Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Flash, DC Super-Pets, and Thai Penanggalan Romance
June 20th, 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
Carlos (Television, France/Germany, Canal+, Olivier Assayas, 2010) Aspiring terrorist commander Ilich Ramirez (Edgar Ramirez) takes the code name ‘Carlos’ as he rises to celebrity in the 1970s. Assayas plays the standard biopic story – big dreams, meteoric ascent, hubris, fall – under a syncopated thriller beat in three long episodes peaking with the bravura Episode 2 hijacking of the OPEC summit in Vienna. Edgar Ramirez wonderfully inhabits the arrogant, charismatic blowhard with an inner conviction that fools himself and sometimes even the viewer. –KH
DC League of Super-Pets (Film, US, Jared Stern, 2022) After eating green kryptonite, Superman’s dog Krypto (Dwayne Johnson) must lead a team of shelter pets empowered by orange kryptonite against Luthor’s former guinea pig Lulu (Kate McKinnon). A sweet story interspersed with plenty of cool fights, with a more-distinct-than-normal animation style: seems like a good recipe for a superhero movie. Standouts include McKinnon (of course) and Keanu Reeves’ pitch-perfect petulant Batman. Kudos for including the Golden Age Flash’s old backup feature Merton the turtle (a wonderful Natasha Lyonne), and I assume Streaky has been saved for the sequel. –KH
Donbass (Film, Ukraine, Sergei Loznitsa, 2018) Vignettes depict Eastern Ukraine’s descent during the 2014 separatist war into a grotesque version of everyday life intermittently interrupted by checkpoints, shakedowns and artillery barrages. Pitiless long takes portray a society coarsened by conflict and threadbare jingoism.—RDL
Inhuman Kiss (Film, Thailand, Sitisiri Mongkolsiri, 2019) In wartime rural Thailand, a nurse’s assistant (Phantira Pipityakorn) who ought to be deciding between her two potential boyfriends instead worries she’s turning into a krasue, the local cousin to the penanggalan. Impeccably localized horror romance provides much-needed representation for cephalic monsters.—RDL
Our Twisted Hero (Film, South Korea, Jong-Won Park, 1992) A man recalls the year he spent as the new kid in a rural school under his fifth grade class president’s bullying tyranny. Emotionally potent political allegory features Choi Min-Sik as an idealistic teacher.—RDL
Good
Fifth Avenue Girl (Film, US, Gregory La Cava, 1939) A sweet-natured industrialist (Walter Connolly) shakes up his neglectful family by installing a straight-talking gal (Ginger Rogers) in his household as an apparent paramour. Agreeable shot at turning the director’s earlier hit My Man Godfrey into a repeatable formula.—RDL
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (Film, US, Guy Ritchie, 2023) Mastermind Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) assembles a team led by superspy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) to recover “the Handle” from sleazy arms-dealing billionaire Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). This intermittently fun flick feels exactly like somebody hired Guy Ritchie to make the fourth installment/soft reboot of a failing spy franchise. Hugh Grant and Aubrey Plaza (as the new hacker on the team) alternate stealing scenes, and Jason Statham hits people in well-lit exotic locations. (Mostly their throats.) –KH
Okay
The Flash (Film, US, Andy Muschietti, 2023) Against Bruce Wayne’s (Ben Affleck) advice, a traumatized Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) decides to run back in time and change history to save his own parents, but instead creates a timeline with no superheroes but Batman (Michael Keaton). Never has a movie run away from its interesting premise this fast, taking refuge in arbitrary ever-changing time travel rules rather than confront the question it purports to ask. Ezra Miller’s acting against Ezra Miller (as the other timeline’s younger goofier Allen) is actually good, but of course it’s wasted in pursuit of a nonsense dilemma. Despite the truly godawful CGI, Keaton and Sasha Calle as Supergirl narrowly bash this morass into Okay territory. –KH
Yaksha: Ruthless Operations (Film, South Korea, Hyeon Na, 2022) Seeking a career comeback, an unyielding prosecutor (Park Hae-soo) accepts a mission to travel to a spy-ridden Chinese industrial town to report back to NIS HQ on a team of rogue agents headed by a no-shits-given veteran black operative (Sol Kyung-gu.) Slick but passionless action thriller brings back the Japanese as default villains.—RDL
Not Recommended
The Mad Miss Manton (Film, US, Leigh Jason, 1938) Aided by a gaggle of fellow daffy socialites, a rich prankster (Barbara Stanwyck) sleuths a murder case, to the smitten consternation of a handsome newspaperman (Henry Fonda.) Six screenwriters broke from what I presume to be heavy martini consumption to quickly dash off the script’s nonthreatening hijinks.—RDL
