John Thackary
John Thackary
Like a Hitchcock thriller with smart devices
Even an agoraphobe can’t be alone
a review of
Kimi, Dir: Steven Soderbergh, 2022
Director Steven Soderbergh is well-known for both prolific output (an astounding 47 films and counting) and speed of production (roughly a movie a year over the past decade). Yet his work’s quality seems not to suffer from such a pace.
On the contrary, something about its fleetness belies a fascinating realism of the outlandish. Fittingly, in Soderbergh’s latest, his third collaboration with the streaming arm of HBO, a film simply titled Kimi, a villain’s posture bumbles unceremoniously. A tech millionaire conducts a Zoom interview in his garage before a pitiable, fake bookshelf background. The manner in which these characters are painted, all through edits and camera framings, bleeds with an obscure intentionality. Form as function.
Jul 8, 2022 Read the whole text...
John Thackary
The Northman
Today, Reflected in the Gore of Yore
a review of
“The Northman”
Dir: Robert Eggers, 2022
There was an unavoidable discomfort in my bones upon deciding to view “The Northman.” It felt difficult to ignore how, from advertisements, the film’s early Norse historical setting seemed like unfortunate—if unintentional—catnip for fascists with a tendency for perverting Paganism to justify ideologies of volkisch nationalism. And yet, I was happily surprised.
Jan 7, 2023 Read the whole text...