Ken and Robin Consume Media: Reality Horror Super Spies, a Belle Epoque Superstar, and Murderous Hair

May 12th, 2026 | 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

Obsessed with Light (Film, US, 2023) Documentary profile reveals the life, technological innovations, and lingering influence of Loie Fuller, the American dancer whose fabric and light performance art made her a star in Belle Époque Paris. Fuller appears in The Yellow King RPG, leading one to nod knowingly at plot hooks shown here, like the one involving radium and her friendship with Marie Curie.—RDL

Reflections in a Dead Diamond (Film, Belgium, Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, 2025) The glint on a diamond nipple ring prompts an old man at a luxury beach resort (Fabio Testa) to recall his past exploits as a suave super-agent (Yannick Renier) locked in a deadly game against Serpentik, a female catsuit-clad assassin with a thousand faces. Deconstructed homage to the 60s euro spy genre blurs the line between meta-fiction and reality horror.—RDL

Good

Exte: Hair Extensions (Film, Japan, Sion Sono, 2007) Freaky morgue attendant (Ren Ôsugi) sells hair extensions harvested from a zombie-like corpse, endangering a protective apprentice stylist (Chiaki Kuriyama) and her traumatized niece (Miku Satô). Outre body horror lets the momentum flag in stretches between disturbing hair attacks.—RDL

Sapphire (Film, UK, Basil Dearden, 1959) Briskly professional police superintendent (Nigel Patrick) leads the investigation into a young woman who was passing as white. Social issue police procedural in a mold that has become a television staple isn’t the most dated anti-racist film of its era. Features lushly muted Eastmancolor cinematography by Harry Waxman.—RDL

Okay

Killer Nun (Film, Italy, Giulo Berruti, 1979) A string of murders enforces the reign of a delusional nun (Anita Ekberg) over the long term care ward she cruelly domineers. Visually undistinguished mix of nunsploitation and hospital horror, loosely based on a real case, plays like grindhouse Buñuel.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: A Magic Shirt, the Last Mr. Moto Novel, and the Yellow King in Minecraft

May 5th, 2026 | 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 Bowery (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1933) Two gamblers, a big lug (Wallace Beery) and a dapper charmer (George Raft), pursue an epic rivalry on the hardscrabble side of Gilded Age New York. Walsh’s ultimate salute to roughneck knuckleheads features a franker-than-usual depiction of period racism and a looser-than-usual performance from Raft.—RDL

Elena and Her Men (Film, France, Jean Renoir, 1956) A much-adored Polish princess (Ingrid Bergman) who specializes in assisting men with their ambitions sets her sights on a general touted for the presidency (Jean Marais), to the consternation of a rival suitor, a suave aristocrat without other aspirations (Mel Ferrer). Renoir fills the screen with people and keeps them in motion in a color-drenched, farcical reimagining of the Belle Époque’s Boulanger Affair, featuring Bergman at her most glamorous and charming.—RDL

The Golden Fern (Film, Czechoslovakia, Jiri Weiss, 1963) Handsome but thin-skinned 18th century shepherd (Wit Omer) takes up with a beautiful forest nymph (Karla Chadimová), who fashions a magic shirt to protect him when he is hauled off to war. Starkly atmospheric folk tale of unheeded warnings and untrustworthy nobles could have made our Fantasy Film Essentials series had I seen it back then.—RDL

A House of Dynamite (Film, US, Kathryn Bigelow, 2025) After an ICBM launch of unknown origin, US government officials, from the personnel at an anti-missile station to mid-level analysts to the Defense Secretary (Jared Haris) and President (Idris Elba) struggle to assemble the information needed to decide whether to trigger global nuclear war. Bigelow marshals her mastery of the stiff-lipped procedural in a speculative docudrama told in three repeated slices of nail-biting time. A telling acknowledgment that the technothriller genre only makes sense if set before the end of the Obama years.—RDL

Right You Are, Mr. Moto (Fiction, John P. Marquand, 1957) American spy Jack Rhyce is sent to Japan to uncover a Communist assassination plot and the elusive “Big Ben,” but complications arise in the form of last-minute spy partner Ruth Bogart and mysterious manipulator Mr. Moto. The only postwar Mr. Moto novel combines genuinely thrilling espionage minutiae and Marquand’s habitual command of the travelogue with reveals that of course “Moto” is an alias, and of course Mr. Moto’s cartoonish English is a cover.—KH

