Ken and Robin Consume Media: Spiraling Ever Deeper Into Noir

September 17th, 2019 | 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.

For Robin’s capsule reviews from the Toronto International Film Festival, hop on over here. They’ll reappear in Ken and Robin Consume Media as titles receive wider distribution in theaters or streaming platforms.

Recommended

The Lineup (Film, US, Don Siegel, 1958) San Francisco cops trace a heroin ring as hired killer Dancer (Eli Wallach) murders the unwitting couriers. Siegel ratchets up the tension from routine cop-procedural to manhunt to a full-on car chase, drinking in the San Francisco location shots along the way. Special shout-out to Robert Keith as Dancer’s manager, who manages to somehow out-creepy Eli Wallach. –KH

Odds Against Tomorrow (Film, US, Robert Wise, 1959) Bitter ex-cop Burke (Ed Begley) masterminds a bank robbery with racist ex-con Slater (Robert Ryan) and hotheaded gambler Ingram (Harry Belafonte). Wise shoots a stark, dispassionate noir fronted by three terrific actors (plus Shelley Winters, outstanding as Slater’s too-sympathetic girl) and backed by John Lewis’ insistent jazz score. The climax drains out rather too slowly, but you can see why Jean-Pierre Melville watched it 120 times. –KH

Pushover (Film, US, Richard Quine, 1954) Assigned to cozy up to bank robber’s girlfriend Lona (Kim Novak), aging cop Paul (Fred MacMurray) falls for her instead. Although its themes of corrupt love and voyeurism echo other, better movies, its tight clockwork timing and professionalism demand respect in their own right. Plus, early Kim Novak is always Recommended. –KH

Good

Killer’s Kiss (Film, US, Stanley Kubrick, 1955) Washed-up boxer Davie (Jamie Smith) tries to rescue dance-hall girl Gloria (Irene Kane) from her sweaty boss Vincent (Frank Silvera). Kubrick’s second film, shot for $75,000 on location in New York, shows flashes of brilliance throughout. The polearm-mannequin fight scene has to be seen to be believed. –KH [Also available as an extra on the Criterion Blu-Ray of Kubrick’s The Killing, itself highly Recommended.]

Nightfall (Film, US, Jacques Tourneur, 1957) On the run from murderous bank robbers, Jim Vanning (Aldo Ray) runs into model Marie Gardner (Anne Bancroft). Beautiful Burnett Guffey lensing and Tourneur’s restrained direction can’t save the idiot plot, and insurance investigator Fraser (James Gregory) damps down the tension at every turn. But Aldo Ray is something to watch as an almost passive noir hero in a world where existential pain or willful blindness seem the only two choices. –KH

Okay

The Garment Jungle (Film, US, Vincent Sherman, 1957) Garment company owner Walter Roxton (Lee J. Cobb) deals with gangster Ravidge (Richard Boone) to keep the union out of his shop. Original director Robert Aldrich wanted to make a pro-union film about a reluctantly brutal small businessman, but interference from Cobb and studio boss Harry Cohn stopped him; Sherman made “guy and girl fall in love in a dress factory” instead. The result: an overcrowded, incoherent movie with a few glorious character bits in it: Robert Loggia as a union organizer and Wesley Addy as a knife artist stand out. –KH

Private Hell 36 (Film, US, Don Siegel, 1954) Cop partners Farnham (Howard Duff) and Bruner (Steve Cochrane) track down a robbery jackpot with the reluctant help of nightclub singer Lily (Ida Lupino). Although Cochrane’s oily corruption is a joy to watch, any film that depends on Howard Duff’s internalized acting has two strikes against it. As always, hardcore Lupino-philes should kick this up to Good. –KH

The Vengeance of She (Fiction, Peter Tremayne, 1978) H. Rider Haggard’s immortal villain-priestess Ayesha returns, in the body of a psychiatric patient in Guildford. Tremayne doesn’t do much with this premise besides re-run Haggard’s novel, but in dull England rather than exotic Africa or Tibet. A promising theme of Ayesha as the id of everyone involved remains barely invoked. –KH

Not Recommended

Cry Tough (Film, US, Paul Stanley, 1959) Young Puerto Rican Miguel Estrada (John Saxon) tries to go straight after a year in prison, but the temptations of gang life and Sarita (Linda Cristal) pull him back in. Is it a social-problem film? A melodrama? A gangster film? A movie that never decides what it wants to do? No location shots (all backlot stuff) and only intermittently sympathetic characters complete the “don’t bother” package. –KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Ken Goes Noir

September 10th, 2019 | 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

Garrison Brothers Texas Straight Bourbon Whiskey (Spirit, US, 2018) Smooth and immediately rich, this is one of the best bourbons I’ve ever tasted. If it came from Kentucky it would fetch quadruple the price.—RDL

