Ken and Robin Consume Media Takes a Turn For the Noir

August 21st, 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

Conflict (Film, US, Curtis Bernhardt, 1945) In love with her sister, Richard Mason (Humphrey Bogart) murders his wife — or does he? Sydney Greenstreet is the suspicious psychiatrist in this unique role-switch that screws tension and interest to a fever pitch for 98 percent of its length. Bogart plays Mason’s disintegrating self so well that the noir script holes just flit past unremarked. –KH

Devil in a Blue Dress (Film, US, Carl Franklin, 1995) Unemployed black veteran “Easy” Rawlins (Denzel Washington) stumbles into detective work, and into murders, when white fixer Albright (Tom Sizemore) hires him to find the missing Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals). Excellent transposition of Walter Mosley’s novel to film relies equally on Washington’s intelligence, Tak Fujimoto’s expertly sun-faded camera work, and a manic turn by Don Cheadle as Rawlins’ psycho ace in the hole, “Mouse.” –KH

I Walk Alone (Film, US, Byron Haskin, 1948) Released from prison after fourteen years, gangster Frankie Madison (Burt Lancaster) seeks a reckoning with his old partner Noll Turner (Kirk Douglas), but finds that times have changed. Come for the Lancaster-Douglas showdown, but stay for the jaw-dropping set piece in which Frankie discovers the real crime of business accounting. –KH

Love Education (Film, Taiwan, Sylvia Chang, 2017) After her mother’s death, a stubborn schoolteacher (Sylvia Chang) launches a campaign to relocate her father’s grave, over the objections of his equally indomitable first wife, the ear-grabbing honorary granny of a close-knit rural community. Moving and funny drama with a wry eye for character observation.—RDL

Love Season 2 (Television, Lesley Arfin & Paul Rust & Judd Apatow, 2017) Despite her resolve to keep her distance, and his inability to navigate her boundaries, love addict Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and awkward Gus circle ever closer to official relationship status. In an era of sophomore slumps, it’s exciting to see a series, especially one so dependent on a keen balance between sharp comedy and real behavior, understand and deliver on what made it great in the first place.—RDL

One False Move (Film, US, Carl Franklin, 1992) Three crooks (Michael Beach, Cynda Williams, and Billy Bob Thornton) fleeing a multiple murder in LA bring big-city cops and gritty violence to the cornpone flyspeck of Star City, Arkansas, and its exuberant police chief Dale “Hurricane” Dixon (Bill Paxton). Franklin blends the crime film and the Western better than most directors handle either genre. Williams’ character anchors the movie, allowing Paxton and Thornton to blow up their parts gloriously. –KH

Understudy For Death (Fiction, Charles Willeford, 1961) When a well-to-do housewife in a small Florida town kills herself and her children, the cynical local reporter assigned to pry into the case stumbles into infidelity. Revived after half a century and still mis-marketed as a crime novel, this features Willeford’s unsparing hardboiled voice but is really an exercise in mid-century American alienation. As if a typical noir cast decided to set aside mystery and murder and stick to the behavior of Cheever or Yates characters. If you don’t know Willeford, start with Cockfighter.—RDL

The Unsuspected (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1947) A seeming suicide, a return from the dead, and a mysterious marriage throw the household of radio true-crime host Victor Grandison (Claude Rains) into dramatic disarray. Although Rains oils and conspires beautifully, if Curtiz had gotten his first casting choices (Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine) this would have been another of his Pinnacles. The dialogue crackles, the cameras zoom and float, and shadows loom and stab in this not-quite-flawless thriller. –KH

Good

Blind Spot (Film, US, Robert Gordon, 1947) A drunk writer (Chester Morris) may have murdered his publisher in a locked room right after coming up with a locked-room mystery plot. Strong viewer identification and the beautiful Constance Dowling (as the publisher’s pawed-at secretary) push this light work up to Good for me, but Morris’ ridiculous “drunk” performance in the first act and the lack of true mystery may drop it to Okay for others. –KH

