Archive for the ‘Audio Free’ Category
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Power Fantasy, Sci-Fi Tarot and the Count of Monte Cristo
February 18th, 2025 | Robin
Recommended
The Count of Monte Cristo (Film, France, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, 2024) On the verge of marriage above his station to Mercedes de Moncerf (Anaïs Demoustier), sailor Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) is betrayed by her jealous cousin and imprisoned in the Chateau d’If black site. Lushly filmed and produced swashbuckler strips down Dumas’ Pinnacle ur-revenge thriller to a mere three hours, staying mostly true to the original while softening some blows for modern audiences.—KH
Crime of Passion (Film, US, Gerd Oswald, 1956) After giving up her career to marry a homicide detective (Sterling Hayden), an erstwhile star reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) succumbs to Machiavellian mania to advance his career. Proto-feminist mix of cop and domestic noir follows the spiral of its flawed protagonist with acerbic abandon.—RDL
Kim’s Video (Film, US, David Redmon & Ashley Sabin, 2023) Documentarian examining the legacy of legendary, defunct NYC video store stumbles across the strange destination of its legality-skirting archive. Tongue-in-cheek celebration of cinephilia moves from investigation to active intervention in its storyline.—RDL
Power Fantasy Vol. 1: The Superpowers (Comics, Image, Kieron Gillen & Caspar Wijngaard, 2025) Beginning with the Trinity detonation, people started getting powers. Six of them have the power to destroy the planet. None of those six really get along. Gillen’s ongoing wrangling with what Watchmen did to the art form has produced a compelling comic that takes some big swings in terms of narrative consequences and risks to audience sympathy; Wijngaard’s art provides clarity of narrative with valuable emotional color contrast.—KH
Sci-Fi Tarot (Tarot, Todd Alcott, 2024) Not the slam dunk of his Pulp Tarot, but closer to that in its homage-collage tendencies than to his Horror Tarot, this tarot casts the traditional suits as glowing rods, ray guns, capsules, and very saucer-like pentacles. Inspirations come from all over SF art, with the strongest DNA from the 1930s to the 1970s. Visually thrilling and in one case (Death) literally breathtaking.—KH
So You Think You Can Be Prime Minister (Nonfiction, Ian Martin, 2024) Jaundiced satire of recent UK politics couched as a how-to manual for the shallow and ambitious, with quizzes and flow charts. Perfect Father’s Day or birthday reading for sarcastic dads who follow the news, from a key writer for The Thick of It and Veep.—RDL
Timecrimes (Film, Spain, Nacho Vigalondo, 2007) Fleeing an attack from a mysterious bandaged figure, an obdurate everyman (Karra Elejalde) jumps into a time machine, which takes him just far enough into the past to unleash a cascade of twisting consequences. Black comic twist on time travel tropes driven by the protagonist’s headlong insistence on the wrongest available decisions.—RDL
Good
Baba Yaga (Film, Italy, Corrado Farina, 1973) Milan fashion photographer resists the advances of a witchy rich lady. Style-obsessed adaptation of Guido Crepax’s erotica comic Valentina with reality horror theme plays like a giallo where the black-gloved killer never shows up. CW: incidental 70s leftist Euro-racism.—RDL
Heartbreak Motel (Film, Indonesia, Angga Dwimas Sasongko, 2024) Traumatized movie star (Laura Basuki) married to insecure, undermining husband (Reza Rahadian) is somehow connected to mousy hotel maid pursued by hunky financier (Chicco Jerikho.) Showbiz melodrama with noirish undertones and fragmented puzzle structure shifts back to convention for its resolution.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: I Saw the TV Glow, September 5th, The Brutalist
February 11th, 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
Becky (Film, US, Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion, 2020) Sullen, grief-numbed teen (Lulu Wilson) awakens a talent for vengeance when a neo-Nazi prison escapee (Kevin James) and his confederates invade the family cottage. James makes a convincing heel turn in an economically drawn piece of elevated neo-exploitation.—RDL
Chasing Chasing Amy (Film, US, Sav Rodgers, 2023) Young queer filmmaker who credits the 1997 Kevin Smith film Chasing Amy as a literal life-saver from the effects of high school bullying examines its creation and the complicated position it holds as a work of LGBT+ representation. What could be simply a critical essay documentary with interviews and a personal perspective takes a couple of surprising, deeply emotional turns.—RDL
I Saw the TV Glow (Film, US, Jane Schoenbrun, 2024) In 1996, socially isolated teen Owen (Justice Smith) bonds with slightly older Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) over YA supernatural show The Pink Opaque. Absolutely crippling emotional realism grounds creeping reality horror; special shout-outs to Eric Yue’s cinematography, which looks far better than the budget allows, and the soundtrack of 2020s artists recording imaginary 90s songs.—KH