Recommended

Creatures of Will and Temper (Fiction, Molly Tanzer, 2017) Did you know you wanted to read a gender-flipped Dorian Gray with fencing and demons? Well, you do. Tanzer keeps her characters flawed and appealing, and the action twisty and surprising, and the demons intriguing and weird, all as they should be, with graceful prose and just a soupcon of (important) earnestness. Best of all, she resists the temptation to pastiche Wilde. –KH

Forever and a Death (Fiction, Donald E. Westlake, 2017) Construction magnate Richard Curtis decides to take revenge on Hong Kong with a soliton device, and only the engineer who designed it for him can stop his plan! This posthumously published thriller began life as a Westlake treatment for a James Bond movie, but it reads like a grittier-than-normal (and better-than-normal) airport thriller. –KH

In a Lonely Place (Film, US, Nicholas Ray, 1950) Violent screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) falls for his alibi (Gloria Grahame) in the murder of a hat check girl. Although the viewer is never in real suspense about Steele’s guilt, Bogart’s brutally honest (and brutal) performance, and Ray’s direction of a disastrous love affair paralleling his own with Grahame, captivate throughout. –KH

The Nosferatu Story (Nonfiction, Rolf Giesen, 2019) Exploring the sources and the legacy of Murnau’s film as much as it does the more standard filmography, Giesen’s work occasionally veers into stodginess or irrelevancy but still provides the best one-stop treatment of this Pinnacle available. Could more be said? Of course it can, Murnau made a masterpiece. Pair the book with a viewing of the Kino Lorber restored film. –KH

Pickup on South Street (Film, US, Sam Fuller, 1953) When Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) lifts a wallet from Candy (Jean Peters) on the subway, he finds himself in the middle of a Commie spy plot. Thelma Ritter completely steals the show as a stool pigeon. Fuller layers so much character into his New York and his cop story and his lovers that it satisfies all the way down. –KH [I’ve actually already seen this one, but not on the big screen and not since we started publicly Consuming our Media, so I’m posting it.]

Sudden Fear (Film, US, David Miller, 1952) Playwright and heiress Myra Hudson (Joan Crawford) fires impoverished actor Lester Blaine (Jack Palance), but there’s no hard feelings, right? Surely not — they meet a month later on the train, she falls in love, and then we remember oh yeah Jack Palance. A taut game of cat-and-also-cat ensues, featuring yet another Crawford master class in pre-Method acting, much of it without dialogue. –KH

Good

Appointment With Danger (Film, US, Lewis Allen, 1950) When a postal inspector is murdered in Gary, Indiana, tough-as-nails postal detective Al Goddard (Alan Ladd) takes the case. Basically ridiculous crime film at least features loads of fun dialogue, including perhaps the only Lutheran zinger in the history of noir. It also nails its supporting cast: Phyllis Calvert as an eyewitness nun, Paul Stewart as the gravel-voiced lug du jour, queen of tarts Jan Sterling, and Jack Webb and Henry Morgan as partners in crime. –KH

The File on Thelma Jordon (Film, US, Robert Siodmak, 1950) Impecunious adventuress Thelma (Barbara Stanwyck in top-notch fettle) seduces assistant D.A. Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey) but falls for him while playing him for the sap he is. Weird, gorgeous minor-key version of Double Indemnity won’t head anyone’s list of Siodmak films, or even Stanwyck performances, but the bravura, near-farce murder coverup scene is a minor masterpiece of black humor. –KH

Okay

White Dragon Season 1 (Television, UK, Mark Denton & Johnny Stockwood, 2019) English lecturer (John Simm) discovers not only that his wife was murdered in Hong Kong, but that she had a daughter (Katie Leung) and another husband, a disgraced ex-cop (Anthony Wong.) The chief pleasure of this anodyne, padded crime thriller is watching Wong act Simm off the screen with one language tied behind his back.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Gothic Hugger-Mugger

August 27th, 2019 | 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 Deadly Trap (Film, France, Rene Clement, 1971) A bipolar mom (Faye Dunaway) loses her grip on reality; meanwhile, a shadowy conspiracy pressures her husband (Frank Langella) to return to his former physics career. A basic paranoia thriller on a textual level, shot and staged with a subjective, gauzy menace that wouldn’t be at all out of place in a work of weird horror.—RDL

Hag’s Nook (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1933) The Starberth heir must spend the night in the haunted prison where his ancestor Governor Starberth died of a broken neck — and guess what happens to him! In this first Doctor Fell mystery, Carr unleashes all his love of Gothic hugger-mugger while keeping the plot and the detection under fine control. Although he would get even better in the next decade, this established Carr as the last great Golden Age detective author. –KH

