, despite the pervasive air of disquietude of an arresting road trip stirred by quirky romance. Working on a paradoxical balance of mirth and melancholy, the director reaps substance from the most precious details, showing us how two apparently incompatible persons can become attracted to each other.

The plot, based on Rosa Liksom’s novel of the same name, follows Laura (Seidi Haarla), a conflicted young Finnish student of archeology who leaves her Russian girlfriend (Dinara Drukarova) in Moscow to board a train to Murmansk. Her intention is to visit the ancient Kanozero petroglyphs. While on the train, she’s forced to share the minuscule compartment with Ljoha (Yuri Borisov), an indelicate, alcoholic Russian miner who ignores good manners. 

A lyrical sense of bittersweet acceptance permeates the film, and the cinematography amplifies the sense of wintry desolation. Still, the images are brashly poetic rather than debilitating. Not in any circumstances I was bored, and to that contributed the low-key performances by Haarla and Borisov. Unapologetically, the film feeds on the unimagined discoveries of their characters while getting to know each other. Sometimes obscure in tone, sometimes oddly appealing, this is not your conventional romance film.

Wood and Water (2022)

Direction: Jonas Bak
Country: Germany

Focusing on a naturalistic reality instead of the artificial, debutant German director Jonas Bak fixates his observant lens on a recently retired widow (played by the director’s mother Anke Bak) who tries to reunite with her daughter and son in the seashore house where they lived before. Since her elusive son, Max, couldn’t make it, she decides to travel to Hong Kong, where he lives and works, only to find the city immersed in pro-democracy protest.

After sleeping the first night in a shared room of a local motel, she was able to get into his apartment, located in the metropolitan area of Wan Chai. But no sight of him. To kill time and cover up the loneliness, she does tai-chi with the building’s doorman (Patrick Lo) and goes to a fortune teller, where she interacts with a former painter turned social activist (Ricky Yeung). 

Favoring a slow, simple style that recall Tsai Ming Liang’s contemplative cinema, Bak builds a ponderous story moved by a broad sense of emptiness, nostalgia and sadness. By using tilt shots to capture the main road and skyscrapers, he creates a sensation of slow motion that is reinforced by the minimalist drone-ambient music of Brian Eno, and even finds the time to incorporate some visual parcels of artistic sensibility. This is one of those drama films that requires patience. In that case , I hope you can extract something interesting from a handsomely framed meditation that straddles between documentary and fiction.

Fresh (2022)

Direction: Mimi Cave
Country: USA

Mimi Cave’s first feature film, Fresh, may have a few great shots, but it’s definitely not a great horror movie. Struggling with conflicting vibes and manipulative flippancy, the film doesn’t do justice to its title, often bordering on the silly rather than the psychologically scary. Cave, who works from a script by Lauryn Kahn, aims for a cult veneer with terrible dialogue and an oscillating tone that wavers uncertainly between inane comedy and blunt violence. 

The story follows Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones in her second big-screen appearance, following Pond Life), an unmarried young woman who practices boxing and hates dating. She has had terrible experiences with dating apps lately, but when unexpectedly approached by Steve (Sebastian Stan), a charming plastic surgeon, she couldn’t resist him. He seems a nice, funny man, but a romantic weekend getaway will unveil his freaky business. 

Unfortunately, the cruder the story grows, the less stimulating it becomes, no matter how efficiently crafted some scenes may look. The only comfort I could find here was to see three women kicking the ass of the Prince Charming who kept abusing them. With Stan delivering a painfully inept performance, Fresh, which listed Adam McKay (The Big Short, 2015; Don’t Look Up, 2021) as co-producer, becomes a largely unappetizing stew that feels oddly inconsistent and skimpy in texture. Not my type of delicacy in every way.

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet (2022)

Direction: Ana Katz
Country: Argentina

Ana Katz’s black-and-white experimentation, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, is a concise drama film that depicts life with all its struggles: loss, work, family, fatherhood, and even the unexpected. It’s also a wry commentary on the alienation and sense of despondency felt throughout the world. Shot over the course of five years but unspooling in just 73 minutes, the film’s sketchy montages quickly lull into slowly-paced monotony.

Sometimes tender, sometimes poignant, other times offbeat and speculative, this film can be thought provoking, especially while cloaking tragedy in a veil of humor. However, it doesn't add up to anything really bold apart from an unaccountable pandemic created by a meteor phenom. A mildly promising premise still sputters thanks to a completely silent dog said to be crying at all times, but even this segment feels ‘abandoned’. 