Mischief (Fiction, Charlotte Armstrong, 1950) Out of town hotel guests readying themselves for a prestigious banquet leave their 9 year old daughter with the wrong last-minute babysitter. Tense psychological thriller makes masterful use of incisively drawn multiple perspectives.—RDL
Red Rooms (Film, Canada, Pascal Plante, 2023) Techie fashion model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) becomes obsessed with the trial of a man accused of livestreaming the torture-murder of three girls to dark web “red rooms.” Plante shows us neither the gruesome murders nor Kelly-Anne’s motivation, depicting both by inference. The result is a film about obsession as obsession; Gariépy’s chilly control gives nothing away to the viewer but something to obsess about.—KH
September 5 (Film, Germany/US, Tim Fehlbaum, 2024) Greenhorn producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) takes over the ABC Sports control room on a slow day during the Munich Olympics of 1972, only to be the man on the button when terrorists kidnap the Israeli Olympic team. This news-process thriller revels in period analog technology, going so far as to rough up its own digital footage to look like 16mm film. Magaro anchors the movie with his harried performance, backed up by a superb Peter Sarsgaard as Roone Arledge and Leonie Benesch as a German office assistant pressed into increasingly critical roles.—KH
Sleep (Film, South Korea, Jason Yu, 2023) Expectant mother (Jung Yu-mi) seeks an extreme explanation when medical treatment fails to fix her actor husband’s (Lee Sun-kyun) dangerous, sudden onset sleepwalking. The pursuit of marital perfection becomes a nightmare of released repression in this claustrophobic ghost horror.—RDL
Terra Formars (Film, Japan, Takashi Miike, 2016) Crew of convicts and outsiders lands on a terraformed Mars to battle its population of giant humanoid cockroaches with their own bizarre bioengineered insect powers. In what might be blurbed as “body horror Power Rangers,” Miike maintains his commitment to heightening the absurdity of his manga adaptations.—RDL
Good
The Policeman’s Lineage (Film, South Korea, Lee Kyu-maan) Young officer (Choi Woo-sik), whose cop father warned him to avoid the family business, accepts an Internal Affairs undercover assignment to investigate the apparently corrupt head of an organized crime squad (Cho Jin-woong.) Well executed treatment of familiar material.—RDL
Ire-Inspiring
The Brutalist (Film, US, Brady Corbet, 2024) Arriving in America after surviving Europe’s horrors, a Bauhaus-trained Hungarian architect (Adrien Brody) accepts a commission from an overbearing, mercurial shipping magnate (Guy Pearce) to build a monumental community center in small town Pennsylvania. Miserabilist Vistavision drama of a tormented artist battling the Man to realize his vision continually asserts its importance, features a third act turn that literalizes its theme in the most trite and puerile manner possible, and finally uses the Holocaust to aggrandize its suffering Mary Sue protagonist.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nosferatu, Presence, MadS, Land of Bad
February 4th, 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
Dahomey (Film, France, Mati Dion, 2024) Documentary follows the repatriation of 26 key royal court artifacts captured during the conquest of Dahomey to what is now Benin. With the notable exception of searching narration in the booming supernatural voice of a kingly statue, takes a distanced, observational stance, relying on a student symposium to articulate the layers of ambivalence surrounding the items’ return.—RDL
Land of Bad (Film, US, William Eubank, 2024) When an anti-terrorist extraction mission in the Philippines goes south, an inexperienced signal operator (Liam Hemsworth) must fend for himself, with only the far-off voice of a maverick drone pilot (Russell Crowe) to guide him. Cleverly weaves contemporary drone warfare into the charging beats of a military action thriller, with affectionate characterizations that sharpen the stakes.—RDL
MadS (Film, France, David Moreau, 2024) Party boy Romain (Milton Riche) scores some indeterminate drugs and almost immediately enters an increasingly nightmarish horror that I shall forbear from describing further. So much of the delight and frisson of this film comes from discovering things partway through that I can only gesture at Moreau’s bravura direction, the startling camera work by Philip Lozano, and the riveting performance by Lucille Guillaume as Romain’s hard-done-by girlfriend Julie.—KH
The Man I Love (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1946) Live-for-the-moment singer (Ida Lupino) fends off the advances of a slick club owner (Robert Alda) to pursue a tormented ex-pianist (Bruce Bartlett.) Walsh, not a name one associates with the woman’s picture, adds noirish atmosphere and an empathy for the lead characters’ self-imposed outsiderness.—RDL
