Prey (2022)

I was just graduated from high school when Alien vs Predator released and, from the marketing fervor around it, I knew I was supposed to think that clash of franchises was a big deal. Although my parents were and are big sci-fi fans, I had seemingly missed both franchises, though, rendering AVP as a movie I never even thought to see. My first film in the franchise was The Predator a few years back; my lack of institutional knowledge posed no problem for me there. 

Because I have such a limited history with the Predator franchise, I hesitated about turning on Prey, the newest entry streaming exclusively on Hulu. It wasn’t so much a concern about missing something as a non-fan—I understood these films don’t exactly build that kind of mythos—as simply a lack of interest. The best reviews I heard and read came from longtime fans of the franchise. I took their endorsement as coming from a different place than would serve me. 

But the concept behind Prey intrigued me. I love those alternate pathway stories that play with convention. always thinking of Red Son, the Superman comic series that imagines Kal-El landing in Communist Russia rather than Metropolitan City. I had real curiosity about how a violent and advanced alien killing machine would grapple with Comanche warriors. It was different and I wanted to see it play out, a fact that combined with a series of insistent recommendations to compel me to watch over dinner. 

And I’m glad I did because Prey impressed me. 

Prey follows the intense and often grisly conflicts that arise when a Predator arrives on earth in Comanche hunting land centuries ago. As soon as it’s shimmering but translucent feet hit the ground, violent confrontation looms, but the story focuses first on Naru (Amber Midthunder), a talented Comanche healer who prefers to hunt. Her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) who leads the hunting parties humors her but doesn’t hesitate to diminish her obvious skill or discourage her participation. When the Predator arrives, though, it begins to attack everything in sight except Naru, whom it deems a non-threat. Soon, though, it is Naru who must contend with the ruthless hunter and try to outsmart it despite its abundant physical and technological advantages. 

The success of Prey owes great credit to its fun premise, but that premise only soars because of Midthunder. Although the first act is a familiar conceit—the younger sister wants to participate but is discouraged from working in the “man’s” world—even that section still plays behind the leading performance. Midthunder, whom I knew only from her work on Legion, is perfectly cast: her diminutive stature and young face lend instantly to the idea that both the tall and muscular hunters and the massive Predator would see her as physically unimposing. Likewise, this heightens the drama when she gets sucked into a skirmish: there’s a terrifying menace to seeing her face off against larger foes and forces. But it’s not just her stature that plays but her expressive intensity as well. We see big swings of emotion in her eyes that range from mortal fear to gritty determination and even diabolical hatred; when she enhances those looks by painting her face, she becomes not just a clever problem-solver and rooting interest but a haunting threat of her own with demons to exorcise. 

Even with such a great character and performance at its center, Prey still could have been a silly exercise, but this is a film that not only excels in its story but that looks and sounds great in every frame. This is a beautifully filmed work with grand sweeping shots of the Great Plains but also intense close-ups of muddied and bloodied faces alike. Despite the vast battleground, there’s a sense of intimate geography present too; I felt like I could follow Naru’s planning because the filmmakers familiarized us with the terrain in a way that made her decisions feel logical and satisfying. The soundscape of this natural world comes out wonderfully—we hear Naru approaching the hungry party early on through the same slight sound the men do, for instance—and contributes to the immersive depth of this world. The score is also great, evocative and stirring while used in just the right moments. 

Not knowing the Predator franchise well coming in, maybe it’s wrong of me to make this statement but I will anyhow: a super powerful alien hunter movie didn’t inherently demand the quality craftsmanship and thought that Prey delivers. With a few clever kills and enough story, CGI, and fake blood to get from A to B, the result could have surely still experienced moderate success from its built in loyal fans without pushing itself. But the team behind this film went hard on making Prey sing and that effort shows, making what could have been a fun but disposable sci-fi slasher into something far greater. It’s hard not to admire and appreciate that effort. 

The Bad Guys (2022)

Effectively a heist movie for a children’s audience, The Bad Guys mimics the slick style of the Ocean’s trilogy. It’s got the cuts and costumes and double-crosses and MacGuffins you’d expect from a genre staple, but it also features zany, child-friendly plot lines with zombie Guinea pigs and (explicit and methodical) lessons about how to be nice. I like this in theory far more than in its execution but, even when I knew what was coming from a mile away, I found this earnest spoof enjoyable enough. 

