Ken and Robin Consume Media: Shang-Chi, The Green Knight, Prisoners of the Ghostland

September 22nd, 2021 | 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 Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (Nonfiction, Sam Wasson, 2020) Brilliantly written step-by-step of the making of Chinatown, the business conditions that briefly sparked the American New Wave, and the Icarus-like descents that would follow for three of the four principal creators. Elegantly ties together disparate threads, from macro to micro, flowing from the tortuous creation of a haunted masterpiece.—RDL

The Green Knight (Film, UK, David Lowery, 2021) King Arthur’s unproven nephew (Dev Patel) steps up when a supernatural adversary appears at Camelot on Christmas to offer a frightening challenge. Sound design and cinematography provide an immersive sense of medieval spaces as the allegory of the Gawain poem receives a modern political update.—RDL

Prisoners of the Ghostland (Film, US/Japan, Sion Sono, 2021) Corrupt local headman puts a bad-ass convict (Nicolas Cage) in booby-trapped motorcycle leathers and sends him into the dangerous land of outcasts and mutants to rescue his so-called niece (Sofia Boutella.) Post-apocalyptic samurai western is a nutzoid, ultra-stylized ramble through the imagery of the 80s SF canon. But you knew that when I said “Nicolas Cage in a Sion Sono movie.”—RDL

The Yin-Yang Master (Film, China, Weiran Li, 2021) Disgraced imperial demon-fighter who now runs a haven for outcast spirit guardians investigates the theft of a powerful artifact from his former organization. Gorgeous-looking big budget fantasy adventure blends martial arts with fun CGI creature design. And this is Chinese cinema, so even the adorable cartoon characters can get melodramatic death scenes.—RDL

Good

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Film, US, Destin Daniel Cretton, 2021) Heir to the Ten Rings criminal empire of his father Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung), Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) must take his proper place as a hero to prevent the end of the world. The first “get the gang together” act is pretty good, with Awkwafina especially engaging as Shang-Chi’s bff, and although the fights are ripped off from better ones, they’re at least mostly visible. But the CGI battle to save a CGI valley from CGI monsters does not compel attention, and it’s mostly shot in a murky mud pit to boot. Michelle Yeoh is of course squandered, winning this installment’s Annette Bening award. –KH

Okay

The Old Ways (Film, US, Christopher Alender, 2020) Local brujos kidnap reporter Cristina (Brigitte Kali Canales) and forcibly exorcise the demon she carries. Although Kali Canales is game, and some of the demon effects are cool, this movie falls heavily between the stools of thrilling Mexploitation and intriguing culture clash, in the end presenting a by-the-numbers exorcism flick in brujeria garb with incongruous girl-power notes. –KH

Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning (Film, Japan, Keishi Ohtomo, 2021) In 19th century Japan, a melancholy killing machine (Takeru Satoh) is torn between service to an anti-Shogunate rebellion and the enigmatic young woman (Kasumi Arimura) who devotes herself to him. Prequel to a manga adaptation series features handsomely mounted action sequences but is weighed down by an obvious, belabored dramatic storyline.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Vintage Deconstructed Vampirism, 30s Mexican Horror, and Hardboiled Mississippi Litfic

September 7th, 2021 | 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 Last Taxi Driver (Fiction, Lee Durkee, 2020) UFO-obsessed ex-novelist has a particularly bad day at work as a cabbie in an equally down-and-out Mississippi town. Hardboiled southern litfic paints a convincingly, not to mention hilariously, jaundiced portrait of life shuttling between rehabs, hospitals, motels and liquor stores.—RDL

The Phantom of the Monastery (Film, Mexico, Fernando de Fuentes, 1934) Three lost hikers, a couple and the best friend who loves the wife, encounter the supernatural in a supposedly ruined and uninhabited monastery. It’s no surprise that Mexico was finding the gothic in Catholicism long before it hit Hollywood in ‘73, as this expressionistic journey into measured eeriness attests. Sometimes translated as The Phantom of the Convent.—RDL