Nosferatu (Film, US, Robert Eggers, 2024) Intent on possessing his cosmically fated love (Lily-Rose Depp) the vampire Orlock (Bill Sarsgaard) lures her advancement-minded husband (Nicholas Hoult) to Romania to assist his relocation to their German home city. Lushly horrifying upsizing of the 1923 Murnau version is extremely faithful to its structure and motifs while also fixing its few key flaws.—RDL
Presence (Film, US, Stephen Soderbergh, 2024) Grieving teen (Callina Liang) at odds with her singleminded mom (Lucy Liu) and insensitive brother (Eddie Maday) heightens tensions when she describes eerie encounters in their new home. Naturalistic weird thriller observes family drama from the ghost’s POV.—RDL
Signs Preceding the End of the World (Fiction, Yuri Herrera, 2009) Self-possessed telephone operator travels from her remote Mexican village to the US in search of her brother. Spare, evocative portrayal of the migrant experience as mythic death and rebirth.—RDL
Good
Mr. Right (Film, US, Paco Cabezas, 2015) Intense but charming woman (Anna Kendrick) forms a rebound attachment to a quirky stranger (Sam Rockwell), incorrectly assuming that he’s doing a bit when he describes his activities as a rogue assassin. The leads’ action rom com star chemistry compensates for a choppy first act bearing the marks of editing demands from a panicked back office.—RDL
The Saint in London (Film, US/UK, John Paddy Carstairs, 1939) Visiting London, adventurer Simon Templar (George Sanders) meets plucky socialite Penny Parker (Sally Gray) and takes on criminal mastermind Bruno Lang (Henry Oscar). Although the script doesn’t really play up the Saint’s unique set of skills, Sanders lounges delightfully through the part and Gray and Oscar play well off him. Filmed in London, but indistinguishable from the RKO backlot. If you enjoy slightly lazy “thrillers” of the era, you’ll enjoy this one.—KH
Okay
Angel With the Iron Fists (Film, Hong Kong, Lo Wei, 1967) Agent 009 (Lily Ho) cozies up to criminal jeweler Tieh Hu (Ching Tang) to uncover and infiltrate the Dark Angels, a kind of Temu SPECTRE led by a mysterious Chief (Tina Chin-Fei). A Shaw Brothers post-Bond outing that launched a franchise despite a lackadaisical story randomly punctuated by fights, but I said Shaw Brothers already. Slow but fun if you’re in the mood for it, with one or two gonzo moments in its over two-hour runtime.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Star Trek Section 31, A Complete Unknown, and Shaw Brothers Bondmania
January 28th, 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
Paris Frills (Film, France, Jacques Becker, 1945) Womanizing couturier (Raymond Rouleau) pursues the young fiancee (Micheline Presle) of his friend and supplier (Jean Chevrier.) Melodrama brilliantly portrays a bygone fashion world on its way into noir territory, with a layer of piquant irony supplied by its unstated context as a film produced during the Nazi occupation. Aka Falbalas.—RDL
Recommended
The Beatle Bandit (Nonfiction, Nate Hendley, 2021) Peaceful Canada recoils in shock when a young bank armed robber’s 1964 raid on a neighborhood bank branch leads to a shootout on a quiet suburban Toronto street that leaves a hotheaded intervening civilian dead. Laudably restrained just-the-facts recounting of the crimes and punishment of Matthew Kerry Smith, a misfit with some sort of borderline mental illness whose nickname derived from the Beatle wig he wore to his most notorious holdup.—RDL
Destiny’s Son (Kiru) (Film, Japan, Kenji Misumi, 1962) Swordsman(Raizô Ichikawa) who has invented a heretical, unbeatable fighting stance is buffeted by the ill fate decreed for him at birth. Philosophical chanbara with an unsettling narrative structure and striking, graphic visual compositions.—RDL
Rivals Season 1 (Television, UK, Disney+, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, 2024) Sexy business machinations ensue when a superstar interviewer (Aidan Turner) ditches the BBC for a regional ITV franchise run by a tyrannical mogul (David Tennant) hoping to humiliate a womanizing, aristocratic cabinet minister (Alex Hassell.) Ensemble comic drama updates the 80s daytime soap to the streaming era with dimensioned characterizations and full-on nudity.—RDL
Good
A Complete Unknown (Film, US, James Mangold, 2024) Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) chafes at the restraints put on his art by avuncular Stalinist folkie Pete Seeger (Edward Norton). Yes it’s a jukebox biopic, with all the leaden notes that entails, but Chalamet manages to convey the joy of being an asshole genius, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez displays genuine onscreen chemistry with him, which is two points in its favor. Throw in a lovingly recreated early 60s lower Manhattan and Boyd Holbrook chewing scenery as Johnny Cash and that’s a Good right there even though I probably would have preferred a movie solely about the recording of Highway 61 Revisited.—KH
