Episode 657: More Mason, Less Free
July 11th, 2025 | Robin
Settle back for some Gaming Hut disambiguation as beloved Patreon backer Bart Mallio asks us to explain the difference between a setting and a campaign frame.
The Mythos Hut listens to a conch and screams when estimable backer Ludovic Chabant seeks the Deep One shenanigans behind the Margate Shell Grotto.
The Cinema Hut Fantasy Essentials series looks at wartime movies about ghosts, supernatural bureaucrats, and an exaggeration-prone Baron.
Finally the Eliptony Hut examines the surely entirely verifiable legend of the Michigan dogman.
Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!
Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.
Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.
Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.
Stop gazing lovingly at that seed catalogue and start pre-ordering Vicious Gardens from Atlas Games. This contemporary, distinctive, choice driven card game combines the joy of gardening with the thrill of being a total jerk. Strategically cultivate your garden, harvest plants, and sabotage others in a cut-throat competition.
A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!
Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.
Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Ken and Robin Consume Media: 28 Years Later, Captain America, and the Occult Detective Who Went Mundane
July 9th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
28 Years Later (Film, US/UK, Danny Boyle, 2025) 28 years after the rage virus depopulated Britain, a 12-year-old boy (Alfie Williams) sets out with his ailing mother (Jodie Comer) from their increasingly medieval home on Holy Island in search of a cure for her. Remarkably beautiful film pits a mythic English remnant against brutish monsters, hitting notes of legend amidst the horror. The score by Young Fathers drives the action, along with brilliant edits by Jon Harris.—KH
The Devil’s Envoys (Film, France, Marcel Carné, 1942) Immortal troubadours with infernal powers (Alain Cuny, Arletty) arrive at a castle in 1485 to torment residents with their seductive wiles on behalf of their master, the Devil (Jules Berry). Fantasy of courtly love drapes a captivating fairy tale atmosphere over a fatalistic view of romantic obsession.—RDL
Dream Scenario (Film, US, Kristoffer Borgli, 2023) Self-centered nebbish biology prof (Nicolas Cage) goes viral when he inexplicably begins to appear in peoples’ dreams. The queasy specter of Charlie Kaufman hangs over this dark comic fable about the hubris of the small.—RDL
Now Beacon, Now Sea (Nonfiction, Christopher Sorrentinno, 2021) Novelist examines his tortured relationship with his angry, unappeasable, self-isolating mother. Memoir of a life shaped by intractable parents told with rueful rigor.—RDL
The Red Dance (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1928) In the lead up to the Russian Revolution, a stalwart young arch-duke (Charles Farrell) and a political prisoner’s passionate daughter (Dolores del Rio) fall In love. Rollicking historical melodrama with energetic action set pieces.—RDL
Speaking of Murder (Film, France, Gilles Grangier, 1957) Gruff garage owner who runs a robbery crew on the side (Jean Gabin) tries to keep his parolee younger brother (Marcel Bozzufi) away from a gold-digging manicurist (Annie Girardot.) Tough, compact crime drama populated by a deep cast of Gallic mugs.—RDL
A Wounded Fawn (Film, US, Travis Stevens, 2022) Museum curator (Sarah Lind) goes to the remote cabin of her new beau (Josh Ruben) for a romantic weekend, not knowing that he is a serial killer planning her murder, or that a being of mythic vengeance waits in the surrounding woods. Stylized vengeance flick fortified with art historical and mythological references and the rare awareness that the typical real serial killer is a pathetic drip.—RDL.
