Angela Childs: Last News

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and Steven Soderbergh just gotta keep on making films, which he does with his 33rd feature narrative title, Kimi, in which the central character’s intense agoraphobia very neatly overlaps with the all-enveloping presence of Covid. It’s a piece that feels like it was quickly made in the heat of the moment and creatively benefits from that edge. The film is also bolstered by the unsettling disruptions of norms, the feeling that the continuation of everyday existence is extremely tenuous. It’s a tight, taut little thriller—the third film Soderbergh has made under Covid conditions–that defines our times as the moment when communication via electric devices has superseded personal one-on-one contact. In this regard, the film clearly represents the time and place it was made.

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.