The Big Bad Wolf (Sam Rockwell) leads a gang of criminal masterminds, his surly best friend Snake (Marc Maron) among them. Pulling off elaborate thefts and toying with the police along the way, the five outcasts live together as friends, but things change when Wolf’s gang is badmouthed by Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), prompting the proud Wolf to lead a rushed operation at a charity gala. While there, Wolf inadvertently saves an old lady and gets a taste for good deeds which stirs conflict among his crew. They oppose his new lease and want one last high-stakes job, even when they get caught red-handed and must rehabilitate themselves working with philanthropist Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade). But a grander conspiracy swirls around the bad guys and Wolf can’t help but be sucked into its center. 

I caught a trailer for this months ago and, while the “breaking good” story intrigued me, it was the unique animation that drew me in first. It evoked Into the Spiderverse for me in a way, an effect that wasn’t lost watching at home from my kitchen. Up close, though, the limited detail and cartoonish faces of the animal characters could be seen. There was still something visually interesting about it, particularly when the varied animals burst into action, but the novelty had a short half life. 

The Bad Guys includes an eclectic but notable voice cast beyond Rockwell, Maron, and Beetz, with Awkwafina, Craig Robinson, and Anthony Ramos rounding out Wolf’s crew. Outside of Ramos, who has a blast with the wildest performance including a lively musical number that showcases his vocal chops, though, the voice work felt oddly generic. Even after looking up the performers behind the characters mid-movie, I struggled to hear them in the roles—isn’t that the point of stunt casting celebrities? A lot of that issue probably falls to Rockwell capturing the cool conflicted vibe of Wolf but playing things so understated and Clooney-esque: I love Rockwell but a kid-ified script and what feels like an impression robs his work of memorability. 

Having never read the books that inspired the film, I enjoyed a plot full of surprises and changing allegiances that never robbed the film of its gentleness or accessibility. Are all of these telegraphed? Oh, for sure—you’ve seen everything here before in better films. But that familiarity bothered me less in a movie made for a young audience. Give me this over Sherlock Gnomes any day. I do fear that some of this twisting results in mixed messaging for younger viewers—bad being good and good being bad could leave an aftertaste of TRUST NO ONE EVER—but a film about redemption arcs and accountability is nice to offer up. 

As one might expect from a childrens’ caper, The Bad Guys isn’t high art with dynamic characterization or smooth pacing. Elements don’t always add up here and things lurch between tropey set pieces from better-crafted adult movies. But I won’t lambast a kids’ movie, particularly one that entertained me and kept me engaged, even when it seemed to aim lower than its aesthetic and idea seemed capable of. I’d watch a sequel for sure. 

Let Them All Talk (2020)

I have a history of watching films superficially similar to Let Them All Talk. I outright rented Poms (2019); I had a theater to myself for a screening of Book Club (2018). I have no idea why—although I might speculate around a fondness for the Grumpy Old Men franchise—but that history certainly informed my choice to seek out Let Them All Talk, the Steven Soderbergh-directed cruise movie released during the pandemic. Whereas I think of this as Diane Keaton’s genre, the presence of Meryl Streep (as well as Soderbergh behind the camera) piqued my interest. What would these Hollywood heavyweights bring to this gentle but predictable genre?

For most of the film, the answer was a fresh perspective, with rich relationship dynamics, an endearing-if-silly espionage plot line, and both the ancillary characters and sufficient intrigue to keep me engaged even while cleaning up a small cup of Greek yogurt that fell three feet from my unreliable hands and somehow splashed all the way to the ceiling. I thought that I had stumbled onto an “old ladies movie” gem and I eagerly waited to find out where it would go. 

This was a mistake. 

Because it went precisely where all the others do. 

Alice (Streep) is a celebrated New York City author with a dilemma: she has received a prestigious British literary prize but can’t fly. Her new agent, Karen (Gemma Chan), suggests she take a cruise on the Queen Mary 2 and Alice accepts on the condition of bringing a trio of guests. Two are her estranged friends from college: Susan (Dianne Wiest), a lawyer who comes with an optimistic outlook, and Roberta (Candice Bergen), a retail saleswoman who holds a grudge and plans to confront Alice over a particular grievance. Also tagging along is Alice’s nephew Tyler (Lucas Hedges) who lends a hand as his favorite aunt’s pseudo-assistant. 

