Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Grim, Gritty Crime and the Cat in the Hat

June 12th, 2018 | 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

13 Tzameti (Film, France, Géla Babluani, 2005) Young roofer stiffed by the death of a junkie client takes over the man’s mysterious mission, leading him to a deadly game. B&W photography, loosely paced first act, and motifs of alienation and solitary danger hearken back to the indie aesthetic of the mid-80s.—RDL

American Animals (Film, US, Bart Layton, 2018) Based on the true story of a 2004 rare book theft from Transylvania University in Kentucky, Layton interweaves talking-head commentary by the real thieves into his engaging — then riveting — heist film. (Anne Nikitin’s score drives the rivets home.) The resulting deliberate metafictions point up all manner of contrasts: between art and life, memory and truth, and yes wrong and right. Kudos to Layton for risking ruining a good movie to make a pretty great one. –KH

The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Nonfiction, Philip Nel, 2007) Thoroughly annotated edition of The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Came Back provides deeper insight into Dr. Seuss’ process, children’s publishing in the 1950s, and the nature of Voom. –KH

Atomic Blonde (Film, US, David Leitch, 2017) M16 badass Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) sent to courier a list of enemy agents from late 80s Berlin fights her way through a tangle of betrayals centered around rogue agent David Percival (James McAvoy.) Combines hard fight choreography with neon-saturated grit and paranoia. Kudos for staging its defining action set piece in mid-film.—RDL

Good

Borrowed Time (Fiction, Jack Campbell, 2016) A collection of competent to fine time-travel stories, some of them sharing a linked “T.I.” universe and some merely serving as excuses to talk history to SF readers. (NTTAWTT) I liked “Betty Knox and Dictionary Jones in the Mystery of the Missing Teenage Anachronisms” beyond its merits, I suspect, but the high camp adventure of “These Are the Times” and “Working on Borrowed Time” is nigh irresistible. –KH

Dark of the Moon (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1967) In his last appearance, Dr. Gideon Fell must unravel the impossible murder of a mathematician amidst the emotionally charged atmosphere of his South Carolina house. Carr occasionally disguises a murder mystery as a door-slamming farce, and he returns to those rhythms here in Dr. Fell’s familiar Gothic register. Carr’s dialogue, always somewhat theatrical, seems borderline ridiculous here, but plot and tension do their work well. –KH

Okay

Papa Là-Bas (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1968) Future Confederate Secretary of State Judah Benjamin solves a Voodoo-soaked impossible murder in 1858 New Orleans. Generally considered Carr’s worst book, its sole strength is period research; even his reliable plot propeller scrapes bottom in this one. The characters solely exist to shout at each other, burst through doors suddenly, and interrupt the detective-ing when they’re not soft-pedaling slavery. –KH

What Price Hollywood? (Film, US, George Cukor, 1932) Actress (Constance Bennett) rises to movie stardom as the director who discovered her (Lowell Sherman) spirals into alcoholism. Full of great early Hollywood atmosphere, though the extremely charming Bennett is stronger in the lighter early acts than when the melodrama kicks in. The ‘37, ‘54, ‘76 and upcoming ‘18 versions of A Star is Born are all uncredited remakes of this—the fifties Garland one also directed by Cukor. See Neil Hamilton, Commissioner Gordon from the 60s Batman show, in his dashing leading man phase as Bennett’s husband.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Americans Ends; Han Solo Begins

June 5th, 2018 | 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 Americans Season 6 (TV, FX, Joe Weisberg, 2018) The best show on television ends its run with the end of the Cold War and a final reckoning for Soviet sleeper agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, even better in those roles now if you can believe it). A three-year jump from Season 5 provides the perfect launch pad for a final season that recapitulates the series’ meaning while flipping its narrative on its head, and never taking the direction you expect. –KH