The director’s brother, actor Daniel Katz, is Seba, a man in his thirties who goes through some difficult moments before achieving some desired stability in life. Absurdist humor is injected, occasionally causing surprise. Yet, for the most part, the film is tonally balmy. I cannot say it was hard to sit through and try to figure out the potential of its ideas. The problem is that every idea is cut up to pieces in a split of a second. Despite the setbacks, including the numerous possibilities to become better articulated and less disintegrated, I’m sympathetic enough to Katz's unclassifiable project, which will certainly find an arthouse niche for itself.

Hold Me Tight (2021)

Direction: Mathieu Amalric
Country: France 

Touching on loss and grief, this puzzle of a film directed by Mathieu Amalric, who is better known as an actor (The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, 2007; The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014), is based on a contemporary play. The film stars Vicky Krieps (The Phantom Thread, 2017) as a woman who apparently tries to reconnect with her family after leaving them. Bafflingly structured, the story points out an ambiguous direction that can only be clarified as the film progresses.

The flashbacks sometimes confound us more, and the film purposely plunges us into constant dualities - reality and imagination, presence and absence, happiness and sadness - which requires patience. It’s all very intensely cerebral rather than powerfully emotional. 

Despite the pleasant frames, I found Hold Me Tight vapid in the assemblage and lethargic in pace, marked by a fluctuating narrative that, not being easy to follow, is not so unique or even unapproachable. The thing for me was that the strong premise gradually weakens with a series of subtleties that keep breaking the fragmentation to reach a conclusion. Even with Krieps infusing the required gravitas and the beautiful piano pieces composed by Beethoven and Schönberg, the film failed to move me profoundly. It ended without much of a payoff.

After Yang (2022)

Direction: Kogonada
Country: USA 

After Yang is the sophomore feature by South Korean director Kogonada, who presents us with another sensitive work after a tender, realistic debut with Columbus (2017). Yet, what he proposes this time is a sweet sci-fi drama film set in a mixed-race future populated by humans, techno-sapiens and clones. The filmmaker wrote the screenplay based on Alexander Weinstein’s short story Saying Goodbye to Yang, which tells the story of a family of three that mourns the loss of a certified refurbished robot. You can think of a somnambulistic intersection of elements and moods from Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina (2014) and Maria Schrader's I’m Your Man (2021).

Exploring relationships, both human and non-human, the film fabricates disconsolate moments with a modest warmth, following a concept that, even posing some questions about human vulnerability and machine memorabilia, doesn’t really go further in its thematic exploration. Both the unfocused direction and unvaried tone of the film make it a drowsy experience, which, failing to be thought-provoking, is unlikely to lodge in your memory. 

The idea is not totally unthinkable considering the technology-centered world we live in. However, this undercooked story never reached the beauty, or even the simplicity, of the images captured. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith are simultaneously restrained and practical in their performances, with the film raising some concerns about the lack of a twist or an emotional boost.

The Batman (2022)

Direction: Matt Reeves
Country: USA 

With its brooding atmosphere and formidable cast, this haunting superhero flick directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, 2008; War For the Planet of the Apes, 2017) has an infatuated, if depressed, Batman (Robert Pattinson doesn’t disappoint with his impersonation of the vigilante at a younger age) joining forces with the seductive Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz) to fight the organized crime in Gotham while trying to grapple with the ghosts of their own families. 

This renewed installment puts on display not only unscrupulous villains with cynical postures - spearheaded by the cruel psycho killer Riddler (Paul Dano) and rounded out by the underground crime kingpin Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and a blander Penguin (Colin Farrell) - but also crooked politicians and police agents, exception made for the honorable officer James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). 

Reeves’ self-possessed direction digs into the character with gravitas and precision, making for a reinvigorating return to basics. Effectively paced, with sober special effects as well as depressingly noir scenarios, the film embraces this darkly captivating mood that, even clocking in at 180 minutes, never felt exhausting. Although falling short of brilliant, The Batman follows a competent plot that translates into some seriously spellbinding moments. It's definitely no ordinary movie, standing on its own as a solid piece of entertainment. Nirvana’s fantastic song “Something in the Way” bookends the story, reinforcing the gothic and the nihilistic in it.