Searching For a World That Doesn’t Exist (Film, US, Wifies, 2025) YouTuber Avery (Owen Yarnold) finds a world he didn’t build inside his Minecraft instance, and tries to track down the mysterious builder and crack his enigmatic message. By far the most-watched Yellow King Mythos work is a tight 42-minute reality horror tale taking place inside Minecraft. This does mean lots of watching Avery walk through Minecraft tunnels, but even that can turn chillingly interesting on a dime.—KH

Good

Beijing Watermelon (Film, Japan, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1989) Stubborn greengrocer (Bengal) fixates on helping Chinese exchange students, threatening his business, family, and health. Somewhat overlong drama of obsessive altruism takes a surprising late swerve from naturalism to metafiction. A huge contrast with the director’s best-known film outside Japan, the berserk horror flick House.—RDL

Destroying a World That Doesn’t Exist (Film, US, Wifies, 2026) Avery (Owen Yarnold) tracks the supposed builder, D3rLord3 (Wifies), and we watch D3rLord3 try to seal up the King in Yellow, who he unleashed by exploring the mysterious instance. Two hours plus runtime and explanations for many of the first film’s brilliantly elliptical mysteries lessen the tension and horror in the sequel, although we get far more explicit Yellow Mythos in this one. The Minecraft scenery is if anything even better and more evocative this time around, though.—KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Golden Dawn, Chekhov at Tunguska, and Daffy & Porky

April 28th, 2026 | 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

Bellflower (Film, US, Evan Glodell, 2011) Shy slacker (Evan Glodell) who with his more outgoing buddy (Tyler Dawson) is building a Mad Max car and homemade flamethrower falls for an outgoing blond (Jessie Wiseman) who warns him she’ll hurt him. Disturbing indie drama with artfully degraded cinematography turns the misfit buddy movie into a spiraling alcoholic nightmare.—RDL

Chekhov’s Journey (Fiction, Ian Watson, 1983) An attempt to hypnotize an actor into narrating the life of Anton Chekhov for a Soviet film on his 1890 journey to Sakhalin goes awry when he starts narrating Chekhov’s journey to the Tunguska blast 18 years before it happened. Watson enjoys his big concept almost as much as he enjoys his version of carping, doubtful Chekhov narration, and the intertwining of both (plus more weirdness as things get going) remain enjoyable to the slightly anticlimactic end.—KH

Ginza Cosmetics (Film, Japan, Mikio Naruse, 1951) Overly generous, middle-aged single mom who works as a hostess in a fading bar (Kinuyo Tanaka) perseveres as prospects for a better life elude her. Drama of beautiful disappointment favors realistic character study over heightened stakes.—RDL

Naked Ambition (Film, US, Dennis Scholl & Kareem Tabsch, 2023) Arts documentary profiles cheesecake photographer Bunny Yeager, who helped define the early Playboy style and took the shots that made Bettie Page iconic. Parallels an argument for Yeager’s importance in photography history with a family story of rise and fall and rise synchronized to changing sexual mores.—RDL

Good

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Film, US, Peter Browngardt, 2024) Taking jobs at a chewing gum factory, adoptive brothers Daffy and Porky (Eric Bauza) stumble into a zombie plan from outer space. A team that deeply loves and understands the source material draws on the 30s Bob Clampett versions of the characters, not quite overcoming the fact that they were built to be enjoyed in seven-minute bursts.—RDL

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: Magic Arts and the Occult Revival (Nonfiction, Felix John Taylor, 2026) Taylor attempts to tell the story of the Golden Dawn as artistic movement, mostly sticking to the “greatest hits”: Florence Farr, Yeats, Crowley, Machen, Waite, Dion Fortune (plus welcome sidelights on Pamela Colman Smith and Charles Williams). The trouble is that this is still a “greatest hits” book on the GD, which means that if this is your first such book, it’s Recommended for its narrative thrust, plentiful illustrations, and relative clarity, but if not, it’s a Good effort that leaves you wanting more about the art: not just of Yeats or Machen, but much more on the less-picked-over GDs, e.g., J.W. Brodie-Innes, or Algernon Blackwood, or Isabelle de Steiger, or the Pagets.—KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Fight or Flight, Queen of Chess, Rental Family