Good
Every Lucius Leffing Story (Fiction, Joseph Payne Brennan, 1962-1990) Lucius Leffing began as Brennan’s occult detective, and morphed into a more regular detective when the mystery magazines wouldn’t buy ghost stories. The result, a not-entirely-Holmes pastiche on the borders of mystery and weird tales, the nostalgia of the ghost story reinforced by the nostalgia of the Holmesian short in the age of the crime novel. I found myself entranced, yes even by the hokey Lovecraftian convention novella Act of Providence (1979), but I cannot convince myself that everyone (anyone?) will be as susceptible, so I dropped it a grade.—KH
Okay
Captain America: Brave New World (Film, US, Julius Onah, 2025) Captain America (Anthony Mackie) and newly-elected President “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) find themselves at odds as a conspiracy undermines a key treaty. Abandoning not just the political but the narrative coherence of the previous two Cap films proves disastrous for a film already drowning in the new Marvel slurry. One or two good fight scenes and an intermittently game Ford don’t rescue it.—KH
Episode 656: They Brought Him Pig Lard
July 4th, 2025 | Robin
The Gaming Hut gets informative as beloved Patreon backer Daiv Barr asks for campaign frames built around the librarian answer-seeking list Stumpers-L, aka Project Wombat.
The Mythology Hut looks at St. Cuthbert, the historical Anglo-Saxon saint who became a D&D god.
Our Cinema Hut fantasy essential series continues with the early 40s.
Finally Ken’s Time Machine surveys alternate histories that postpone Attila the Hun’s ignominious death.
Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!
Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.
Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.
Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.
Stop gazing lovingly at that seed catalogue and start pre-ordering Vicious Gardens from Atlas Games. This contemporary, distinctive, choice driven card game combines the joy of gardening with the thrill of being a total jerk. Strategically cultivate your garden, harvest plants, and sabotage others in a cut-throat competition.
A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!
Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.
Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Episode 655: You Think Too Much About Pole Arms
June 27th, 2025 | Robin
As assigned by an anonymous beloved Patreon backer, the Gaming Hut ponders a university urban fantasy campaign where the syllabuses matter as much as the sylphs.
The History Hut retreats to the high ground to meet estimable backer Robert Wolfe’s request for the esoteric and gaming ramifications of Dayton’s Great Flood.
Our Cinema Hut Fantasy Film Essentials series continues in the late 30s and rounds the corner into the 40s.
Finally backer and sponsor John Kovalic asks the Consulting Occultist about 1960s blues rock musician Graham Bond, who considered himself the son of Aleister Crowley and feuded with rival magicians.
Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!
Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.
Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.
Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.
Stop gazing lovingly at that seed catalogue and start pre-ordering Vicious Gardens from Atlas Games. This contemporary, distinctive, choice driven card game combines the joy of gardening with the thrill of being a total jerk. Strategically cultivate your garden, harvest plants, and sabotage others in a cut-throat competition.
A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!
Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.
Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Films Adapted from Haggard, Heinlein, and Dunsany
June 24th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
100 Yards (Film, China, Haofeng Xu & Junfeng Xu, 2023) Resentful, pushed-aside martial artist (Jacky Heung) decides to wrest his late father’s organization from the shady rival (Andy On) who inherited it. Stylized staging and restrained delivery convey distinctly mainland take on the fight for supremacy trope.—RDL
The Door Into Summer (Film, Japan, Takahiro Miki, 2021) Swindled out of his share in the robotics company he helped found and into a cryosleep chamber, a young genius resorts to fringe science to regain what he lost. Glossy romantic beats add feeling to the tricky plotting of its Robert Heinlein source novel.—RDL
It Happened Tomorrow (Film, US, Rene Clair, 1941) Turn of the century reporter (Dick Powell) advances his career and woos a charming mentalist’s assistant (Linda Darnell) when an older colleague starts giving him newspapers from one day in the future. Comedy of the fantastic with a light touch as magical as its subject matter. One of the two feature films ever adapted, in this case extremely loosely, from the work of Lord Dunsany.—RDL
She (Film, US, Lancing Holden & Irving Pichel, 1935) Following in the footsteps of a 16th century ancestor he strongly resembles, a jut-jawed explorer (Randolph Scott) finds a hidden civilization in the Arctic, ruled by a ruthless despot (Helen Gahagan) who has been longing for him for five hundred years. The best adaptation of the H. Rider Haggard fantasy classic features glorious art deco production design and an unforgettable climactic ritual dance sequence.—RDL
The Wedding (Fiction, Gurjinder Basran, 2024) The impending, lavish nuptials of a perfection-seeking bride and checked out groom heighten the tensions between public face and inner self for a large cast of characters from B.C.’s Sikh community. Generous, expansively observed social novel of values both traditional and Instagrammed.—RDL
Good
Phantom (Film, Germany, F. W. Murnau, 1922) Weak-willed clerk with poetic ambitions (Alfred Abel) spirals into degeneracy after a fleeting interaction with a rich young woman sparks an obsessive romantic fixation. Moral drama with expressionistic touches and an early example of the blatantly tacked-on happy ending. Sometimes classified as a fantasy film, due to a couple of symbolic shots that last a few seconds.—RDL
Episode 654: My Serpent Man Godfrey
June 20th, 2025 | Robin
The Gaming Hut has stacked up the non-perishables and gas masks to answer beloved Patroen backer’s Jason Thompson about a campaign that starts on the day of the apocalypse.
