Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticFor a couple of decades now, Steven Soderbergh’s “little” movies — the lo-fi dramas, often quirky thrillers, that he makes as palette cleansers in between his higher profile projects — have been a pleasurably idiosyncratic, off-on-his-own-cloud thing.
Some of them are good (like “Bubble” and “Side Effects”), some are meh (like “Haywire”), and one is great (“The Girlfriend Experience”); none of them make much of an impact in the marketplace.
Yet you feel the pulse of filmmaking fervor in them. You could say they’re Soderbergh’s protest against blockbusterization, a way of reminding his audience, and maybe himself, that a few simple elements — story, actors, camera angles — can still add up to what a movie is.
Only now, at a time of slow-motion crisis in the industry (will audiences come back to theaters?) and seriously over-inflated budgets, Soderbergh’s latest little movie, the nimble and sinister cyber-age corporate thriller “Kimi,” plays as an object lesson in showing us a way forward.
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