Steven Soderbergh's latest is a collaboration with screenwriter David Koepp, whose massive and varied resume includes a lot of big FX spectacles like Jurassic Park, the first Spider-Man movie, and War of the Worlds. But the Koepp movie that Kimi reminds me a little of is Panic Room. But Kimi is a little lighter on its feet, and kind of lulls you into the comfortable rhythms of Zoe Kravitz's agoraphobic protagonist working at home during the pandemic before the shit starts to get real. There's some mildly clever stuff with the Alexa/Siri-style virtual assistant being a plot device, but I don't think that's necessarily what I liked or found memorable about it, as usual Soderbergh is great with little character moments that really flesh the whole thing out. 

No Exit is somewhat similar to Kimi in that it climaxes with a young women trying to evade some bad dudes and a nail gun being used as a weapon. It's a bit more of a straightforward thriller, where a woman gets stranded at a rest stop during a blizzard and realizes there's a kidnapped child in the van of someone else there. There's some pretty good cat-and-mouse plotting and a couple good twists and nail-biter moments, not a masterpiece but I really liked it. Havana Rose Liu really kicked ass in a kind of demanding role, and I liked that at the end she had a Confusion Is Sex-era Sonic Youth shirt. 

Longtime readers may recall that my wife and I got snowed in and watched horror movies and ordered Chinese on our first Valentine's Day together and that has subsequently become our annual tradition. Last month was our 20th V Day together, and my wife's pick was Antlers. It was a little annoying that they managed to make a horror movie about a wendigo with just one indigenous actor/character in an obligatory exposition scene, but otherwise it was good and creepy. 

I think this was probably better than its reputation, but still a little underwhelming, somewhere in the bottom half of MCU movies. There were a few cool moments, the opening sequence with the Pink Floyd needledrop is great. And I was pleasantly surprised that Gemma Chan and Richard Madden got to really lead the ensemble, I was expecting a lot more boring Angelina Jolie scenes, though the few she did have were quite boring. 

It's a little embarrassing but I actually find Ryan Reynolds funny and charming and am happy that he's found his niche in Hollywood, Free Guy is definitely up there with the Deadpool movies as far as being an ideal vehicle for him. The movie occasionally buckled under the weight of its own concept, and Taika Waititi's role kind of felt like a waste of his talent, but it was fun and well executed. 

George Clooney's directorial career started out pretty promisingly, I still have a pretty high opinion of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but it feels like he's very decisively just another moonlighting movie star now and there's an air of unambitious amateurism to the movies he directs. I think he did about as much as he could with the source material, though, it's adapted from a memoir and feels like a kind of indulgent cool-story-bro origin story about how this one writer you've never heard of grew up and became a writer. But as a period piece, it feels very detailed and lived-in, it's full of great atmosphere and good music choices, including the repeated use of the Jackson Browne deep cut "My Opening Farewell." There's a bit of meta to Ben Affleck's role, at least in my mind -- the movie ends with him happily seeing his nephew has left home to pursue his dreams, much like Affleck does with his best friend at the end of Good Will Hunting. 

When I saw that Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson did a romcom together, my first thought was that they're testing the premise put forth when Matthew McConaughey stepped in for Wilson in Tropic Thunder. Wilson is a little awkward opposite J.Lo, but that's kind of the point and enhances the charm of the story. I think they kind of overdid it and undermined the premise, though -- the whole thing hinges on the idea of a pop star seeing someone with a "marry me" sign in the audience and taking them up on it, but they gave J.Lo's character a hit song called "Marry Me" so the sign was way less unexpected. 

I watched this Netflix documentary because everyone was talking about it, but I just found the whole thing too boring to pay any attention to, sick of the whole 'scammer' zeitgeist.