The Golden Buddha (Film, Hong Kong, Wei Lo, 1966) An unscheduled Bangkok layover and an accidental briefcase switch pits a two-fisted businessman (Paul Chang Chung) against the Skeleton Gang in pursuit of three linked Buddha statuettes. Part of Shaw Brothers’ bid to get in on Bondmania, this endearingly nutty spy romp doesn’t have any actual spies in it but does feature the lowest-stakes archvillain plot ever.—RDL
Mock Up on Mu (Film, US, Craig Baldwin, 2008) From his Mu base on the Moon in 2019, an exiled L. Ron Hubbard (Damon Packard) sends a memory-wiped Marjorie Cameron (Michelle Silva) to Earth to seduce defense contractor Lockheed Martin (Stoney Burke) and flip reclusive scientist Jack Parsons (Kal Spelletich) to his somewhat-incomprehensible plans. This collage film incorporates snippets of industrial film, advertisements, and pirated footage to string together its “Babalon Working sequel” story. The effect is delightfully hallucinatory and off-kilter, and probably Recommended for true fans of the subject matter, but too many bits don’t actually work or pay off for the un-Thelemated cineaste.—KH
Enjoyable Nonsense
Sea Devils (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1953) Unaware of her true mission, a wily smuggler (Rock Hudson) sneaks an adventurous woman (Yvonne De Carlo) into Napoleon’s France. Walsh’s rambunctious energy wrassles a visibly collapsing script, half hearty period adventure, half bondage-curious psychosexual portrait of an obsessive relationship, where the female lead advances the plot and her male counterpart obstructs it, into ironic watchability.—RDL
Okay
Laapataa Ladies (Film, India, Kiran Rao, 2023) A crowded train and traditional veils lead to a mix up for a new groom (Sparsh Shrivastav), who takes home someone else’s less than willing bride (Pratibha Ranta) and loses his own (Nitanshi Goel.) Ingratiating comic drama known for snaffling India’s Oscar nomination slot at the expense of the glowingly reviewed All We Imagine as Light.—RDL
A Study in Terror (Film, UK, James Hill, 1965) Sherlock Holmes (John Neville) and Dr. Watson (Donald Houston) investigate the Ripper murders. The first Holmes vs. Ripper film, and intended to be the first of a Holmes series; Neville gives excellent Rathbone-lite, and the script shows genuine attention to the Doyle canon. Robert Morley steals the picture as Mycroft and a young Judi Dench delights as the niece of a moody Whitechapel surgeon. But the story is basically arbitrary when it’s not inert and plodding, adding none of the weird touches later treatments did. Hill’s attempts to make the killings lurid seem both tepid and desperate.—KH
Not Recommended
Star Trek: Section 31 (Television, US, Paramount, 2025) Mirror Universe dictator turned club owner (Michelle Yeoh) gets pulled back into wetwork by a weirdo team of Federation spies seeking a mysterious doomsday weapon. If you’re thinking that Mission Impossible in the Star Trek universe starring Michelle Yeoh is a tough brief to screw up, the way to do it is to whipsaw between grimdark melodrama and stupid Whedonesque hijinks. Though billed as a retooling into a standalone movie, it absolutely remains the pilot to a show that wasn’t picked up.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Skeleton Crew, A Real Pain, and the Occult World of Song Collection
January 21st, 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
The Hop Pickers (Film, Czechoslovakia, Ladislav Rychman, 1964) As their high school class fulfills its summer duties as harvesters of the titular beer ingredient, a nonconforming intellectual (Vladimír Pucholt) competes with a virile striver (Milos Zavadil) for the attentions of an independent-minded beauty (Ivana Pavlová.) Infectiously charming swingin’ 60s musical comedy with a dissident text and gay subtext celebrates youth rebellion from the other side of the Iron Curtain.—RDL
Recommended
All You Need Is Death (Film, Ireland, Paul Duane, 2023) Two song collectors (Simone Collins and Charlie Maher) track down an ancient Irish song for its alchemical power but unleash a deadly curse. This occult world of folk song collection, with its selfish gurus and dodgy money-men, could fuel a whole Unknown Armies campaign. The great thing about this movie is that, even on its threadbare budget, it lives up to its terrific high concept and manages some genuine shocks along with the creeping horror.—KH
David Lynch: the Art Life (Film, US/Denmark, Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, 2016) Lynch works on his visual art and narrates the events of his life from boyhood to Eraserhead. Intimate arts documentary shows that his work’s layering of bucolic Americana and bubbling darkness is wholly autobiographical.—RDL