The Stock Character Hut returns to examine a trope with a truly ancient provenance, the wily servant.
Part two of the Cinema Hut Fantasy Essentials Series picks up in the mid 1930s.
Finally the Eliptony Hut ponders the chalky, suspicious artifact that is the Grime’s Graves Goddess.
Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!
Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.
Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.
Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.
Stop gazing lovingly at that seed catalogue and start pre-ordering Vicious Gardens from Atlas Games. This contemporary, distinctive, choice driven card game combines the joy of gardening with the thrill of being a total jerk. Strategically cultivate your garden, harvest plants, and sabotage others in a cut-throat competition.
A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!
Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.
Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
KARTAS Live at Gen Con Now Booking
June 19th, 2025 | Robin
The KARTAS Live event at Gen Con is now booking. Thanks to everyone who exercised patience waiting for this event to appear in the listings. It took us some extra time to figure out how to do it in Robin’s absence.
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Mission: Impossible, Attila the Hun, and Vintage Fantasy Films
June 17th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Film, Germany, Lotte Reiniger, 1926) Heroic prince battles monsters and an evil magician to save the lovely ruler of a demon island. Cinema’s first animated feature is a straight up swords and sorcery yarn, shot in a beguiling, delicate style with articulated 2D silhouette figures.—RDL
Lost Horizon (Film, US, Frank Capra, 1937) Diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman) and four others get hijacked to the peaceful realm of Shangri-La. 21st-century viewers may find Capra slow going, not willing to relax into the scenic and cultural idyll he paints. But there’s a scorpion sting in the tail (and occasional other places) that provide the needed venom beneath the seemingly placid (and visually arresting) action.—KH
Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (Film, US, Christopher McQuarrie, 2025) Superspy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) continues his quest for the source code that can unmake the Entity, a rogue A.I. destroying truth and threatening apocalypse. Alternately talky and taut, the film does a creditable job of rounding off the whole franchise with one last world-saving mission. Also worth examining as part of Cruise’s lengthy cri de coeur for reality and story in film over AI, CGI, IP, and the other besetting sins of the current age.—KH
Zvenygora (Film, Russia, Alexander Dovzhenko, 1928) During the 1917 German invasion of Russia, an old man and his grandson scheme to find the cursed treasure buried in a magic mountain. Allegorical fantasy with a weird hypnagogic intensity has a lot of mystical Ukrainian nationalism in it for a film its director thought would win over Party cultural apparatchiks.—RDL
Good
Attila the Hun: A Barbarian King and the Fall of Rome (Nonfiction, John Man, 2005) Historical biography traces the rise of the Huns, the impact exerted by the titular leader as he occupied the Balkans and threatened the 5th century Roman Empire(s), and his outsized role in later myth. A solid comprehensive treatment weighed down by putatively flavorful you-are-there-while-I-talk-to-this-museum-curator narrative flourishes.—RDL