Vampir Cuadecuc (Film, Spain, Pere Portabella, 1970) Dissident avant-garde filmmaker Portabella somehow talked the Franco regime into giving him permission to shoot a “behind-the-scenes” documentary of schlockmaestro Jess Franco’s production of Count Dracula as its own version of Dracula. The deconstruction of the coincidentally-named Franco’s art as artifice is only part of this polysemic experience: high-contrast black-and-white shifting tones, constant fourth-wall breakage, and the charged musique-concrète score by Carles Santos all create a reality-sliding metafilm experience more Dreyer’s Vampyr than Stoker’s vampire. –KH

A Very Curious Girl (Film, France, Nelly Kaplan, 1969) Put-upon servant (Bernadette Lafont) gets revenge on the creeps and prigs of her crummy rural village by connecting with her inner witch and selling sex. Wry Bunuelian satire with a feminist vantage point on comeuppance and the restoration of order.—RDL

A Walk Among the Tombstones (Film, US, Scott Frank, 2014) Haunted ex-cop (Liam Neeson) hunts a pair of psychos who specialize in kidnapping women to squeeze their drug trafficker loved ones for ransom money. Well-crafted, grounded detective noir based on a novel from Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder series.—RDL

Good

The Menacers (Fiction, Donald Hamilton, 1968) Clandestine government assassin Matt Helm gets seconded to bring a UFO witness back to Los Alamos from Mexico — or kill her if he can’t do that. The eleventh in the Matt Helm series plays with the military-intelligence side of the UFO question, while also being a cracking good thriller leavened with tough-guy pragmatic philosophizing. Helm partisans emphasize his “realism” over the Bond novels, but Fleming’s flair is what elevates his books to Recommended. Hamilton’s books mostly hit the higher reaches of Good, however, so if you don’t mind a little period grit you can absolutely do worse. –KH

Not Recommended

Bridesmaids (Film, US, Paul Feig, 2011) Brittle, self-pitying failure Annie (Kristen Wiig) feels her only meaningful relationship slipping away when her best friend (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged, and responds with selfish panic. The comedy of unease depends on actually ever sympathizing with anyone in the story, a low bar that this over-explained sluice never clears. Melissa McCarthy’s anarchic honesty and feral comic joy provide the sole bright spot, so of course she’s always the butt (literally in one case) of the joke. –KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Candyman, Annette, Climate of the Hunter

August 31st, 2021 | 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 Bolter (Nonfiction, Frances Osborne, 2008) Biography of the Edwardian social rebel Lady Indina Sackville, whose hunger for love and sex drove her to five marriages and a life of scandal in England and colonial Kenya. Cameo appearances from bold-faced names abound in this piquant account of the swirling relationships of a shattered generation, written by the subject’s great grand-daughter.—RDL

Candyman (Film, US, Nia DaCosta, 2021) Anthony McCoy (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an artist living in the gentrified Cabrini-Green neighborhood of Chicago, becomes inspired by the local urban legend: Candyman. While just a little too didactic and self-congratulatory to be the equal of the 1992 near-Pinnacle, this sequel does a remarkable (and remarkably self-aware — other characters repeatedly ding McCoy’s art for its didacticism) job of renewing the legend for a new audience without copping out on the deep racial text at its core. DaCosta shoots Marina City like a beehive and Candyman like a peripheral-vision specter, and that’s just the highlights of her many-layered artwork. –KH

The Hot Rock (Film, US, Peter Yates, 1972) A museum heist to grab a diamond claimed by multiple African nations requires master planner John Dortmunder (Robert Redford) to stage a series of follow-up crimes. Lighthearted caper flick, based on a Donald E. Westlake novel, anchored by an undercoat of 70s grit.—RDL

Val (Film, US, Ting Poo & Leo Scott, 2021) Aided by home footage he’s been taking since childhood, Val Kilmer, his voice and health badly damaged by a bout with cancer, looks back on his successes and regrets. An unrevealing person cautiously reveals himself in this autobiographical documentary, with voice-alike narration from Kilmer’s son Jack.—RDL

