Ken and Robin Consume Media: Play Dirty, Short Spy Stories, Livestreaming Horror, and Meta-Reacher

October 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

Black Angel (Film, US, Roy William Neill, 1946) To clear her wayward husband of a death row murder rap, a loyal wife (June Vincent) teams with the victim’s alcoholic songwriter ex (Dan Duryea) to get close to their prime suspect (Peter Lorre.) Cornell Woolrich adaptation ticks along as slightly off-kilter for its first two acts, then spins into full nightmare noir.—RDL

The Calder & Behrens Stories (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1962-1981) Calder and Behrens, both middle-aged British WWII veterans, do “distasteful” jobs for a special counterintelligence committee using a combination of fussy brio and unfussy brutality. Perhaps the hardest genre in short fiction to pull off is the espionage short, and Gilbert succeeds virtually every time at bat. Only when read in rapid succession do the stories seem even slightly formulaic, but good luck reading one short and not immediately inhaling both volumes.—KH

Freeway (Film, US, Matthew Bright, 1996) When cops haul off her crackhead mom (Amanda Plummer) and stepdad, an irrepressibly survival-minded at-risk youth (Reese Witherspoon) hitchhikes to Grandma’s house and is picked up by the sinister Dr. Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland.) Fairy tale retold as blackly comic juvenile delinquent flick derives its charge from the contradictions between the director’s gleeful midnight movie impulses and the absolute commitment of its deeply stacked cast.—RDL

GonJiam: Haunted Asylum (Film, South Korea, Jung Bum-shik, 2018) Click-hungry college age ghost hunters livestream their illegal exploration of a derelict mental hospital. Familiar premise skillfully executed, for example by cleverly establishing how the characters can be shooting their found footage from every possible angle.—RDL

Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery (Film, Canada, Ally Pankiw, 2025) Documentary traces the origins, explosive growth, and loving vibes of Sarah McLachlan’s late 90s feminist touring festival. Focuses primarily on the show’s emotional impact on artists and audiences, while laudably finding time to depict it as a business enterprise.—RDL

Reacher Said Nothing (Nonfiction, Andy Martin, 2015) Martin, a Cambridge lecturer in French literature, watches thriller author Lee Child from the first keystroke to the last as he writes Reacher novel number 20, Make Me. An extremely interesting look at one writer’s process made even more interesting by Martin’s simmering undertone of flailing to justify his own project to himself. Reacher would never.—KH

Good

KPop Demon Hunters (Film, US, Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025) Demon-hunting kpop trio Huntr/x (Arden Cho, et al.), accelerate their project of locking demons away from human souls, leading the demon lord Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) to retaliate with his own boy band Saja Boys (Ahn Hyo-seop, et al.). Delightful animation and catchy songs do the necessary in this somewhat rote urban fantasy story that could use a skoosh more violence and horror to cut the anodyne flavor.—KH

The Last of Us Season 2 (Television, US, Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann, 2025) A shocking event sends Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and her new ride-or-die (Isabela Merced) to Seattle on a mission of vengeance. With a high level of execution, this downbeat post-apocalyptic western took me to a place I did not particularly want to go, leaving me with the feeling that the filmmakers chose to punish the audience for a characters’ sins .—RDL

Play Dirty (Film, US, Shane Black, 2025) Master thief Parker (Mark Wahlberg) assembles a crew including regular sidekick Grofeld (LaKeith Stanfield) when an accomplice who betrayed his last crew (Rosa Salazar) points him to a treasure taken from a shipwreck. Terrible Parker movie; kinda fun Shane Black movie.—RDL

Okay

Play Dirty (Film, US, Shane Black, 2025) Heist planner Parker (Mark Wahlberg) survives betrayal by freedom fighter Zen (Rosa Salazar) and recruits his old crew including Grofield (Lakeith Stanfield) and Ed Mackey (Keegan-Michael Key) to get his own back. Ridiculously awful CGI in an early scene sets the low bar for this clunker, which in addition to miscasting Parker decides to make him Dortmunder to boot. Flashes of cleverness persist, annoyingly.—KH

Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City (Film, Japan, Takashi Miike, 2010) The schoolteacher (Shô Aikawa) who once saved the world from alien parasites as a striped costumed hero resurfaces as an amnesiac in the grim police state future of 2025. Sequel dives right into freaky tongue-in-cheek imagery without a pause to shape the narrative.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Wednesday, Edgar Allan Poe, and a Murky Found Footage Reveal

October 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.