The majestic boat—it is effectively a horizontal hotel floating in the Atlantic—makes for a grand setting for reconnection…but Alice has other plans. Informing her guests that she plans to work on her new manuscript the whole time, she’ll see them at dinners. Probably. This complicates things: Roberta stews and begins aggressive flirting while waiting to pounce, Susan shrugs and tries to enjoy her escape, and Tyler gets roped into a plot by Karen to unearth dirt about Alice’s manuscript to report back to her publishing house. The ship is gargantuan but far from infinite; these issues, among others, will all come to a head. 

Those pieces all combine to generate far more drama than I initially inspected. Roberta’s bitter fury crackles; what revelations will the inevitable confrontation unearth? Tyler and the much-older Karen have a warm chemistry; where will their relationship go? Susan and Karen both hit it off with thriller writer Kelvin (Dan Algrant); how will that play out and impact the aloof and pretentious Alice? And why in the world did Alice orchestrate this entire trip? 

That last question is key but also where Let Them All Talk goes awry. The answer is…well? It’s probably one thing but it plays out as another thing and that other thing is so conventional that it sucks all the air out of the film’s ending. This fresh take on familiar fare suddenly turns into familiar fare. For such a simple premise, this had a swearing, yogurt-cleaning me genuinely intrigued, but then seemed to dip its script into a bowl of cliches to clean up all of the glorious messiness it had set up. 

And those cliches rendered the film instantaneously inert. At one point during the final scenes, characters sit down and debate what they should next do. The question couldn’t help but sound meta-textual even though it was rhetorical: now you do what the characters do in every one of these movies. 

What’s the penalty for a film like Let Them All Talk that squanders everything in the last fifteen minutes? I really enjoyed the setting on the massive cruise liner, Streep was solid as the enigmatic Alice who can’t face her friends but wants them nearby, and I grinned many times throughout the dalliances between Hedges’ and Chan’s characters. I don’t dislike this genre that, even when it condescends, leaves me with a bit more perspective on the privilege of relative youth. But the ending undoes my good cheer and my willingness to laud this as something greater than its genre’s middling staples. 

This a good movie, except for the parts that are trite and terrible. This is a bad movie, except for the parts that feel fresh and populated by characters with depth interacting in an immaculate setting. I wouldn’t have thought this film would land here in such a mediocre place, but I guess I didn’t thing yogurt from a small cup could leap ten vertical feet either.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Lamb (2021)

I’ve listened to 77 episodes of the Grierson & Leitch movies podcast this summer while walking which is staggering in its volume: I’m averaging more than one per day. At the same time, it’s also staggering in how little progress into their catalog that translates to, since Sunday will deliver their 326th episode. Listening to these two men discussing movies daily, though, means that I know the show’s rhythms but also its vernacular: it’s hard not to catch some patterns across 200+ movies worth of conversation. And, as one might expect, their diction and perspective has informed mine. I find myself thinking about what I’m watching with much the same language that Tim and Will use. 

One such phrase of theirs that has grafted itself onto my film viewing voice is “on my wavelength”. When a film is out there but they still find themselves following it where it goes, they are “on its wavelength”; when there’s something about a production that never settles with them, they “never got on its wavelength”. I‘ve internalized this term as a way to convey whether or not the film “worked” or engaged them in a way that let them enjoy the experience in spite of components that didn’t quite work or story threads that didn’t quite land. Sharing a movie’s wavelength is like vibrating at its same frequency: the result is melodious and pleasing, not dissonant and jarring. 

If you’ve read this far and suddenly been struck by the presence of two paragraphs about podcast colloquialisms and not a single mention of the A24 psychological horror(ish) fable of a film Lamb I’m purportedly here to review, then congratulations on breaking my not-so-subtle code. I’m not dying to review Lamb because I never got on its wavelength. Curiosity during the first half hour of its runtime gave way to counting down the minutes until it would end as even its most cryptic moments produced a shrug. I am watching fewer movies now in fear of having to forfeit 45 minutes to reviewing movies that didn’t work for me. So yes, you caught me: two paragraphs about vocabulary are two less about Lamb. 

