Ken and Robin Consume Media: Star Trek, Yellowjackets, and Ma Dong Seok Slapping Yet More Dudes

August 22nd, 2023 | 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

Accident Man (Film, UK, Jesse V. Johnson, 2018) Cold-hearted hitman (Scott Adkins) traces the death of his pregnant ex to his own colorful assassination gang. Skillfully choreographed and staged martial arts flick takes its time to establish its characters and their relationships.—RDL

The Round Up (South Korea, Sang-yong Lee, 2022) Burly police lieutenant Ma Seok-do (Ma Dong Seok aka Don Lee) is back, this time on the trail of an expat kidnapper who has been killing his fellow Korean nationals in Vietnam. Like many sequels, this leans into self-aware comedy, but does so without sacrificing smart police procedural plotting and the crunching ass-beatings we’ve signed on for.—RDL

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 (Television, US, Paramount+, Akiva Goldsman & Henry Alonso Myers, 2023) The shadows of wars past and future hang over Pike and the Enterprise crew as they continue their interstellar exploration mission. Though thrown off-balance by three comic change-of-pace episodes in a ten episode season, the show keeps its focus on procedural problem-solving and navigates clear of a sophomore slump.—RDL

Yellowjackets Season 1 (Television, US, Showtime, Ashley Lyle & Bart Nickerson & Jonathan Lisco, 2021-2022) A blackmail scheme and a likely murder provoke unwanted recollections for a group of women (Melanie Lynskey, Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Tawny Cypress) who as members of a high school soccer team were stranded after a plane crash and did some terrible things. It’s a testament to our era of siloed culture that this tense, funny double ensemble piece, which is popular and much-talked about, could so clearly establish itself as folk horror from episode one yet gain comparatively little mindshare among genre nerds.—RDL

Good

Anonymous Club (Film, Australia, Danny Cohen, 2019) Impressionistic documentary depicts singer songwriter Courtney Barnett as she struggles with self-doubt and depression on the road and at home. You’ll learn more about the subject from her songs than in this diffuse portrayal, but it does portray the outwardly uninteresting life of a prolific artist and closes on a profound bit at the end.—RDL

Okay

Extraction 2 (Film, US, Sam Hargrave, 2023) Not actually dead after the first film, self-loathing commando Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) returns to bust his sister-in-law (Tinatin Dalikashvili) out of a Georgian prison. Golshifteh Farahani has a little bit more to do this time out as Rake’s handler, and the pseudo-single-take prison break is almost too lavishly violent, but the rest of the film grinds into messy predictability, losing the tension and tang that made the first one mostly kind of work. –KH