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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nosferatu, Wallace & Gromit, and Anglo-Saxon Monsters

January 7th, 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

Nosferatu (Film, US, Robert Eggers, 2024) Obsessed with fey dreamer Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) lures her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) to Transylvania to convey him to her home of Wisborg. Remake of Murnau’s 1922 Pinnacle enriches it with reference to Stoker’s novel, Browning’s film, and The Exorcist among other influences, while presenting the Gothic world on its own terms as only Eggers can. Robin Carolan’s unnerving score, Jarin Blaschke’s perfectly lit darkness, and the actors’ total commitment are only the high points of the best Nosferatu in a century.—KH

History of the Occult (Film, Argentina/Mexico, Christian Ponce, 2020) As a canceled investigative news program ticks down its last broadcast in 1987, its producers (Nadia Lozano, Augustín Recondo, Ivan Ezquerré) desperately try to uncover the piece of evidence that will unlock a black-magic conspiracy at the heart of the Argentine establishment. Superb reality horror justifies the formal experimentation, which veers from retro noir to discontinuous narrative to … —KH

Uprising (Film, South Korea, Kim Sang-man, 2024) The bond between a defiant slave who learns fighting moves with eidetic memory (Gang Dong-wan) and the feckless young noble he trains (Park Jeong-Min) turns to deadly enmity against the backdrop of the 16th century Japanese invasion of Korea. Violent period action epic pulls off all the turns of its complicated, story-packed narrative structure. Old Boy’s Park Chan-wook produced and contributed to the screenplay.—RDL

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Film, UK, Nick Park & Merlin Crossingham, 2025) Inveterate inventor Wallace (Ben Whitehead) neglects the misgivings of loyal pooch Gromit to create an overeager robot garden gnome (Reese Shearsmith), creating an opportunity for imprisoned nemesis Feathers McGraw. Brilliantly and lovingly sustains the energy of the original “Wrong Trousers” short, with an all-time great animation performance of cinema’s foremost deadpan penguin arch-villain. Whitehead’s recreates the late Peter Sallis’ vocal role as Wallace with astonishing fidelity.—RDL

Good

Drive-Away Dolls (Film, US, Ethan Coen, 2024) Hyper-verbal Jamie (Margaret Qualley) invites herself on her uptight friend Marian’s (Geraldine Viswanathan) road trip to Tallahassee, which unfortunately involves a car sought by a criminal Chief (Colman Domingo). Fun and funny lesbian hangout movie lacks Joel Coen’s mordancy and touch of horror, which doesn’t make it bad, but does make it kind of interchangeable (Qualley’s delightful performance notwithstanding) with every good 90s road trip sex-comedy movie.—KH

Room 999 (Film, France, Lubna Playoust, 2023) In a followup to a film with the same format made by Wim Wenders in 1988, directors attending Cannes, including Wenders, Cronenberg, Denis and Luhrmann, tell a camera in a hotel room whether they think the language of cinema is dying. The question of this thought-provoking snack for deep-dive auteur cinema fans mostly acts as a synecdoche for “are you an optimist or a pessimist?”—RDL

Safe Conduct (Film, France, Bertrand Tavernier, 2002) In occupied Paris, womanizing screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydès) resists recruitment efforts by a German-run studio; meanwhile, intense assistant director Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin) works for them while committing acts of sabotage for the Resistance. The wartime setting of this indulgently paced intimate epic intensifies the stakes of Tavernier’s core concern, how one lives life with dignity in difficult circumstances.—RDL

Okay

My Old Ass (Film, Canada, Megan Park, 2024) To mark her last summer on the family cranberry farm, a college-bound queer teen (Maisy Stella) meets, via mushroom trip, her older self (Aubrey Plaza), who warns her to steer clear of charming doofus Chad (Percy Hynes White.) Bolts magic realism and Aubrey Plaza onto an eager-to-please coming of age yarn.—RDL

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