Recommended

18×2 Beyond Youthful Days (Film, Taiwan/Japan, Michihito Fujii, 2024) Ousted from the company he founded, a Taiwanese video game designer takes a trip to Japan, meandering his way to the home town of the girl he loved half his life ago. If you’re going to spin an essential plot point around Shunji Iwai’s 1995 Pinnacle Love Letter, you’d best deliver a beautiful, evanescent drama, a challenge Fujii more than meets in this exploration of travel and memory.—RDL

Devo (Film, US, Chris Smith, 2025) Arts documentary profiles DEVO, the band who took a Dada sensibility hardened in the Kent State massacre and the industrial dolor of Akron OH and briefly managed to inject it into the pop culture mainstream through such delivery systems  as Warner Brothers Records, SNL, MTV, and The Merv Griffin Show. Freedom from choice, it’s what we want.—RDL

La Dolce Vita (Film, Italy, Federico Fellini, 1960) Tabloid journalist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) spends a week in his native environment, the celebrity party scene of Rome, and finds himself dissatisfied. Lush and beautiful, this episodic film allows Mastroianni’s layered acting to convey his character’s emotional journey; a stellar supporting cast fills out this slice of the sweet life as Fellini’s story adds the amaro. Vital if not quite transcendent, this must-watch remained on my list of unseen shame for far too long.—KH

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait (Film, Canada, Adrian Langley, 2025) Antique dealer Whitlock (Michael Swatton) interests old-soul artist Ava (Pragya Shail) almost as much as his oval portrait interests area thief Julian (Paul Thomas). Adaptation of the Poe short-short expands in the direction of crime and melodrama, with a nicely satisfying ghost story underneath both. The score by Andrew Morgan Smith perfectly evokes the mood of this Hammer-Hallmark blend that plays out like the 1960s B-pictures it’s modeled on.—KH

Poison in Jest (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1932) Visiting old friends in Pennsylvania, detective sidekick Jeff Marle discovers a house full of deadly pranks, secrets, and (soon) a serial poisoner. Carr lays on the atmosphere thick in this breathing-space novel written the year before he launched his Gideon Fell series. Not as polished as his later masterpieces, but featuring surprisingly strong characterization for Carr.—KH

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Film, US, Jeff Rowe & Kyler Spears, 2023) Adolescent humanoid martial arts chelonians (Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon) who yearn for acceptance in the world of humans battle a monstrous fly (Ice Cube) who plans to destroy it. Kinetic animation and an innovative visual style bring fresh energy to the franchise. I especially loved that the action scene featuring Splinter, voiced by Jackie Chan, follows the rules of a classic Jackie fight.—RDL

Tribe (Film, US, Dan J. Asma, 2025) Retired professor Devon Adams (Asma) heads into the Cujamaca Mountains outside San Diego in search of an explanation for his cult-raised best friend’s suicide. Asma cuts big-budget trailers as his day job, which makes this one of the more effective found-footage films even as the editing is so good that it can break suspension of disbelief. The big reveal is appropriately murky, conspiratorial, and apocalyptic, and Asma picks powerful visuals that overlap with the story suggestively without drowning it.—KH