Set on an Icelandic farm in the foggy shadows of a mountain range, Lamb follows a childless couple, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guōnason). Saying almost nothing, the pair tend to their animals, struggle with an uncooperative tractor, and eat small meals. They share a routine—a monotonous one to be sure, but a routine nonetheless. One morning, though, that routine gets interrupted when they birth a lamb. They did this twice the day before without a second thought, but this time their eyes go wide. Soon this lamb is wrapped snug in a blanket and sleeping in a crib by their bed. A warmth enters their home with this change, at least until Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) arrives and takes an immediate dislike to the creature, throwing a wrench into the idyllic lifestyle. 

If you’re like me, the inherent mysteries probably sell you the most on Lamb’s concept. What is the creature? Why have Maria and Ingvar made special room in their lives for it? Where did it come from? Where will its presence lead them? These are all good questions, all of which the film eventually addresses and answers. En route to those answers, though, is a lot of strange nothing. Once we get our bearings with the special lamb, the film just…proceeds. We return to routine. The film appears to be building toward something, but without any urgency. 

I normally avoid reading about a film before reviewing it—I want my reaction and takeaways to be authentic—but with Lamb I was so not with it that I flipped through a handful of takes. One called this entire operation “minimalist” and that definitely nails the aesthetic. Action and dialogue are sparse; the plot boils down to “unique lamb and troubled brother-in-law appear”. Everything looks great, with the vast landscape conveying a sense of scale that prodded me and the visual effects around the titular creature are so impressively realistic that I too shrugged and adopted it into the film’s reality, but I filled up on those pieces early and just wanted something to happen. Something explosive preferably, but I would have taken something minor but dramatic instead. 

But Lamb is allergic to drama and addicted to understatement. I’ve liked a great many films that adopt this approach, but here nothing worked for me. Forced into giving a reason, I imagine some of my response is extratextual—I just wasn’t in the right mood for a minimalist film like Lamb last night—but I also wonder if I wasn’t responding to the way the film seemed to tease the audience about its central mysteries. At one point, Ingvar talks about scientific principles of time travel; the film leaves a cryptic scene of television visible on the edge of the screen another time, feeds a steady diet of religiously evocative imagery throughout, and has heavy breathing from an unseen source once and dense, all-encompassing fog floating in from what might well be an alien world during another. Each of these moments stoked the flames of curiosity for me, a curiosity that needed to sustain me through the meticulously crafted but intentionally unexciting rest. 

But the juice is never worth the squeeze for me in Lamb. The ending is pretty unambiguous (not to mention as close to explosive as this gets), and yet I desired no followup. I felt no compulsion to rewind back and inspect scenes anew. Unlike Nope last week where I couldn’t wait to piece together thematic ties between the assorted parts, I held the remote in my hand, my finger excited to finally press the off button. I was a sixth period class on a Friday afternoon when the teacher solicits questions. No thank you, sir, please just let me inch closer to this whole thing being over with for awhile. 

I did not enjoy Lamb but I’m not prepared to dismiss it as a bad film. With a piece like this, I suspect the cryptic minimalism and matter-of-fact treatment of the aforementioned lamb are less bugs than features for many fans. I’d have pegged myself as someone in the wheelhouse of this movie but that’s not the way it struck me last night. My favorite part was when it ended. But this is well-made, it stays on tone, and it presents some interesting ideas in a unique package. That wasn’t enough to hook me last night but that’s how things go sometimes. I will always loathe Guardians of the Galaxy 2 for reasons that have nothing to do with the movie itself; maybe Lamb is just another entry on the list of films that I watched at the wrong times. 

All I will say in summary is this: Lamb just wasn’t on my wavelength.

Nope (2022)

I’m of two minds when it comes to “horror” films. One part of me feels like the best horror leaves the theater with you; like stepping on a piece of chewed gum, it gets into the crevices of your brain and it’s tough to fully remove it, the mind tricked into a jumpy state of unease because of fictional fear from the screen. The other part of me, though, prefers horror where the tension and dread ooze from the screen and into an audience fearing vicariously through the actors in the film…but, when the credits roll, that fear vanishes completely. One is a haunt that stalks future nightmares; the other is a rollercoaster of temporary terror. 