Recommended

Barry Season 1 (TV, HBO, Alec Berg and Bill Hader, 2017) To the consternation of his surrogate uncle-slash-manager, a malleable hit man (Bill Hader) enrolls in an L.A. acting class. Squeezes fresh energy from the collision of two otherwise well-worn sub-genres, with a dark moral wallop at the heart of its squirm comedy.—RDL

Dark Star Rising: Magic and Power in the Age of Trump (Nonfiction, Gary Lachman, 2018) Traces the influence of such esoteric beliefs as New Thought, chaos magick, Traditionalism, and biospherism on the burgeoning forces of international post-modern authoritarianism. Ties its threads together with clarity, erudition, and the rueful alarm felt when a chronicler of occult and fringe topics sees his work becoming suddenly topical. (An unease shared, needless to say, by a couple of podcasters I could name.)—RDL

The Final Master (Film, China, Xu Haofeng, 2015) Laconic wing chun master attempting to establish a martial arts academy in the northern city of Tianjin discovers that the deadliest fights occur behind the scenes. Invests the bare bones of 70s fu fight tropes with languorous style and covert, Brechtian political allegory.—RDL

Good

Department Q: Keeper of Lost Causes (Film, Denmark, Mikkel Nørgaard, 2013) After a stubborn misstep gets one partner killed and the other paralyzed, a brooding homicide detective (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) gets downgraded to cold case duty, where he and his upbeat but disregarded new partner (Fares Fares) take a more hands-on approach to a bureaucrat’s disappearance than his superiors intend. Well-crafted, straight-up treatment of police procedural tropes uses a flashback structure to interweave the events of the crime with its investigation. First of a trilogy.—RDL

Okay

Martin Roumagnac (Film, France, Georges Lacombe, 1946) Small-town construction contractor (Jean Gabin) falls hard for a scandalous young widow (Marlene Dietrich) whose con man uncle hopes to marry her off to a freshly widowed diplomat. Engaging when its two great stars share the screen, not so much when it turns into a by-the-numbers courtroom drama. Also known as The Room Upstairs.—RDL

Solo: A Star Wars Story (Film, US, Ron Howard, 2018) Street rat Han (Alden Ehrenreich) has a creakily paced origin story that provides him with all of Han Solo’s trappings but little of his personality. I’m a fan of Ehrenreich, who plays his thankless Lazenby role as well as possible — he’d make a better rebooted Indy, on this showing. The one element I was sure would never work, Han’s friendship with Chewbacca, actually sold me. But the endless endless callbacks and fan servicings (and Ron Howard’s staid direction) drain much of the zip out of what could have been a really neat B-movie set in the Star Wars universe, if only it had been called Frelbeg: A Star Wars Story and been about literally anybody else in the galaxy. –KH

Not Recommended

Solo: A Star Wars Story (Film, US, Ron Howard, 2018) Brash street kid Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) joins a team of energy thieves in a bid to rescue his first love, who has her own survival plans. Fun intermittently breaks out when given the breathing room to be a heist flick in the Star Wars universe, but mostly this is an unnecessary origin story that both over-references and undercuts the ‘77 classic. Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian demonstrates it’s better to be asked to channel Billy Dee Williams than Harrison Ford.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Deadpool 2 and Lovecraft Illustrated

May 29th, 2018 | 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

Arrow Season 6 (Television, US, CW, Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle, 2017-2018) As dissension rocks Team Arrow and Oliver adjusts to fatherhood, a hacker/gangster partnership tightens its grip on the city. Gets the show’s grim groove back by splitting the heroes, and hiring top character actors Kirk Acevedo and Michael Emerson as the big bads.—RDL

The Italian Connection (Film, Italy, Fernando di Leo, 1972) Small-time pimp (Mario Adorf) shows surprising grit when, due to mob machinations above his pay grade, a pair of New York hit men (Henry Silva, Woody Strode) show up in Milan looking to snuff him. Wild, lurid poliziotteschi resolves a corrupt, chaotic universe with underdog ultraviolence.—RDL