Ted K (2022)

Direction: Tony Stone
Country: USA 

Based on Theodore Kaczynski's diaries and writings, Ted K is an unthrilling, dry account of the nearly reclusive years of the man known as the Unabomber. After one year of teaching at the UC Berkeley, this sinister, if clever, mathematician goes to live in a wooden cabin with no electricity and no water in the woods of Lincoln, Montana. There, he ruminates about killing the people he doesn’t like. Being anti-social, anti-technology and anti-noise, he pledges revenge against society, which results in a spiral of bombing attacks. Concurrently, he wrote a 35,000-word manifesto that would play a key role in his capture in 1996. However, what really messed with this radical's head was his sexual frustration. 

Having released a successful documentary in 2016 (Peter and the Farm), director Tony Stone seems to be fascinated by the topic of isolation. However, the aimlessness and mediocrity of Ted K is underwhelming for a movie of its kind. Whereas his direction is wayward, the main actor, Sharlto Copley (District 9, 2009; Elysium, 2013), is OK but not exactly tailored for the role. The film lugs around the secluded life and obsessive ideas of the title character, but after we get his point, it becomes terribly boring, with too many unnecessary scenes severely impairing our viewing. 

Boasting some great landscape shots, this biopic was sufficiently clear about impractical relationships and sexual frustration, but is a missed opportunity in everything else.

Fear (2022)

Direction: Ivaylo Hristov
Country: Bulgaria

Fear, Ivaylo Hristov’s tension-filled romantic comedy was the official submission of Bulgaria for the Academy Awards in the category of Best International Feature Film. The film has a mock-aggressive style, addressing serious racial discrimination with disconcerting hilarity. The sharp-tongued language and coarse demeanor employed in this stinging satire may shock some viewers, but it serves the purpose of demystification of racial fears for the sake of unity.

The central character is the subversive Svetla (Svetlana Yancheva), an unemployed widowed teacher from a small Bulgarian village near the border who decides to give shelter to Bamba (Michael Flemming), a sympathetic Malian doctor turned refugee on his way to Germany. Having distinct personalities and the language as a barrier, the twosome manage to get along, forming an unusually appealing odd couple determined to be happy. Both villagers and local border officials, headed by the racist commander Bochev (Stoyan Bochev), become furious. 

Even the film's chanciest moments sustain an overall racial provocation that is partially dissolved by Hristov’s choice to mock his characters and condemn Bulgaria xenophobic mentality. The director should be proud of the solid script, his knack for storytelling, interesting characters, and the funny dialogue peppered with some memorable translating moments. It’s a wild, darkly comic collision between refugees, ignorant villagers, dysfunctional governmental figures, and debilitated military forces. On top of an arresting black-and-white photography, Fear also boasts commendable performances.

Paris, 13th District

Direction: Jacques Audiard
Country: France

French auteur Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, 2009; Dheepan, 2015) is not as strong as we ought to be in Paris, 13th District, but by turning his lens to four disappointed young adults with distinct personalities and backgrounds, he provides a valid analysis of present-day French youth. Flowing like a waltz - two steps forward one step back - this arthouse effort with lots of sex appeal and emotional vulnerabilities develops from a screenplay by Audiard, Céline Sciamma (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019; Petite Maman, 2021) and Léa Mysius (Ava, 2017; Farewell to the Night, 2019). Their writings were based on three short comic stories by American cartoonist Adrian Tomine, and the title is a reference to a particular administrative district of towers located in Paris. 

The promiscuous and egocentric Émilie Wong (Lucie Zhang), a recently graduated young woman forced to work small jobs, accepts Camille Germain (Makita Samba), an unfulfilled teacher, as her roommate. They instantly become lovers, but pressures drive them apart. Nora Ligier (Noémie Merlant), a law student from Bordeaux, is framed by her college mates when she’s mistakenly identified as Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth), an online erotic entertainer. Through the intersecting paths of these characters, Audiard weaves a human story that, eschewing overstatements, feels very contemporary. 

The film is meandering and some parts don’t really hold together, but the way this tale finally ties into personal happiness is light-hearted and life-affirming. Rone’s electronic music together with Paul Guilhaume’s voluptuous black-and-white photography take advantage of the Parisian charm, facilitating the flow of energy from and to these characters.