A Real Pain (Film, US, Jesse Eisenberg, 2024) In tribute to their recently deceased Holocaust survivor grandmother, two cousins, one (Eisenberg) uptight and settled, the other (Kieran Culkin ) gregarious but volatile, join a Jewish history tour in Poland. Culkin takes a star turn in a dialogue-driven indie dramedy that astutely refracts its two-hander structure through a chorus/ensemble.—RDL
The Return of Munchausen (Fiction, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, 1927) Deposited by a mischance in the early 20th century, the famed adventurer and fabulist Baron Hieronymus von Munchausen accepts a lucrative mission from the British Foreign Office to visit the USSR incognito and report back. Only a liar may tell the truth in this absurdist satire of the early Soviet Union, which went unpublished until glasnost.—RDL
Skeleton Crew Season 1 (Television, US, Jon Watts, 2024-2025) Quartet of hoverbike-riding kids on technologically sheltered coin-minting planet discover a buried spaceship, accidentally blasting off into danger, with a scheming pirate (Jude Law) as either their protector or exploiter. Fast-moving, structurally coherent, with new, interesting antagonists, recognizably in the setting but untethered to the Skywalker narrative line, and just plain fun, this show leaps over all the pitfalls of recent Star Wars television.—RDL
Good
The Accountant (Film, US, Gavin O’Connor, 2016) Genius forensic accountant on the autism spectrum (Ben Affleck) unleashes his hidden other side as an ultra-efficient killing machine when his latest client targets him and one of their own employees (Anna Kendrick) for elimination. Entertaining action thriller devotes a surprising amount of B-plot time to its hero’s backstory, as if setting up a series, which it has finally spawned, with a second installment due in 2025.—RDL
A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery Season 1 (Television, UK, BBC, Michael Chapman, 1987) Adapts three of the four Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries featuring his love light, mystery novelist Harriet Vane, the most successful self-insert in fiction. Harriet Walter is note-perfect as Vane; Edward Petherbridge makes the most of his strong physical resemblance to Wimsey, though he plays Lord Peter less energetically than Ian Carmichael did. The adaptations start very strong (Strong Poison), then good with flashes of greatness (Have His Carcase), but end with an odiously cut and compressed Gaudy Night missing nearly all the Oxford business that elevates the source novel.—KH
Roman Special Forces & Special Ops (Nonfiction, Simon Elliott, 2023) After defining his “special forces” terms (elite, selective, special skills and esprit de corps, operate beyond friendly lines, deniable) Elliott runs through a number of candidate forces in the Roman army from late Republic to early Byzantium, concluding that only the exploratores truly fit the bill. More details on their (few) known missions, and less padded history of the Empire and its foes, would have improved the book, but it’s good to see the comprehensive assessment.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: New Donnie Yen, Black Doves, A Ghost Story for Christmas, and Gender-Flipped Conan in the Bardo Thodol
January 14th, 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
Day of Anger (Film, Italy, Tonino Valerii, 1968) To get out of a town that treats him as a wretched outcast, a young man who has been practicing his fast draw (Giuliano Gemma) seeks apprenticeship under a cynical gunslinger (Lee van Cleef) ruthlessly pursuing an old debt. Offers unusually strong characterization and dialogue for a spaghetti western, a subgenre that typically paints with broader strokes.—RDL
A Ghost Story for Christmas Series 1 (Television, UK, BBC, Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1971-1978) Shot on film, not videotape, these horror shorts share a rich, haunted look and (with the exception of the final film, made without Clark’s involvement) feel. Of the eight shorts, five are solidly Recommended: the first four M.R. James adaptations and “The Signalman” (based on the Dickens story). “The Ash Tree” lets its timeslip get away from it, although the spider-things are truly horrendous; “Stigma” is a one-note folk horror shaggy dog, and “The Ice House” (the only Okay one in the batch) suffers from truly bizarre line readings and a distinct lack of ghost. —KH
She is Conann (Film, France, Bertrand Mandico, 2023) Guided by a dog-headed psychopomp (Elina Löwensohn), the legendary avatar of slaughter Conann the Barbarian (Françoise Brion) goes on an afterlife recapitulation of her past personae: traumatized teen (Claire Duburcq), implacable warrior (Christa Théret), 80s Bronx scenester (Sandra Parfait), near-future dictator (Agata Buzek) and death-seeking decadent (Nathalie Richard.) Surreal bardo thodol odyssey invokes the spirits of Méliès and Greenaway as it queers the tropes and characters of Robert E. Howard.—RDL