Jordan Peele creates horror of the second kind. Within the theater, I feel the dread and menace and suspense; when I leave the theater, though, I stop glancing over my shoulder. His films aren’t like Hereditary where I pull the sheets tighter and try not to look at the shadows in the corners of the room or swallow hard when I turn out the lights. Still, the experience of a Peele film does not end when the lights come on and his name crosses the screen because there is intellectual puzzling still to come. What was he saying about the world? What did that situation represent thematically? Why did those characters behave that why and what can we take from their decisions? 

His latest production, Nope, is less pure horror than sci-fi/horror but the effect is the same. My heart pounded during the movie; my brain took up the mantle right afterward as it tried to make intellectual sense out of his crafting. Hell: during Nope, I’d maybe even say both happened simultaneously as a part of me kept trying to sort of how the disparate pieces all fit together. No matter, though: Nope is a blast that picks at flying saucer tropes in a heart-pounding way that plays brilliantly on a large screen but yet always in a grounded way as well. 

OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) trains horses for Hollywood productions on his family’s ranch. His father (Keith David) runs a well-regarded operation, allowing OJ to serve as a general ranch hand, but a freak accident forces OJ and his brash sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) to take over. Times are hard, though, forcing the siblings to sell multiple horses to the nearby tourist trap run by a former child star, Jupe Park (Steven Yeun), best known for his starring role on a sitcom that ended when his chimpanzee co-star violently attacked cast members. OJ hates this—he wants to buy back his father’s animals, not sell them off—but they have no choice. 

Things turn, though, when OJ and Keke spot a UFO above the ranch. Just as their great-great grandfather was the first man captured on film, they aim to be the first to capture extraterrestrials on film. An alien-obsessed clerk at Fry’s named Angel (Brandon Peres) joins them in setting up cameras and traps to lure the UFO out, but Jupe also has plans to capitalize on the situation. When things turn deadly, the three still refuse to give up and must set in motion an intricate plan not just to record the UFO but also survive. 

Nope looks pretty great from start to finish. Set amid sprawling hills in Southern California, the scale of everything feels pitch perfect. This is a place where a UFO could appear while evading wide detection, for one, but there’s also something barren and dried out and dying about the place that sets the mood for the film as well. The camera work here is engaging, using majestically centered shots that feel cinematic but are always slightly askew, the extra tilt or twist lending uneasiness and tension to the story. The CGI is less perfect, particularly with Gordy the chimp and a few late, close shots of the UFO, but neither hampers the film at all. Every sequence is visually inventive and cleverly framed to make the movie feel large, sweeping, and epic in scale even when the stakes are low. (The now-defunct Fry’s electronics store will never be rendered more generously.)

Behind the dynamic look of Nope is a carefully constructed script in which everything present is there for a reason. No random item or bizarre scene here is without purpose from start to finish; given time, the place for each will emerge. Even the hokey Jupiter’s Claim, with its large balloons and fake wells and too-good-for-this-place arena, is a masterpiece of cinematic problem-solving. It’s hard not to admire that attention to detail (and how so many of these clever adornments splash color against the dead hills. 

Performance-wise, the cast really fits together. Kaluuya was fantastic here in an understated performance; his OJ is calm and patient but also gritty and resourceful.  We see that, when the winds swirl and alien things appear, everyone screams while Kaluuya appears scared but somehow unflappable as well, making OJ both heroic and impossibly human. For her part, Palmer brings the kinetic energy that Kaluuya resists, talking at a hundred miles a minute and always dancing and moving and shaking; they are perfect counterpoints as leads. Yeun plays Jupe as a bit slimy and myopic, maybe even arrogant, but the character’s traumatic back story and the actor’s easy likability give Jupe additional depth. (I’ll give a shout out to Jacob Kim who plays Jupe as a child for a convincing depiction of mortal fear in his one scene.) And Peres skates close to being in a different film than everyone else—Angel yammers about Ancient Aliens and seems about 25% too goofy for the tone here—but he finds his way and eventually settles in as part of the team rather than forced comic relief. On that note, Nope is a film with jokes, not a comedy, and Angel’s role is the only one that left me uncertain about that fact. On the flip side, there are moments that lean into audience expectations in great ways that underline that Nope isn’t truly horror either, and those head fakes are delights as moments where Peele can show off his authorial command.  