Blue Light (Film, Germany, Leni Riefenstahl, 1932) Travelers in a mountain town read the story of Junta (Riefenstahl), a fey “witch” who could climb to the inaccessible blue crystal grotto, and the stranger Vigo (Mathias Wieman) who loves and destroys her. Magnificent climbing sequences provide the highlight of this alternately sententious and tender film, which aims for mysticism and achieves it only sporadically.—KH
Monkey Man (Film, US, Dev Patel, 2024) Man employed as a simian-masked human punching bag at underground MMA matches (Dev Patel) infiltrates a high end nightclub/brothel on a mission of vengeance. Intense actioner blunts its impact by withholding its revenge motivation sequence until the end of act two, instead of putting it up front where it belongs.—RDL
Okay
Destiny (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1921) A grief-stricken young woman (Lil Dagover) begs a weary, remorseful Death (Bernhard Goetzke) to spare her fiance, prompting him to show her vignettes of his inevitable power set in Arabia, Renaissance Italy, and a fanciful China. The heavy hand of Orientalism weighs down this mordant anthology film of the fantastic.—RDL
Fascinatingly Wrong
The Wizard of Oz (Film, US, Larry Semon, 1925) After henchmen from Oz arrive in a biplane to assassinate their unknowing rightful queen Dorothy (Dorothy Dwan), she is whisked there by a tornado, where her farmhand friends (Larry Semon, Oliver Hardy, Curtis McHenry) dress up as a scarecrow, a tin man and a lion. Now-forgotten slapstick star Semon ruined his finances and health with this massive flop, which audiences perhaps thought would bear some resemblance to L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. CW: racism.—RDL
Episode 653: Flankington’s Syndrome
June 13th, 2025 | Robin
In the Gaming Hut beloved Patreon backer Michael Cule wants to know more about the role dice play in roleplaying games.
Fun With Science answers estimable backer Jurie Horneman’s request to look into a case of brain diagnosis by inner voices.
The Cinema Hut kicks off our tour through Fantasy Film Essentials with the formative titles of the silent era.
Finally in Ken’s Time Machine our resident chrononaut reveals the dread timelines prevented by his intervention in the sinking of the galleon San Jose during Wager’s Action.
Want to pose a question to the show? Get your priority question asking access with your support for the KARTAS Patreon!
Our Patreon-backed Letterboxd list of all films mentioned on the show is now up and running.
Also check out the Goodreads list of books mentioned on the show.
Snag Ken and Robin merchandise at TeePublic.
Stop gazing lovingly at that seed catalogue and start pre-ordering Vicious Gardens from Atlas Games. This contemporary, distinctive, choice driven card game combines the joy of gardening with the thrill of being a total jerk. Strategically cultivate your garden, harvest plants, and sabotage others in a cut-throat competition.
A global mythos conspiracy ensnares the player characters in The Borellus Connection, Pelgrane Press’ new Fall of DELTA Green mega-campaign by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite. Journey in the guise of federal narcotics agents to Saigon, Beirut, Prague and Bozukepe. Buy it for your GM and demand that she run it today!
Get caught in the spiral with God’s Teeth, a new set of pulse-pounding Delta Green scenarios dripping with the once and future corruption of a nation swirling into cruelty and spite. From a government panopticon to alien worms to an app-driven mass shooter, your agents have nothing to fear but every screaming headline.