The Score (Fiction, Richard Stark, 1964) Master thief Parker overlooks initial objections to run an operation to knock off an entire North Dakota mining town. An original heist premise provides the foundation for an extra existential installment of the hardboiled realist crime series.—RDL
The Stool Pigeon (Film, Hong Kong, Dante Lam, 2010) Guilt-ridden cop (Nick Cheung) presses an ex-con street racer (Nicolas Tse) to join and inform on a ruthless robbery crew. Bathed in the last vestiges of Hong Kong neon, this crime drama brings hard action and harder fatalistic melodrama.—RDL
The Prosecutor (Film, China/HK, Donnie Yen, 2024) Veteran cop turned rookie prosecutor (Donnie Yen) detects a wider conspiracy in the case of a poor young man charged with receiving a package of cocaine. Martial arts meets aggressively sincere courtroom drama in a star vehicle that begins to question whether anyone, including Donnie Yen, should be making Donnie Yen still get kicked around like this.—RDL
Vertical (Fiction, Cody Goodfellow, 2023) Traumatized urban explorer rejoins his former crew under duress for one last exploit: climbing Moscow’s Korova Tower before its opening. Goodfellow’s superb horror reflexes energize this relatively straightforward thriller, wringing real suspense from standard beats of paranoia, disaster, and betrayal.—KH
Good
Black Doves Season 1 (Television, UK, Netflix, Joe Barton, 2024) When Helena’s (Keira Knightley) lover is killed, she risks her position as a spy planted on (and wife of) the UK Defence Minister (Andrew Buchan) to hunt down those responsible. Let us be frank with one another: unless it’s a real dog’s breakfast, “Keira Knightley spy thriller” is going to get at least a Good from me, assuming Keira both smiles and shoots people. Sterner critics might praise Ben Whishaw’s steady performance as her hit-man protector, or enjoy the occasional descent into Ritchified low comedy, but they would probably also point out that none of it is remotely plausible, tactically or even emotionally.—KH
The Entity (Film, US, Sidney J. Furie, 1982) Targeted by a rapist poltergeist, beleaguered single mom (Barbara Hershey) seeks help from an intense doctor (Ron Silver) and then a team of earnest parapsychologists. Adapted from his own novel by Frank de Felitta and blithely misrepresenting a real case, this psychotoxic dose of eliptonic horror gains disorienting power from its mix of disreputable subject matter and mainstream, naturalistic presentation. The premise is the content warning.—RDL
Eye of the Devil (Film, UK, J. Lee Thompson, 1966) When her husband the Marquis de Monfaucon (David Niven) returns suddenly to his ancestral chateau to deal with a drought killing the vineyards, his wife Catherine (Deborah Kerr) follows and discovers strange cult goings-on. Although its momentum suffers from the last-minute reshoots (Kerr replacing an injured Kim Novak; Thompson was the fourth director on the project), the resulting dreamlike imagery and discordance keep things well and truly uncanny. Sharon Tate and David Hemmings as weird witch-twins, meanwhile, strangely imply that modernism is the new paganism.—KH
Shopworn (Film, US, Nick Grinde, 1932) When a charming waitress (Barbara Stanwyck) and an ardent med student (Regis Toomey) inform his wealthy mother (Clara Blandick) of their wish to marry, she goes to deranged lengths to separate them. Romantic melodrama burns with good old fashioned class animosity.—RDL
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
Recommended
Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World (Nonfiction, Tim Flight, 2021) Literary analysis of Old English texts illuminates role monsters such as dragons, demons, wolves, Grendel, and whales played in the Anglo-Saxon mind as diabolical boundary guardians.—RDL
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
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Heretic, The Beekeeper, and 80s Polish SF Satire
December 17th, 2024 | 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 Ark Before Noah (Nonfiction, Irving Finkel, 2014) After a snappy 101 on cuneiform tablets, the author, a noted British Museum curator, examines versions of the Babylonian flood myth later adapted into the Biblical story. Potentially dense material elucidated with self-deprecating wit and sweeping certitude.—RDL
Duckweed (Film, China, Han Han, 2017) Comatose after an accident caused by his beef with his father (Eddie Peng), a race car driver (Chao Deng) travels back in time to the months before his birth, meeting the mother he never knew (Zanilia Zhao) and a sweeter version of his dad. A light touch quietly elevates this dramedy of camaraderie and melancholy.—RDL
Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes (Film, Poland, Piotr Szulkin, 1985) Penal space program sends dissident to a planet of authoritarian sleazeballs, where he is expected to commit a spectacular crime justifying his scheduled human sacrifice. Scathing allegorical satire with Gilliamesque production design.—RDL