By the end, some larger themes develop, although there’s so much there that it took me awhile to chew things down. Nope explores animals, particularly the way we use them and attempt to tame them but so often resist understanding them or respecting their unknowability. The quest for the perfect shot or the perfect show and leveraging something terrifying for attention and fame comes up repeatedly in the film, particularly with Em and Jupe, and the film points to this and endorses the idea of hard, intentional work toward success rather than capitalizing on something, a conflict that exists on the micro level two between the Haywoods. It’s difficult to tackle these big ideas without either sounding incredibly vague or veering into spoilers, so I’ll leave things at that.

Peele’s movies are interesting films that do things I haven’t seen before and they always feel bigger, grander, and more resonant than the canvases they paint on. Even when the pieces don’t all line up, like in Us, or they feel maybe a tad bloated, which I fear happens a bit in Nope, they never cease to be entertaining and thought-provoking as well as exceedingly well-made and visually original. I will always aim to see his creations on day one so that I can soak them in and chew on them myself before any other voices can pollute my thoughts. Nope is a success, though, a thrill to watch and a joy to dissect, and I look forward to watching it again soon. 

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

On Saturday night, I finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens; on Sunday afternoon I watched the recently-released movie version. I’m pretty sure that I’ve never read a book and watched its cinematic adaptation in such close proximity before and I’ll admit that the arrangement led me to scrutinize the latter far more than normal throughout its runtime. Part of that scrutiny (mental note-taking, thinking about construction, constantly reflecting about its effect on me) came from the movie not working for me, though, as well. That it didn’t wasn’t exactly a surprise, but I really tried to dig into what exactly made this feel like a mediocre film. 

First, for context, the story: the Clark family lives in the marshes of North Carolina. The youngest daughter Kya (Jojo Regina) lives a precarious life there with an abusive father (Garrett Dillahunt) and both money and food tight among five children. When Kya’s mother leaves, her siblings slowly follow, eventually leaving the youngest alone with her father. That works for awhile and the two bond…until he too leaves and Kya is left to fend for herself. She is illiterate and unable to afford food, but she’s a resilient, resourceful kid and makes deals with the kindly grocers Jumpin’ and Mabel (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt) on the wharf and slowly carves out a niche. 

Those who know the book or movie might quibble with my summary as I have indeed omitted a huge chunk of Where the Crawdads Sing. I’m beginning here, though, because this is the part of the film that really works. This section builds up the world around Kya that this story needs. We see an at first idyllic home torn apart by a violent alcoholic, we see a town of snooty locals who treat Kya like a rodent, and we meet the few good people who care for this little girl.

And we get to see the marsh, which is often a breath-taking, dynamic setting. Like a meadow of ocean, nature is the star here and the film highlights this with sweeping grand shots over the physical living world Kya explores. Where the Crawdads Sing never works better than when it revels in the glorious landscape—and soundscape, which music often gives way to—and lets the audience share in the beautiful world separate from the ugly one that shuns her. 

My favorite parts of the novel were Kya scraping by, learning the marsh, coexisting uneasily with her father, and figuring things out without real guidance, and Regina captures this section with a splendid performance for such a young on-screen presence. She captures the wild swings of emotion—terror, despondency, awe—that fit a kid learning to be a person while perpetually alone. 

Of course, this story isn’t just about a kid fending for herself: this is a series of interwoven tales from Kya’s entire life. There’s a love triangle teenage Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) finds herself caught in between the sweet aspiring biologist Taye (Taylor John Smith) who teaches her to read and the haughty, manipulative Chase (Harris Dickinson) who starred at quarterback in high school and now runs his father’s auto parts store. And then there’s the situation that frames the film version: Chase has been (possibly) murdered and Kya has been arrested for the crime. Only the kindly retired lawyer Tom (David Straithern) stands between her and the death penalty. 

With so much going on, the novel maintains a strong balance between the past and present, never dwelling in one time period for too long while the two stories slowly converge. The film struggles more with this, letting things drag through rote courtroom scenes that lack inertia and resemble similar  sequences done far better elsewhere. The mellow trial is surely more realistic than its explosive cinematic peers, but that doesn’t make it great viewing. The legal aspects also steal away the film’s greatest asset—stunning visuals of nature—which further left me frustrated by them. 