Good

Annette (Film, France/Belgium/Germany, Leos Carax, 2021) The marriage of comedian Henry (Adam Driver) to soprano Ann (Marion Cotillard) buckles under the strain of his self-loathing in this musical written by art-pop duo Sparks. Much as it pains me to admit it, the weak link in this film is not the grandiloquence and artificiality of Carax (which repeatedly hits), but the script (and even the music) by Sparks. The music is great, but deliberately underpowered — the whole movie likewise deliberately undercuts itself, as a reach for a kind of pop-Wagnerian irony. Driver does almost too good a job integrating his character, adding another skew element to a movie not at all bereft of them. –KH

Okay

Climate of the Hunter (Film, US, Mickey Reese, 2019) Resentment between middle-aged sisters escalates when one suspects that the aging swain who has re-entered their lives is a vampire. Layers of stylistic affectation take precedence over narrative development in this talky supernatural drama.—RDL

Deadly Sweet (Film, Italy, Tinto Brass, 1967) A brooding protagonist who acts like a detective but is never explicitly identified as one (Jean-Louis Trintignant) investigates the murder of a club owner, falling for a witness (Ewa Aulin) he finds standing over the corpse. Pop art deconstructed detective flick apparently designed to turn Blow-Up into a genre, just as the Italian film industry did by obsessively imitating A Fistful of Dollars and Blood and Black Lace. Except this time it didn’t happen. Also known as I Am What I Am.—RDL

The Yellow Wallpaper (Film, US, Kevin Pontuti, 2021) Suffering from postpartum depression, a woman (Alexandra Loreth) goes mad thanks to really unpleasant wallpaper (and also patriarchal wilful blindness). Charlotte Perkins’ Gilman’s classic short horror story works not least because it compresses months of oppression into brutal momentum; although many aspects of Pontuti and Loreth’s film capture the story’s mood and themes it desperately needed 20 minutes vigorously trimmed rather than the lengthy rest cure it gets. –KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Green Knight, M. R. James’ Medievalism, and Where to Take a Break in the Tale of Genji

August 17th, 2021 | 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 Tale of Genji (Fiction, Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Dennis Washburn, 11th century/2015) A preternaturally handsome and charismatic Heian-era courtier and his descendants cause and endure suffering as a result of their romantic entanglements. The first long-form narrative readable as one would a contemporary mimetic novel, here in a lucid, accessible translation, limns the mores and atmosphere of a hothouse social milieu. The last third of this extremely long piece stands alone as a sequel to the rest, so you might want to set that aside that for later.—RDL

Recommended

The Green Knight (Film, US, David Lowery, 2021) Royal nephew Gawain (Dev Patel) seeks honor by answering the deadly challenge of the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson). Lowery’s departures from the original 14th-century poem will irritate purists, and some of his insertions may well confound everybody regardless of prior knowledge. Our 21st-century failson Gawain seeks self-improvement through a series of lush, eerie set pieces that don’t quite add up — yet Patel sells them and himself, and you’re never bored watching Andrew Droz Palermo’s cinematographic tapestries. Sean Harris’ exhausted Arthur imbues the film with special pathos. –KH

Jewel Robbery (Film, US, William Dieterle, 1932) Bored countess (Kay Francis) falls for a suave jewel robber (William Powell.) Adaptation of a frothy Hungarian play keeps the focus where it belongs, on the interplay between its charming leads.—RDL

Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M.R. James (Nonfiction, Patrick J. Murphy, 2017) Rather than a study of medieval elements in James’ ghost stories (although there is a decent amount of that) this book expounds the thesis that the discipline of “medieval studies” — just coming into being as James wrote — becomes the crucial lens through which to view James’ work. Rather than death or sex or body, the boundary James’ specters and protagonists transgress is the disciplinary boundary between antiquarianism and academe. I’m not sure I buy it, but Murphy also uncovers a lot of new details about the tales, and I did learn a good deal about “medieval studies” to boot. –KH

Pig (Film, US, Michael Sarnoski, 2021) Chef-turned-hermit (Nicolas Cage) returns to the city he abandoned in a stoic, implacable quest for his stolen truffle pig. Absurdist story elements played absolutely straight, in a strange feat of tonal control, with a plot adjacent to the noir and vengeance genres and an interiorized but nonetheless deeply Cagey lead performance.—RDL