When the Tenth Month Comes (Film, Vietnam, Đặng Nhật Minh, 1984) Undone with grief on learning that her husband has been killed in action in a border clash with Khmer Rouge Cambodia, a rice farmer enlists a schoolteacher to help conceal his death from family and neighbors. Heartfelt drama with touches of mystical realism examines the dynamics of trauma suppression.—RDL

Wednesday Season 2 (Television, US, Netflix, Alfred Gough & Miles Millar, 2025) Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) trains her knack for investigation on undoing her psychic vision of werewolf roommate Enid’s impending death. Avoids the sophomore slump by devoting more screen time to the perfectly cast other classic Addams characters and with a tightly plotted arc rarely seen in serialized streaming.—RDL

Good

Beyond the Drumlins (Film, US, Dan Bowhers, 2025) Archaeology professor Rust (Michael Kowalski) leads four others into the woods to find an archaeological site for next semester’s dig. Wisely downplaying interpersonal drama, the film depends on the scares to work, which is great until you discover that it’s all the same scare over and over. Some of the segments very effectively spook, and the mysterious structure in the woods is an all-time irruption that absolutely sells it, but as a whole the film never reaches takeoff.—KH

The Bowstring Murders (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1933) When the eccentric and awful Lord Rayle is found strangled with a bowstring in his own armor museum, alcoholic criminologist John Gaunt is called in to solve the case. A borderline locked-room mystery solved with Carr’s traditional brio, but the setting is too over-the-top to be believable, and Carr doesn’t put in the work to keep the cast real enough for us to really care who the killer is.—KH

The Harbor Men (Film, US, Casey Malone, 2025) During the outbreak of a hallucinogenic virus at the docks, vaccine denier Steven Dorre (Aidan White) retrieves a mystical musical instrument from a murder scene. For a while, Malone’s inventiveness and creepy visual sensibilities carry you along, but whatever payoff you thought was coming peters out in mysticism instead of horror.—KH

Okay

Maggie Moore(s) (Film, US, John Slattery, 2023) Widowed small town police chief (Jon Hamm) investigating the murders of two women with the same name tentatively romances the next door neighbor (Tina Fey) of the dumbass perpetrator (Micah Stock.) Nick Mohammed stands out in this blend of rom com and Coenesque neo-noir with his atypical delivery in a stock character role, the deputy who acts as Hamm’s confidant / sidekick.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: One Battle After Another, Classic Noir, Chinese Neo-Noir

September 30th, 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

One Battle After Another (Film, US, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Wake-and-bake fugitive ex-bomber (Leonardo di Caprio) and his teen daughter (Chase Infiniti) flee the heavily resourced pursuit of a weirdo anti-terrorism officer (Sean Penn) who once had a perverse relationship with her revolutionary mother (Teyana Taylor.) Anderson trains his cinematic control on the conspiratorial pursuit thriller, satirically tuned to the contemporary moment, with Jonny Greenwood’s restless percussive score its percussive, insistent timekeeper.—RDL

Recommended

Alias Nick Beal (Film, US, John Farrow, 1949) Crusading district attorney Joseph Foster (Thomas Mitchell) offers to sell his soul to get the goods on a racket boss; fixer Nick Beal (Ray Milland) appears to help him rise to the governor’s mansion. Milland is superbly smooth as the Devil in this rare occult noir, shot with foggy menace by Lionel Lindon. Standout sequence: Nick Beal rehearsing fallen woman Audrey Totter in her script of seduction, two consecutive readings of the dialogue showing supernatural menace and emotional depth.—KH [Note: For this Noir City KARCM I am reviewing some films I saw three weeks ago that I’ve already seen, but that I haven’t covered in these hallowed pixels before. After all, the whole point is to point you beloved readers to good movies.]