Heretic (Film, US, Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, 2024) LDS missionaries, one (Chloe East) bubbly, the other (Sophie Thatcher) reserved, step into the parlor of a hyper-verbal eccentric (Hugh Grant), who has prepared for their arrival with traps both theological and physical. Claustrophobic debate horror in which Grant, playing a character from his current villain phase who thinks he’s as charming as Grant in his leading man days, pounces on every morsel of the script, with East and Thatcher responding in kind.—RDL
Panique (Film, France, Julien Duvivier, 1946) Slick criminal (Paul Bernard) and his devoted, newly sprung girlfriend (Viviane Romance) scheme to pin a murder on an unpopular neighbor (Michel Simon.) Simon’s poignant performance as an unloved outsider anchors this dark tale of the dangers of community, based on a Georges Simenon novel.—RDL
Red Dog (Film, US, Casey Pinkston, 2019) Nashville songwriter interviews his mom, a freewheeling raconteur, and her erstwhile running buddies about their time as strippers, bouncers and hangers-on at Oklahoma’s notorious Red Dog Saloon in the oil-rich, hard-drugging 1980s. Warm-hearted documentary portrait of a wild scene that could have killed a lot more of its participants than it did.—RDL
Good
The Beekeeper (Film, US, David Ayer, 2024) When connected cyberscammers impoverish his only friend, beekeeper Adam Clay (Jason Statham) sets out to protect the hive by arson and mayhem. Raffi Simonian’s insane opening titles write a check no movie could cash, but Ayer and Statham try their best, producing some of the finest action tableaux of the century. Sadly the FBI B-plot is content to run the numbers from a much less bee-obsessed (and therefore worse) movie.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: New Neal Stephenson, An Aptly Named Action Movie, and a Classic M. R. James Adaptation
December 10th, 2024 | 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
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Film, US, Tyler Taormina, 2024) In the long-gone days of the late flip phone era, an extended Italian American clan gathers for a raucous holiday celebration. Observational ensemble drama evokes the loving chaos of family events and a nostalgia unstuck in time. Producer Michael Cera appears in a small role as a befuddled policeman.—RDL
Destroy All Neighbors (Film, US, Josh Forbes, 2024) Put-upon sound engineer (Jonah Ray) spirals into hallucination and murder when the EDM beats jackhammering from the apartment of his grotesque weirdo new neighbor (Alex Winter) interfere with the creation of his prog rock masterpiece. Witty, amiable gore comedy shambles to the beat of its own oddball drummer.—RDL
Kill (Film, India, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, 2023) Commando (Lakshya) boards a train seeking to elope with his sweetheart (Tanya Maniktala) only to wind up fighting his way through an entire bandit clan. Though this aptly named revenge actioner leverages the limitations of confined space fight choreography, its chief innovation is to show the emotional impact of the death toll on the villains as well as the heroes.—RDL
Polostan (Fiction, Neal Stephenson, 2024) Russian-American Communist cowgirl Aurora (aka Dawn Rae) returns to the Soviet Union to assist the Revolution as a spy. Told in overlapping flashbacks from 1919 to 1933, running through the Bonus Army March and the Century of Progress World’s Fair among other things, this first volume of a trilogy is a peak Stephenson blend of background crunch and driven characters.—KH
Support the Girls (Film, US, Andrew Bujalski, 2018) On a bad day in an Austin Hooters-style restaurant, accumulating crises test the unrewarded competence of beleaguered manager Lisa (Regina Hall.) Observational workplace ensemble drama finds a transcendent nobility in the neverending struggle against everyday bullshit.—RDL
Whistle and I’ll Come To You (Television, UK, Jonathan Miller, 1968) Fusty academic (Michael Hordern) staying in a Suffolk hotel digs up an old whistle that tests his disbelief in the supernatural. Assigning himself the daunting task of rendering M. R. James prose cinematic, Miller zeroes in on the very English auditory realm of non- and sub-verbal utterances and mumblings. First aired as part of the Omnibus anthology series, this paved the way for the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series, the early installments of which North Americans can now find on Shudder.—RDL
Good
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Film, US, Guy Ritchie, 2024) Desperate to break the U-boats’ stranglehold on Britain, M (Cary Elwes) recruits maverick Major March-Philipps (Henry Cavill) and his team to scuttle the Nazi supply ship in neutral Fernando Po. Rousing action film never quite manages to hold or maintain tension (never Ritchie’s strong suit, Wrath of Man notwithstanding) but looks great throughout (Ed Wild shoots in a lively supersaturated 70s palette) and zips along through a two-hour run time.—KH
Okay