April 21st, 2026 | 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

Fight or Flight (Film, US, James Madigan, 2024) Booze-soaked, cashiered Secret Service agent (Josh Hartnett) is reactivated to apprehend a prolific hacktivist (Charithra Chandran) on a plane of assassins seeking to kill her. Yep, it’s 2022’s Bullet Train on a plane, with superb fight choreography and Hartnett fully morphed into his rumpled charmer Pokémon form.—RDL

Rental Family (Film, Japan/US, Hikari, 2025) Isolated expat actor living in Tokyo (Brendan Fraser) reluctantly accepts a gig at an agency that supplies performers to insert themselves into client’s personal lives. Fraser brings his reservoir of sadness to a reassuring, well-judged drama based on a heightened version of an actual Japanese phenomenon.—RDL

Queen of Chess (Film, US, Rory Kennedy, 2026) Trailblazing chess great Judit Polgár, raised alongside her sisters by a dad determined to mold them into champions, doggedly battles over many years to best nemesis-turned-mentor Garry Kasparov. Documentary profile invests its game recreations with energy and suspense.—RDL

Okay

Tee Yai: Born to be Bad (Film, Thailand, Nonzee Nimibutr, 2025) A notorious armed robber with reputed supernatural powers (Apo Nattawin Wattanagitiphat) stays a step ahead of the cops as his running buddy (Wisarut Himmarat) falls for an abused sex worker (Supassra Thanachat). Thailand’s answer to John Dillinger gets a down-the-middle treatment in a crime docudrama that flirts with heroic bloodshed themes but never releases the doves.—RDL

Ken was on the road this week.

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Deathstalker, Two Thrillers by J. Jefferson Farjeon, and the Queen of Indonesian Horror

April 14th, 2026 | 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 5.18 Mystery (Fiction, J. Jefferson Farjeon, 1929) A young man falls for a woman on the train to Norfolk and blunders into the middle of a kidnapping plot. Edgar Wallace-style (or Hitchcock-style, in film) thriller rather than an actual mystery keeps the plot moving propulsively despite a delightful authorial tendency to wander from the point and chat with the reader. This “amiable fathead” sort of hero also helps keep the suspense far more real than the competence-porn rescuer a thriller has to have nowadays.—KH

Deathstalker (Film, Canada, Steven Kostanski, 2025) An act of murder hoboism binds a sword-slinging adventurer (Daniel Bernhardt) to a cursed amulet from a doomsday prophecy, sending him on a quest accompanied by a good-hearted thief (Christina Orjalo) and semi-competent kobold wizard (Patton Oswalt/Laurie Field.) Spoofy celebration of VHS-era sword and sorcery flicks loads up on gloriously gory and gruesome creature effects.—RDL

Mastermind: To Think Like a Killer (Television, US, Hulu, Abigail Fuller, 2024) Three-part true crime docuseries surveys the multiple careers of soft-spoken juggernaut Ann Burgess, who put the science in the FBI’s Behavioral Science (profiling) Unit, centered victims in the study of sex crimes, and helped bring down Bill Cosby.—RDL

Good

The House Opposite (Fiction, J. Jefferson Farjeon, 1931) Ben the tramp sees strange happenings in the house opposite the abandoned house he’s squatting in, but it’s a girl in danger that spurs him to interfere. The first half of this crime thriller follows Ben’s viewpoint (with plenty of Farjeonian discursion), the second half follows the people in the house opposite and fills in the blanks. Intriguing format and a welcome lower-class hero; somewhat marred by the villain being an entirely stereotypical Indian.—KH

The Queen of Black Magic (Film, Indonesia, Liliek Sudjio, 1981) When the rich louse (Alan Nuary) who seduced her accuses her of witchcraft and rouses a mob to kill her, a young woman (Suzzanna) learns black magic for real and exacts visceral revenge. Root for Indonesia’s answer to Barbara Steele or Robert Englund as she dishes out inventive no-budget kills.—RDL

Okay

Berlin Express (Film, US, Jacques Tourneur, 1948) An assassination attempt on a Berlin-bound train sets an American nutrition consultant (Robert Ryan) and an ad hoc party of his fellow Allied occupying officials in pursuit of revanchist plotters. Interweaves expressionistic spy thrills with invasively narrated quasi-newsreel segments on the state of postwar Germany.—RDL

The Secret Bride (Film, US, William Dieterle, 1934) Dedicated attorney general (Warren William) and devoted governor’s daughter (Barbara Stanwyck) conceal their marriage while they race to clear her father of bribery charges. Plot-driven legal thriller confines its stars to expository dialogue.—RDL