Cry Danger (Film, US, Robert Parrish, 1951) When a sudden eyewitness (Richard Erdman) springs him from a prison sentence for a robbery rap, Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell) goes in search of the money to clear his still-imprisoned partner. Rhonda Fleming plays the woman on the outside and William Conrad the oily fixer in this perfectly curdled bit of postwar noir in which the only light remains the easy comradeship of its war veteran characters.—KH

The Fallen Bridge (Film, China, Yu Li, 2022) When her engineer father’s remains are discovered in a crumbled support column of a collapsed bridge he was working on at the time of his disappearance, a stunned college student (Sichun Ma) teams with a wary fugitive (Karry Wang) to investigate. Gritty crime drama indicts official corruption in its way to a thriller conclusion.—RDL

One Battle After Another (Film, US, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Burnout bomber Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and psycho colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) seek the favors of revolutionary Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), and then custody of her daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). Anderson’s groove meshes perfectly with early-Pynchon interlocking conspiracies against the backdrop of the Eternal Seventies we seem to be stuck in, and his handling of bombings, chases, and chaos is as sure-handed as his depiction of gormless fuckups. Jonny Greenwood turns in another terrific score, as well.—KH

Phantom Lady (Film, US, Robert Siodmak, 1944) Besotted secretary Carol (Ella Raines) searches for the unknown woman who can alibi her boss Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) for the murder of his wife. Terrific adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich novel kicks into high gear when Scott’s missing best friend Marlow (Franchot Tone) shows up to help. Don’t miss Elisha Cook Jr’s orgasmic drum solo, either. Woody Bredell’s cinematography and Bernard Brown’s sound design transform a crime thriller into raw noir.—KH

The Prowler (Film, US, Joseph Losey, 1951) Called to the sumptuous home of Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) by a prowler scare, resentful cop Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) insinuates himself into her life and bed, while her jealous husband (voiced by sub rosa screenwriter Dalton Trumbo) keeps his all-night DJ shift. This can’t last in a proper noir, and doesn’t, leading to a somewhat overblown climax in a desert ghost town. But the first two acts are all weaselly and riveting Van Heflin.—KH

Separate Tables (Film, US, Delbert Mann, 1958) In a sleepy seaside inn populated by long term residents leading lives of parallel isolation, a tormented man (Burt Lancaster) receives an unwelcome visit from the scheming ex (Rita Hayworth) who broke him, and a bluff military man (David Niven) attempts to conceal a scandal. Perfectly judged adaptation of the Terence Rattigan stage play, a capsule from a time before anyone used therapeutic language to describe their problems.—RDL

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Film, US, Lewis Milestone, 1946) Gambler Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) returns to Iverstown after 17 years to find his childhood sweetheart, heiress Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck) married to the nebbish Walter O’Neil (Kirk Douglas in his first role), now district attorney. Will he be able to escape with ex-con Antonia (Lizabeth Scott) or will he fall for Martha once more? Rich noir melodrama makes a grand feast for Stanwyck, and thus a grand experience for the viewer.—KH

Good

Chongqing Hot Pot (China, Qing Yang, 2016) Desperate to make their failed underground restaurant salable, a trio of childhood friends performs an illegal excavation that accidentally breaks through into a bank vault. Heist movie about comradeship and surprise colliding forces openly signals its love for the works of Johnnie To.—RDL

Dead Reckoning (Film, US, John Cromwell, 1947) Paratrooper Rip Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) heads to Gulf City on the track of his war hero friend Johnny Drake, but he finds a burned corpse, a tangled prewar mystery, and Drake’s former lover Coral (Lizabeth Scott). Convoluted noir works too hard for cool and leans too hard on a somewhat phoned-in Bogart. Scott’s Bacall impression, and Morris Carnovsky’s turn as villainous club owner Martinelli, both deserved a better script.—KH

Murder, My Sweet (Film, US, Edward Dmytryk, 1944) On the trail of a missing nightclub singer, Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) gets entangled with Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor) and her step-daughter Ann (Anne Shirley) and an also-missing jade necklace. Powell’s Marlowe is weirdly jaunty throughout this Chandlerian labyrinth (based on Farewell, My Lovely), despite getting knocked out at least three times, poisoned, and blinded by gunshot. The film is kind of a mess, frankly, but never boring.—KH