Abigail (Film, US, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, 2024) Professional heisters (Dan Stevens, Melissa Barrera, et al.) snatch a little girl for ransom and take her to an old mansion chosen by their client’s cut-out (Giancarlo Esposito) but things aren’t as they seem. The first surprise (she’s a vampire!) is revealed in the trailer and the poster; the film takes too long to get to the second, and really could use a third one to pick up the slack. I enjoyed Stevens and Barrera, and am a sucker for the premise, but this is a high Okay at best.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Gladiator II, Only Murders, and a Paean to Tackiness
November 26th, 2024 | 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
Flipside (Film, US, Christopher Wilca, 2023) Gen X documentarian whose career has sidetracked into a lucrative, family-supporting gig directing commercials assembles footage from incomplete projects about a moldering hometown record store, a blocked writer, Ira Glass’ midlife crisis dance show, and dying jazz photographer Herman Leonard into a profound and challenging meditation on the tangled relationship between creative ambition and personal happiness.—RDL
Hansan: Rising Dragon (Film, South Korea, Kim Han-Min, 2022) Having struck a surprise blow against the invading Japanese navy with a new, terrifying ramming vessel, cool-headed Admiral Yi (Park Hae-Il) presses to turn back their assault. Tactics, espionage and internal maneuvering precede a thrilling second half of naval warfare in a huge production with a sprawling cast. If you’re wondering why Choi-Min Sik has been replaced by a much younger actor, this is a prequel, not a sequel, to 2014’s The Admiral: Roaring Currents. The character is again recast in the trilogy’s final installment, 2023’s Noryang: Deadly Sea.—RDL
A Murder at the End of the World (Television, US, Hulu, Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij, 2023) Reclusive billionaire Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) invites true-crime writer Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) and eight other guests to his isolated Icelandic hotel for an earth-saving summit, but someone murders activist artist Bill Farrah (Harris Dickinson), also Darby’s ex. An immense amount of hugger-mugger surrounds this straightforward classic mystery plot; Corrin’s superbly natural acting successfully grounds both the genre and cyber-wow elements.—KH
Only Murders in the Building Season 4 (Television, US, Hulu, Steve Martin & John Hoffman, 2024) When someone shoots Sazz (Jane Lynch), Charles Haden-Savage’s (Steve Martin) stuntwoman, the podcasting trio lurches into action, complicated by the movie being made from Season 1 of their show. Although a good raft of B-listers try their best to keep the “movie madness” subplot raucous, Melissa McCarthy absolutely steals the season as Charles’ sister. The mystery is also surprisingly good, and interestingly misdirected.—KH
Repast (Film, Japan, Mikio Naruse, 1951) The surprise extended stay of her work-worn husband’s (Ken Uehara) flighty niece (Yukiko Shimazaki) prompts a disappointed woman (Setsuko Hara) to reconsider the state of her marriage. Subtly observed domestic drama finds the tensions beneath the surface of everyday life.—RDL
Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have To Offer (Nonfiction, Rax King, 2021) Memoiristic essays juxtapose the author’s past headlong pursuit of sex and love with disregarded works of popular culture ranging from Sex and the City and the Josie and the Pussycats movie to Creed and The Sims. Emotional depth and rueful insight concealed by a thin veneer of superficiality.—RDL
Good
All the Moons (Film, Spain, Igor Legarreta, 2021) A vampire girl (Haizea Carneros) separated from her undead protector (Itziar Ituño) in the 19th century Basque region attempts to live among humans. In its effort to remain beautiful and tasteful this Basque-language gothic drama also winds up keeping its distance from the situation and characters:—RDL
Gladiator II (Film, US, Ridley Scott, 2024) After the Roman general Acacius (Pedro Pascal) captures his Numidian city, enslaved gladiator Hanno (Paul Mescal) vows revenge. Denzel Washington’s scheming courtier Macrinus tries to make this movie more than just “Gladiator but with two evil emperors,” and his scenes pop with brio. Sadly nobody thought to make him the A-plot instead of retelling the first film, and the comparison does Mescal no favors. Roman history buffs be warned: this movie does not end with Elagabalus taking power.—KH
Not Recommended
Footprints on the Moon (Film, Italy, Luigi Bazzoni, 1975) Seeking an explanation for three days of missing time, a tense translator (Florinda Balkan) travels to an off-season resort town. A compelling vibe, bolstered by Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography can’t overcome this existential mystery’s weak, circular clue structure and disappointingly obvious conclusion.—RDL