Everything Went Fine (2022)

Direction: François Ozon
Country: France 

With this adaptation of Emmanuèle Bernheim’s deeply intimate novel, the adroit filmmaker François Ozon (Under the Sand, 2000; Frantz, 2016) mounts a valid and courageous reflection on assisted suicide, making it unclouded by distilling a few hints of humor. Effectively blending heavy drama and dark comedic tones, the film succeeds on the strength of its acting, with Sophie Marceau bringing a kind of attentive concern to her character, and André Dussolier - who worked with everyone from Alain Resnais to Eric Rohmer - appearing at his most disconcerting.

Emmanuèle (Marceau) is a Parisian writer who had a difficult childhood because of her depressed and unsupportive father, Andre (Dussolier). Now, at 85, the latter is recovering from a severe stroke at a hospital. Despite daily health improvements, there’s this irreconcilable pain associated with the fact that he became semi-paralyzed and will need external help in the future - “surviving is not living”, he claims. This permanent anguish leads him to ask his daughter to help him end it all. Dealing responsibly and bravely with the idea, she arranges the trip to Switzerland, where the practice is legal. But not without some bumps along the way.

This bittersweet snapshot of an aging man and his last will is more functional than great. Although catapulted by Emmanuèle’s fortitude, the film is occasionally coated in dramatic toppings, especially when Andre’s former lover, Gerard (Grégory Gadebois), is around. It’s a minor Ozon but still successful; surprisingly funnier than one should expect given the controversial topic. 

Strawberry Mansion (2022)

Direction: Albert Birney, Kentucker Audley
Country: USA

Strawberry Mansion is a sci-fi romance that seems to have taken inspiration from surrealist works by Terry Gilliam, Jan Svankmajer and David Lynch. Intermittently interesting, the film is an uneven hallucinogenic trip that suddenly gets lost in its own eccentricities. Transmission of ads into dreams? Outdated VHS tapes with bizarre creatures? Strange encounters that lead to past lives? Sure! All that would be valid if experimentalism and articulation had worked in better consonance.

Written and directed by Kentucker Audley, who also stars as the committed dream auditor James Preben, and Albert Birney, Strawberry Mansion may be remembered in the future, but not in the way the filmmakers intended. Undeniably artful, this gaudy chimera finds most of its appeal on the puzzling side of the picture. The magic never reaches those stages of awe and enchantment we look for in this type of movie, and the directors didn't spend enough time building their characters.

Despite the heavy symbolism, it all becomes more visually awkward within a dreamworld facade rather than something actually smart. Moreover, the puffs of dark humor didn’t work for me, only the score by electronic musician Dan Deacon felt adequate for the visual communication intended. At once disaffected and ludicrous, it’s difficult to tell if this fatiguing oddity wants to be dark or funny.

Cow (2022)

Direction: Andreas Arnold
Country: UK 

In her first documentary, Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, 2009; American Honey, 2016) turns the camera lens to a milking cow, Luma, and its calves, showing their daily routines over several years with an experimental approach that, besides purely visual, is non-judgmental. The idea came up seven years ago, and the outcome is raw and sufficiently explanatory with no need for voice-over or musical score. 

Shot with harmless gravitas, Cow projects a strange mix of roughness and awareness through carefully composed frames that show a predilection for extreme close-ups. Ruminative, unhurried and intimate, the doc is a fascinating insight into the life cycle of dairy cattle from a modern farm located in Kent, England. There are moments where Luma seems annoyed by the camera, staring inquisitively and beseechingly while calling a newborn calf taken away too early. 

We are witnesses of some uncomfortable procedures inflicted on these animals, which are not exactly free despite enjoying real moments of freedom. Informative, quite involving, yet inevitably repetitive, Cow could not have brought more into the fold. No one has heretofore captured cow life as Arnold did, but as a film experience, it should leave many unsettled.

Huda's Salon (2022)

Direction: Hany Abu-Assad
Country: Palestine / Egypt / other 

In this cold political thriller by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now, 2005; Omar, 2013), two women fight for their lives in a heated Bethlehem under siege. They are Reem (Maisa Abd Elhadi), a young mother trapped in a complicated marriage and forced to betray her own people, and Huda (Manal Awad), the bitter hairdresser who framed her. 