That said, the murder case was a rare opportunity for us to see Edgar-Jones really capture Kya’s aloofness. Sketching on a notepad or gazing out the window, fully disengaged from the trial: this is the solitary naturalist Kya was in the novel, a shy enigma conditioned to avoid people. But this is a rarity on screen: too often the film pushes against that characterization. At one point, Kya sits on a beach amid strangers drawing—the film leverages it as a meet-cute of sorts with Chase—but a consistently-written Kya, the definition of isolated and antisocial, would never have done that. Combine this inexplicable spot with moments where Kya’s language and intensity become incongruous and the script’s struggle to really lock in its central character becomes clear. 

But that struggle points toward issues that predate this adaptation: one** of my biggest frustrations from the novel contributes to this problem: Kya is hilariously overpowered. This is a character who faces a litany of obstacles—poverty, abuse, illiteracy, prejudice, isolation, heartbreak, and later both sexual assault and rape—but who also becomes the world’s most profitable naturalist as well as an artist, anonymous poet, and author with a lucrative publishing contract who is capable of solving every problem she encounters. Kya is cunning but naïve; she is rugged but empathetic. Don’t get me wrong: it’s difficult not to cheer for a little girl who claws out of such a hole to achieve success and a secure life, but it’s just a lot—and Kya often becomes exactly what the story needs her to be in a given moment while still being all those other things too. That can work in a novel format (although I might submit it doesn’t quite get there) but, even after excising a few skills and traits from the cinematic equivalent, the film still has to throw a ton at the screen to capture the superhero that is Kya. Edgar-Jones hits many of these notes—she embodies undaunted resolve as well here as she did in Under the Banner of Heaven—but Kya is a bit of everything to everyone which ratchets up the difficulty. Characters often have to spew out compliments and exposition just to keep her borderline omnipotence on screen, and I got the sense Edgar-Jones couldn’t convey a character defined by limitless ability and a personality of contradictions all at once. 

**The other major frustration was the condescending portraits of Jumpin’ and Mabel, the black couple who provide for Kya and run a successful business in the south before the Civil Rights movement. The film fixes some of that issue, including multiple instances of explicit prejudice toward them—rather than just Kya—that the novel omits despite its third-person omniscient narration, which is a nice nod to a fact that all the pity for the marsh girl repeatedly overlooked. 

The result is a film that feels…hokey, strange as that is to say. There were times where this plays like a Hallmark original movie, albeit one with impeccable production values and a strong cast. I can’t quite pinpoint the precise reason why—I suspect the stilted dialogue in the script, much of it directly from the novel, shoulders a lot of the blame—but I undeniably felt it. Likewise, it multiple times becomes a so-called “bodice ripper” where inordinate time is spent painstakingly removing shirts and blouses which…fine, these are all attractive people. But it did leave me wondering if I had miscalculated the primacy of Kya’s romantic entanglements in the book and story. Those scenes felt out of a different, kitschier movie than the serene, almost pastoral story that encompasses most of this one. 

At its best, Where the Crawdads Sing is a juicy drama about an abandoned but resourceful child buoyed by gorgeous scenic shots and sounds that bring a vibrant world to life. It centers things on a story with a bit of everything and a rising star, Edgar-Jones, and crosses its fingers that those elements can paper over an awkward script. It doesn’t, though, and at its worst, the movie plays as soapy and corny, never bad but also often too tiresome, derivative, and inconsistent to be more than good. I don’t blame the filmmakers—I got the sense while reading that the novel wasn’t going to translate well—but I’ve gotta call it like I see it. This is a highly faithful adaptation of a popular novel that just can’t puzzle out the messy source material. 

Granted, the audience at my Sunday afternoon showing (including my mom) would disagree with me. They were buzzing as it wrapped up. But, for me, Where the Crawdads Sing is middling entertainment that looks great but lacks what it needs to be anything greater than that.

KIMI (2022)

Years ago, I received an Amazon Echo Dot as a gift. I didn’t—and still don’t—have an Alexa because the notion of a perpetually-listening device bothers me. It goes without saying, then, that I have never opened the Dot’s box. 