Good

Occult (Film, Japan, Koji Shiraishi, 2009) Faux documentary follows Shiraishi’s investigation of a seemingly random resort stabbing and the web of paranormal reality behind it. Influenced by Lovecraft (especially “From Beyond”) its mix of weird and mundane horror would probably work more effectively with better special effects in one or two key scenes, but still ambitious, personal, and strange, all good things. –KH

That Guy Dick Miller (Film, US, Elijah Drenner, 2014) Loving documentary portrait of iconic genre character actor, who brought a unique mix of energy and authenticity to the films of Roger Corman and his directorial proteges.—RDL

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Film, US, Richard Linklater, 2019) Agoraphobic, misanthropic, blocked architect Bernadette Fox (Cate Blanchett) jumps out a window rather than face her life; her husband (Billy Crudup) and daughter (Emma Nelson) try to find her. Whipsaws tonally between an interesting take on “naturalist Wes Anderson film” and standard-issue family dramedy. Blanchett’s big, loud performance doesn’t really join the disparate bits, but her and Nelson’s chemistry keep you invested. –KH

Okay

The Scapegoat (Film, UK, Robert Hamer, 1959) Despondent university professor (Alec Guinness) meets an identical stranger, a cash-strapped French count, who tricks him into assuming his identity and carrying on his complicated family life. Unhurried pacing and Guinness’ unflappable persona dull the suspense in a contemporary gothic adapted from a Daphne DuMaurier novel.—RDL

Stranger Things Season 3 (Television, US, Netflix, The Duffer Brothers, 2019) The dirty Russkies have re-opened the gate to the Upside Down, as the Mind Flayer recuperates in Hawkins and our heroes get weirdly adolescent-looking all of a sudden. The Duffers badly endanger one of the two strongest features of the series — its tone — in this all-over-the-map tribute to 1985. Directing David Harbour to shout 85% of his lines is only the biggest offender as the series also plays fast and loose with its other strength, its characters. It’s still a high Okay, but like most 80s franchises, the third installment markedly suffers by comparison to its progenitors. –KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Fast and Furious Spins Off

August 13th, 2019 | 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

Daredevil Season 3 (Television, US, Netflix, Erik Olesen, 2019) A physically and emotionally shattered Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox) reverts to his proto-costumed persona to battle Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’onofrio), who has suborned the FBI into releasing him from prison. Hits Pinnacle status whenever D’onofrio’s amazing multi-layered Kingpin is on screen; drops to Okay at best when the writers are sticking to their conception of Matt as a petulant mope.—RDL

Forbidden (Film, US, Frank Capra, 1932) Staid small town librarian (Barbara Stanwyck) throws it all aside for a Caribbean cruise, where her encounter with a charming attorney (Adolphe Menjou) leads to a lifelong affair. Moving performance from Stanwyck abetted by snappy direction from Capra, who at this point in his career has yet to mask his essential bleakness with a thick layer of treacle.—RDL

Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) (Nonfiction, Jeff Tweedy, 2018) The Wilco frontman recounts his Southern Illinois upbringing, work as a musician and songwriter, painkiller addiction and tight-knit family life. Stays out of the weeds of individual recording projects, instead telling its anecdotes with humility and often a sharp comic vision.—RDL

Good

Hobbs & Shaw (Film, US, David Leitch, 2019) Alpha badasses Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Shaw (Jason Statham) must team up to save Shaw’s sister (Vanessa Kirby) from killer cyborg Brixton (Idris Elba). A film directed by a John Wick alumnus set in the Fast & Furious universe should have better fight scenes and car chases — with the exception of the truly spectacular helicopter vs. truck chase, this doesn’t hit the best-of-breed level. But there’s something to be said for good-humored testosterone by the bucketful, joined to earnest sentimentality about family. –KH

May the Devil Take You (Film, Indonesia, Timo Tjahjanto, 2018) Young woman whose estranged father’s pact with demonic forces has come due heads to her childhood home in the forest, where she must protect her half-siblings from their mother, now inhabited by a Deadite. Inventive scares liven up a fun fright flick that invites the gonzo brio of The Evil Dead into the south Asian exorcism sub-genre.—RDL

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (Film, US, Allan Arkush, 1979) Rebellious music fan (P. J. Soles) and her science-loving pal (Dey Young) run afoul of their school’s new authoritarian principal (Mary Woronov) in the run-up to a Ramones concert. Like a zine come to life, this scrappy product of the Roger Corman system celebrates female friendship and takes the rebellion of the teen flick to a cheerily explosive extreme. I put this on for a rewatch only to discover that I, bizarrely, had never seen it. Owned the soundtrack record and everything!—RDL