Play spies, skirmishers, and saboteurs in the battle for the future of the Thirteen Colonies in Flagbearer Games’ thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated 5E compatible roleplaying game Nations and Cannons. Jump into the early actions of the war with the new campaign guide The American Crisis, available as a PDF or for print pre-order.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Andor, The Phoenician Scheme, Ballerina
June 10th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
The Pinnacle
Andor Season 2 (Television, US, Disney+, Tony Gilroy, 2025) Run by an increasingly ruthless Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard), Cassian earns his spurs as an Alliance intelligence officer; Dedra (Denise Gough) and Syril (Kyle Soller) assist a genocidal Imperial resource extraction scheme. Packed with incident, constantly forwarding its story, this suspenseful, incisive meditation on authoritarianism and the compromises needed to defeat it does serialized television right.—RDL
Recommended
Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney (Television, Netflix, John Mulaney, 2025) This second season of Mulaney’s talk show sadly proves less wonderfully shambolic than the first, but Letterman-style stunts (lining up 25 men by height, Mulaney fighting three 14-year-olds) go some distance to erase the second-season polish. The live remotes are much missed (replaced by clearly producer-driven “Mulaney in the wild” type segments), the taped comedy hits a peak early (a focus group entirely made up of actors who have played Willy Loman) and doesn’t quite hit thereafter. But given the desuetude of the American talk show nowadays, Mulaney still provides a joyful refresher.—KH
Hilma (Film, Sweden, Lasse Hallström, 2022) Obsessive painter Hilma af Klint (Tora Hallström/Lena Olin) flummoxes the 1880s Swedish art establishment by inspiring a collective of spiritualist women, including jealous lover Anna Cassel (Catherine Clark), to fashion her pioneering works of abstract art. Hallström’s script avoids biopic syndrome by rigorously hewing to its emotional and thematic throughline. Due to vagaries of film financing this extremely Swedish film is in English.—RDL
Juror #2 (Film, US, Clint Eastwood, 2024) Doting expectant father and recovering alcoholic (Nicholas Hoult) gets seated on a murder jury, only to realize that he’s the responsible party in the victim’s death. Calmly observant courtroom drama plays its melodramatic premise straight, more moral fable than thriller.—RDL
The Monk and the Gun (Film, Bhutan, Pawo Choyning Dorji, 2023) When election officials arrive in a remote village to stage a practice vote prior to Bhutan’s transition to democracy, a lama orders his junior monk to find him a pair of guns, so he can make things right. Gently amusing, breathtakingly photographed social realist comedy.—RDL
The Order (Film, US, Justin Kurzel, 2025) Reassigned to a rural field office, an FBI agent on the edge (Jude Law) investigates an Aryan Nations terrorist splinter group led by a charismatic young philanderer (Nicholas Hoult.) Tense true crime police procedural mirrors its characters against expansive landscape.—RDL
The Phoenician Scheme (Film, US, Wes Anderson, 2025) Unscrupulous arms dealer-fixer Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) survives his sixth plane crash and decides to name his novitiate daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) as his heir, so that his scheme to bring water and transport to Phoenicia will outlive him. Behind a series of sketches presented as business negotiations, Anderson tells a story of morality and redemption; his most Coen-Brothers-esque film can’t be his finest, but it’s great great fun.—KH
The Phoenician Scheme (Film, US, Wes Anderson, 2025) After yet another assassination attempt resulting in a fiery airplane crash, a ruthless businessman (Benicio del Toro) plucks his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton) from her impending vows as a nun to accompany him as he attempts to knit back together a massive infrastructure deal in a fictive Saharan nation. With less grief and fewer layers than usual for Anderson, this journey into recondite silliness plays like one of his animated features, albeit with actors who move more than a frame at a time.—RDL
Wasp (Fiction, Eric Frank Russell, 1957) Inserted into the hostile and totalitarian Sirian Combine, James Mowry begins a one-man campaign of propaganda, sabotage, and distraction to tie down the enemy forces long enough for Earth to strike a fatal blow. Barring a few super-chemicals and an interstellar radio, the SF level of this WWII war story is almost nonexistent, but as a thrilling adventure it’s hard to beat. Unlike many similar works, Russell constantly conveys the danger of enemy countermeasures; both Mowry and his foes get lucky just enough for verisimilitude.—KH
Good
Ballerina (Film, US, Len Wiseman, 2025) To avenge her father’s death at the hands of the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) joins the Ruska Roma to learn the assassin’s art. The marketing tag “From the World of John Wick” tells you everything wrong with this movie: it slogs through a bunch of Wickiverse world-building before it gets to the bang-bang. The fights are universally great to jaw-dropping; Stahelski (who allegedly re-shot them in post) convincingly sells tiny Ana fighting guys whose legs weigh more than she does. Two of the fight scenes in here are all-timers, but Keanu looks tired of the whole idea in both his cameos.—KH