It also goes without saying, then, that I would be drawn to KIMI, the Steven Soderbergh film released exclusively on HBO Max earlier this year. In the film, Angela (Zoë Kravitz) works for the Amygdala corporation, listening to recordings from their Alexa-like Kimi device and fixing errors. Angela works remotely in post-pandemic Seattle because she suffers from agoraphobia but, when Angela overhears an apparent murder by two contract killers on a Kimi, she must venture outside her apartment to report the crime she heard through her company. But escaping that journey unscathed becomes a challenge in itself because what she overheard was not just any crime.

If that premise sounds both a bit pulpy and of-the-moment, you would be correct. KIMI taps into the very fear that leaves me leery of Alexa; that someone might be listening is disconcerting. But there’s more paranoia-stoking tech tricks in here than just an eavesdropping speaker. There are creepy powerful hackers, devices activated and tracked from other continents, and deep profiles of users at the fingertips of the bad guys. If you get the willies when your phone pops up an ad for something you were just talking about, expect some shivers. 

But KIMI is not some Black Mirror-esque cautionary tale. This is a rush of adrenaline that looks and plays slick and had me screaming and cheering at the TV throughout its second half. There are moments that evoke great sci-fi cinema, but also some extended set pieces that conjure far lighter films with names I’ll omit to avoid spoilers. (You’ll know one when you see it.)

The sum of these intriguing parts fails without a dynamic human center, though, which Kravitz ensures is never in question. In the first half, we get a portrait of a brilliant but trapped woman. She bounces between work, calls from her concerned mother, and therapy appointments via Zoom. Saving the whys for later, we focus on how her agoraphobia stifles her: she makes and breaks plans with a man across the street (Byron Bowers), she refuses medical attention for a painful abscessed tooth, and she disappoints her support system (as well as herself) over and over again. Angela is never weak but we can see she feels weak, ready to move on but unable to make that move. Kravitz captures all of that with a palette of wistful intensity from an expressive face. 

When Angela is thrust into the world, though, Kravitz’s performance elevates even higher. She captures a walking manner I know well while fully masked with her eyes forward and shoulders made as narrow as possible while taking short quick steps. Angela embodies that post-COVID discomfort with other people and a world of invisible assailants perfectly. But then, while later on the run, Kravitz also hits the right notes for that same fearful person forced to flee with kinetic flailing and stumbling leaps but determination underneath muted terror all the way. She absolutely carries KIMI forward into a good movie rather than merely a cool concept with some bad tech baddies. 

Speaking of the bad guys, they lack Angela’s depth and nuance, to say the least. These are bad guys straight out of a John Hughes comedy. We’ve got the jeering henchmen—one tall and one short—the sinister hacker in his mother’s basement, even a villainous profit-driven corporation. The most interesting antagonist might well be the HR officer (Rita Wilson); in a so-real-it-stings turn, she offers a string of performative niceties and empty platitudes that convey how aggressively little she cares about Angela and the crime victim. There’s nothing gray here in any of them; these guys are each unequivocally terrible. This could be a flaw in a weaker movie but here it works: there’s no wasted energy adding dimensions to the enemy. This is Angela’s story; they are merely obstacles in it. I will confess I did struggle with Jaime Camil as the leader of the heavies—I have never wanted bad things to happen to Rogelio de la Vega before—but even he becomes a generic afterthought to Kravitz in short order. 

I’m running long here so let me touch on a few quick hits. There’s a great scene involving a protest that plays as aspirational in the same way the train scene in Darkest Hour does, but I bought this one in spite of the other turning me into a cynic. Despite exploding with action in the second half to the point that it’s almost a different movie, Soderbergh nails the ending even though he indulges in an 80s freeze frame finish. For such a convoluted set-up, KIMI wastes no time even though it shows rather than tells almost to a fault. The result is ninety excellent minutes of tense fun that fit snugly together. More than anything, though, I love that a story like this doesn’t settle for unredeemable vilification of technology; a lesser film might have ended with an Office Space-style clubbing of a Kimi device rather than letting that same worrying tech play a role in the resolution. 

There’s a ton of good here, and I had a great time watching KIMI and seeing Kravitz shine. But I cannot sell it any better than this: when I am alternately yelling profanity at the TV and whooping out loud for almost an hour of a movie’s run time, there’s no denying that the movie I’m watching works. Kimi works.