Lovecraft Illustrated (17 vols.) (Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft and Pete von Sholly, 2014-2018) Von Sholly’s bold, colorful, pulp-inflected cartoons help re-establish Lovecraft as first and foremost an author of weird, scary stories. The early volumes mostly cover one story each, with some scholarly pieces or inspirational fictions as addenda; the later ones pack in several shorter works per volume. Texts are the Joshi-edited versions, although one or two typos creep back in. –KH

Raazi (Film, India, Meghna Gulzar, 2018) During the 1971 Indo-Pakistani crisis, a dying Indian spy plants his daughter Sehmat (Alia Bhatt, ever more superb) in the household of a Pakistani general as bride to his son Iqbal (Vicky Kaushal). Gulzar flavors her tense, realistic spy thriller with a love story, the acting and genuinely human characters bringing both off without a hitch. Jaideep Ahlawat excels with underplayed stoicism as Sehmat’s handler, and the score by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy provides both period and emotional beats par excellence. –KH

Supernatural Season 13 (Television, US, CW, Andrew Dabb, 2017-2018) Sam and Dean become surrogate dads to an angsty nephilim as his real father, Lucifer, schemes to regain his full power. Worth it for the Scooby Doo episode alone, this show is still finding just enough freshness to keep its very specific formula spinning.—RDL

Good

The Chelsea Murders (Fiction, Lionel Davidson, 1978) DCS Warton doggedly, if not particularly effectively, pursues three main suspects in a series of killings in Chelsea, connected both by by killer-sent letters and by the victims’ initials to the district’s famous poetical inhabitants. Davidson wrote very infrequent novels, each of which seem to be in a different style and genre. This one combines an airy, cynical tenor with a somewhat hectic murder mystery that Davidson explicitly compares to a game of three-card monte. The result, while a rocketing good read (as are all Davidson’s works), doesn’t carry the immediacy or the power of his best thrillers. –KH

Crime Seen: From Patrol Cop to Profiler, My Stories from Behind the Yellow Tape (Nonfiction, Kate Lines, 2015) Author recounts her career with the Ontario Provincial Police, starting with highway patrol and undercover operations to top leadership posts, with a notable stint as the province’s first Quantico-trained criminal profiler in the middle. A fresh local (to me) angle on the forensic psychology memoir. The sections covering the upper management years do get a bit press release-y.—RDL

Deadpool 2 (Film, US, David Leitch, 2018) Meta metahuman Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) tries, intermittently, to stop future soldier Cable (Josh Brolin) from killing a young mutant (Julian Dennison) who goes bad in the future. The original film had enough juice that the sequel can run on that during its own slack periods, which are not insubstantial. Deadpool would also seem to be an odd franchise within which to examine the morality of murder; further, the temptations of irony and snark predictably undercut it. But the fights are fun, and Zazie Beetz’ Domino deserves a trilogy of her own. –KH

Deadpool 2 (Film, US, David Leitch, 2018) Left suicidal by a loved one’s murder, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) reluctantly decides to protect a super-powered kid (Julian Dennison) from grim time-traveling warrior Cable (Josh Brolin.) With the original’s dizzying tonal surprises now an established quantity, this amiable follow-up pelts the viewer with enough gags and action sequences to keep the plates spinning.—RDL

The Flash Season 4 (Television, US, CW, Todd Helbing, 2017-2018) The Flash battles the Thinker, who is hunting metas, including louche new teammate the Elongated Man, to absorb their powers. A shift to a lighter tone comes at first in the form of inane hijinks, which fortunately recede as the stakes rise later on.—RDL

Upon Further Review: The Greatest What-Ifs in Sports History (Nonfiction, Mike Pesca, ed., 2018) This collection of 31 essays runs the gamut from Jon Bois’ absurdist “What if Basketball Rims Were Smaller Than Basketballs?” to Mary Pilon’s earnestly sociological “What if Title IX Never Was?” My favorites include Claude Johnson’s alternate beginning for the NBA and Julian Zelizer’s “What if Nixon Had Been Good at Football?” but most of them don’t make too many waves, in memory or history. –KH