In a first stage, Abu-Assad builds the scenario of a panting thriller, fully captivating. But the film slowly descends the hill of glory to never surprise again. Even if the tension never completely abandons the narrative, the excitement is limited, and we feel like it had no time to settle. There’s also no magnetic presence on the screen, but, on the other hand the plot is never fuzzy and the film makes its point on how society creates monsters and how monsters drag innocent people into the mud. In Huda’s case this was not a matter of political belief, but a forceful desire to retaliate against a cruel ex-husband who made their three sons abandon her. It’s a bit tricky, I know. 

Played in the overwhelming context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the film turns its focus to the different freedoms and “roles” expected from women in the Palestinian society. Although flawed to the point of failing to reach its true potential, and with practically every scene signposted with heaviness, there’s still a pertinent message here demanding reflection.

Scream (2022)

Direction: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Country: USA

The fifth installment in the Scream franchise is co-directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the pair who made an impression three years ago with Ready or Not. Sadly, they were unable to put a fresh spin in a sequel, which, being hackneyed and immature, feels unnecessary within the slasher saga created by Kevin Williamson and the late Wes Craven, to whom the film is dedicated. This is the first of the series without the latter at the helm. 

The crazed Ghostface returns to Woodsboro and targets a few more youngsters directly related to the original murders that occurred twenty five years before. Among them is Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), who hides a family secret that could be at the source of the recent attacks. She soon begs for the help of the town’s former Deputy Sheriff, Dewey Riley (David Arquette), and unexpectedly meets with two other female survivors, the brave Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and the news reporter, Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). Sad to say that all three actors reprising their roles here perform on autopilot.

Imbued with fruitless stabs of suspense and a sense of constant tribulation that is more repetitive than challenging, this film employs overused conventions glued together by a catastrophic, invertebrate plot that shows a blatant lack of attention to detail. Each scene prompts laughs of annoyance and déjà vu instead of proper scares. With boredom, let’s just scream for no more! 

The Sky is Everywhere (2022)

Direction: Josephine Decker
Country: USA 

Josephine Decker’s moody adaptation of The Sky is Everywhere, the young adult novel by Sandy Nelson, who also wrote the screenplay, is held back by a total lack of chemistry between the protagonists and a notorious mismanagement of the natural flow of things. It’s all neatly filmed with vivid colors, the mise-en-scene is a joy, and there’s a lot of style on show, but the sequences feel stilted while the substance becomes thinner as the film moves along.

This coming-of-age tale places Lennie (Grace Kaufman) at its center. She is a 17-year-old high school student with an exceptional talent for music, who gets caught at a dramatic crossroads between grief - created by the sudden death of her close sister - and the excitement of the first love. While going through a phase of emotional disorientation, she must make a firm decision about who she wants to be with: her late sister’s depressive boyfriend, Toby (Pico Alexander), or a cheerful new colleague, Joe Fontaine (Jacques Colimon), who sends her to the clouds. 

Emotionally strong topics like these deserve more affecting outcomes. Unfortunately, all traces of cleverness from Decker's previous films - Madeline's Madeline (2018) and Shirley (2020) - have been scrubbed away in favor of a serviceable slickness. They say love can move mountains, but this one here is too inconsistent to prove it.

Kimi (2022)

Direction: Steven Soderbergh
Country: USA

The very opportune Kimi - a tense, character-driven and technology-motivated thriller with a dandy payoff - showcases the American director Steven Soderbergh in top form, and provides more than enough dark giggles to compensate for the lighter tones of previous flops like The Laundromat (2019) and Let Them Talk (2020). Written by David Koepp (Stir of Echoes, 1999; The Panic Room, 2002), the film soars above most of the recently released thrillers, presenting an intriguing story that takes place in Seattle, Washington. 

Angela Childs (Zoë Kravitz) is an agoraphobic voice stream interpreter who works from home for the thriving tech corporation that runs Kimi, a voice-activated device with strong similarities with Alexa. While working on a piece of audio, Angela finds out disturbing words suggesting sexual assault and later evidence of murder. But when, miserably and resolutely, she sets foot out of her apartment to report the incident to her superiors, there's only  pressure and hostility instead of appreciation. 

Vividly directed and acted, Kimi is not deprived of some plot swings but, well supplied with panicking situations and oppressive atmospheres, provides a bravura mixture of psychological trauma and crime. The integrity is always there beneath the thriller elements, but Angela conquers her fears with unremitting rage and a special fondness for nail guns. This is a potent cocktail of mystery, phobia and danger. This is the Soderbergh we’ve all been missing so much.