Okay

The Reckless Moment (Film, US, Max Ophüls, 1949) Left to manage the house by herself in her husband’s absence, Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) tries to shield her daughter Bea (Geraldine Brooks) from a murder charge, as blackmailer Donnelly (James Mason) gets closer. While full of bravura Ophüls tracking shots and domestic stress, it can’t overcome the fundamental passivity of the main character.—KH

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1932) On the lam after her no-good ex shoots a cop, a single mom taxi dancer (Ann Dvorak) attracts the eye of a glib, corner-cutting reporter (Lee Tracy), who does not suspect she’s the story he’s trying to track down. Curtiz keeps the pot boiling, and the pre-Code lingerie shots coming, but because the lead role is taken by Tracy, a second banana at best, instead of a charismatic, smoldering movie star, the script makes no emotional sense.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Star Trek, Thunderbolts*, The Ballad of Wallis Island

September 23rd, 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

Ladies’ Paradise (Film, France, Julien Duvivier, 1930) Pure-hearted girl (Dita Parlo) reluctantly takes a job in the bustling department store putting her uncle’s fabric shop out of business, catching the eye of its ambitious owner (Pierre de Guingand.). Densely visual, with a quick cutting style that will be obliterated by the coming of sound film and not return for half a century, this modernist melodrama appears to take aim at progress but is actually after an older adversary. Based on an Emile Zola novel.—RDL

Marilyn’s Eyes (Film, Italy, Simone Godano, 2021) Sentenced to remedial behavioral therapy at an outpatient clinic, a chef with anger issues (Stefano Accorsi) and a would-be actress / pathological liar (Miriam Leone) contrive to turn its lunchroom into a high-end restaurant. Psychological rom com features plenty of complications and the magnetic performances essential to the genre.—RDL

The Martyred (Film, South Korea, Yu Hyun-mok, 1965) As the South maintains a precarious hold on Pyongyang during the war, an army officer investigates a Northern massacre of Christian pastors to confirm that it suits his superior’s propaganda objectives. Solemn debate drama examines the ethics of fighting despair with deception.—RDL

Good

The Ballad of Wallis Island (Film, UK, James Griffiths, 2025) Exasperated singer-songwriter (Tom Basden) discovers that his lucrative gig on a remote island is for an audience of one, an awkward superfan (Tim Key), who has also invited his ex (Carey Mulligan) to put their band back together. Adapted from a short, this has too little story for a feature, and strives to ingratiate, albeit with appealing characters and performances.—RDL

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 (Television, US, Paramount+, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, 2025) The Enterprise crew battles the Gorn and encounters an ancient evil. Everyone’s favorite starship continues its drift from TOS to TNG as its model, which is a problem for a couple of reasons: 1) the structure is built for a longer per season episode order and 2) the freaking holodeck.—RDL

Not Recommended

Thunderbolts* (Film, US, Jake Schreier, 2025) When her high-handed boss (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) hires other expendable operatives to dispose of her, despondent assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) teams up with them, and Bucky (Sebastian Stan), to keep an amnesiac metahuman (Lewis Pullman) out of her hands. Second and third tier characters battling the personification of clinical depression in the hollowed-out ruins of Avengers HQ supply an inadvertently apt summation of the state of the mega-franchise.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Ken Reports from Noir City Chicago

September 17th, 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

Caught Stealing (Film, US, Darren Aronofsky, 2025) Alcoholic washout bartender Hank (Austin Butler) gets dragged into seedy, dangerous crime doings by cat-sitting for his seedy British neighbor (Matt Smith). Plenty of people object to Smith’s blundering, obvious performance but it’s clearly of a piece with Aronofsky’s heightened “animated cartoon but with consequences” sensibility along with the other cartoonish but very dangerous gangsters. Adding real danger to a Guy Ritchie-style crime flick perfectly suits Aronofsky, and gives this film more bite and staying power than its Nineties charm alone would have.—KH

Detour (Film, US, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945) Lovesick pianist Al (Tom Neal) hitches a ride with a bad hat (Edmund MacDonald) but gets in even worse trouble when he gives a ride to hellcat Vera (Ann Savage). Poverty Row classic takes its sweet time getting started but once the gears of Fate start grinding Al they just never stop. Ulmer was a master at doing a lot with a little, and he never did more with less than this film.—KH

The Hot Spot (Film, US, Dennis Hopper, 1990) Drifter Harry Madox (Don Johnson) gets caught in small-town Texas between his boss’ predatory wife Dolly (Virginia Madsen) and Gloria (Jennifer Connelly), a good girl with a dark secret. Relentless noir originally scripted in 1962 for Robert Mitchum became Dennis Hopper’s vehicle for over-the-top emotional direction: if sunshine Gothic were a thing this would be that thing. The Jack Nitzsche score, featuring Miles Davis, Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, and others, really sells this beautifully rancid film.—KH [Note: For this Noir City KARCM I am reviewing some films I saw last week that I’ve already seen, but that I haven’t covered in these hallowed pixels before. After all, the whole point is to point you beloved readers to good movies.]

The Killing (Film, US, Stanley Kubrick, 1956) Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) leads a crew of five in a perfectly choreographed racetrack holdup. Believe it or not, something goes wrong. Kubrick’s first American feature layers scene onto scene, often repeating the action from a different viewpoint to assemble an almost Cubist view of the caper. Much of the film’s strength, however, comes not from Kubrick but from scriptwriter (and hard-boiled novelist) Jim Thompson; the toxic interplay between husband and wife Elisha Cook Jr and Marie Windsor provide the emotional heat (and faulty decision-making) at the heart of this noir.—KH

Out of the Past (Film, US, Jacques Tourneur, 1947) Gone to ground in a small town, former detective Jeff Markham (Robert Mitchum) gets dragged back into the search for corrupt millionaire Whit’s (Kirk Douglas) missing girl Kathie (Jane Greer). None of the three main actors were over 30, and their energy drives what could have been a convoluted switchback of a story, as Tourneur masterfully layers in suspense beat after suspense beat to ratchet up the tension. An uncredited Frank Fenton provides duelistic dialogue while cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca lights up clouds of pointed cigarette smoke in this ne plus ultra of 1940s noir.—KH

Good

My True Story (Film, US, Mickey Rooney, 1951) Paroled thief Ann Martin (Helen Walker) gets enmeshed in another long con masterminded by her old boss Trent (Wilton Graff), to steal precious oil of myrrh from a perfumier’s widow. Walker’s constant code-switching from hood to flirt to respectable lady is the best thing in the movie, Graff’s oily “budget George Sanders” performance is the second-best. Once you get over the notion of a myrrh heist, the movie plays out predictably though seldom without interest.—KH

Tension (Film, US, John Berry, 1949) Cuckolded, bespectacled pharmacist Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart) takes on a second, glasses-free identity so he can kill the lover of his wife Claire (Audrey Totter) but gets caught in a squeeze play. Totter and Basehart between them keep this one popping almost up to Recommended, although it’s almost too straightforward a plot to live up to the high concept. Cyd Charisse isn’t quite wasted as the girl next door, but when Richard Basehart (even without glasses) is the interesting half of a couple things need some kind of adjustment.—KH

The Woman in the Window (Film, US, Fritz Lang, 1944) Psychology professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) meets the even-more-beguiling subject (Joan Bennett) of a beguiling painting while his wife is out of town, and that’s when the nightmare begins. With a superb cat-and-mouse tension ratchet driving it along with real guilt and terror, plus Dan Duryea in an early (but still slimy) role, this could have been one of the greatest noirs ever. But the ending just ruins it all, sadly.—KH