Bodyguard (Film, US, Richard Fleischer, 1948) Dismissed from the LAPD, maverick cop Mike Carter (Lawrence Tierney) finds bodyguard work, and skullduggery afoot, in the Dyson meat-packing clan. Either you want to see Lawrence Tierney bully, slink, and growl his way through plenty of vital, interesting Los Angeles location shots or you don’t. –KH

Strange Impersonation (Film, US, Anthony Mann, 1946) Biochemist Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) experiments on herself with a new anesthetic, sending the viewer on a thrill ride of blackmail, identity theft, alembics, and post-surgery cigarettes, with a terrific Anthony Mann shot every so often to goose the emotional stakes. Even William Gargan as the inexplicable bone of romantic contention can’t stop things dead. –KH

Okay

Escape in the Fog (Film, US, Budd Boetticher, 1945) Recuperating nurse Eilene (Nina Foch) has a nightmare of seeing a man stabbed on the Golden Gate Bridge — and then meets him when her waking screams bring him running. Budget limits and a hack script waste the appealing Foch and a great premise on a rote spy-smashing B-picture. Boetticher doesn’t really bother trying here. –KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Aquatic Humanoids and the New Tim Powers

August 14th, 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

Alternate Routes (Fiction, Tim Powers, 2018) A former Secret Service agent who now works for a ghost-proof courier service in LA collides with an ongoing government program that’s weakening the walls between worlds. This is a very Powers-y novel, albeit one more rooted in the present than his usual. The ghost cosmology bubbles inventively, a blend of Expiration Date and “Down and Out in Purgatory,” with a few new wrinkles. Although the action seldom lets up, it’s not quite the barn-burner that the Powers Pinnacles are, with only one truly vertiginous revelation. –KH

Black is the Color (Graphic Novel, Julia Gfrörer, 2013) Sailor set adrift by his desperate shipmates attracts the attentions of an affectionate but sinister mermaid. Deadpan, haunting weird tale told in spare, almost monoplanar line art.—RDL

Cold Skin (Film, France/Spain, Xavier Jens, 2017) Weather station operator (David Oakes) newly arrived on a remote, barren island joins with its only other human inhabitant, a truculent lighthouse keeper (Ray Stevenson) to fend off nightly attacks from aquatic humanoids. Stark, beautifully shot period horror reminiscent of William Hope Hodgson.—RDL

Good

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (Film, US, Lou Adler, 1982) After minor celebrity makes Corinne “Third Degree” Burns (Diane Lane) unemployable in her small town, she talks her (awful) band The Stains (Lane, Marin Kanter, and Laura Dern) onto the tour of the Metal Corpses (various Tubes) and the Looters (Ray Winstone fronting various Clash and Sex Pistols). What ensues, murkily directed and recorded, is the origin myth of the Riot Grrrl movement via All About Eve. Nancy Dowd took her name off the script, which as shot and cut can’t figure out if it’s indicting the Spectacle or Burns or both. Lane and Winstone are great, though. –KH

Ken Pulls Off His Rubber Mask, Revealing Robin With His Detective Dee Review

July 31st, 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

Bombshell: the Hedy Lamarr Story (Film, US, Alexandra Dean, 2017) Documentary recounts the life of the Hollywood star whose beauty eclipsed the quality of her roles, and whose efforts as an inventor led to the frequency-hopping technology underlying wi-fi and GPS. Inspiring and sad in equal measure.—RDL

Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Affair with a Famous Cartoonist (Graphic Novel, Bill Griffith, 2015) The opportunity to look through a trove of family documents sends the author down a research rabbit hole into his deceased mother’s secret romantic life. Autobiography becomes a web of hidden and unknowable adjacent biographies, with the comics medium heightening interior drama as no other form could.—RDL

Mission: Impossible — Fallout (Film, US, Christopher McQuarrie, 2018) Superspy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, effortlessly effortful) must deal with the titular fallout from the previous film while being saddled with a thuggish CIA observer (Henry Cavill). Cavill (perhaps on purpose) plays it as Dark Peter Lupus, as this installment homages the TV show repeatedly and well. Of course it still finds room for three insane chase sequences and the by-now-expected sudden but inevitable betrayal. –KH

Ugly Delicious (Television, Netflix, David Chang and Peter Meehan, 2018) Iconoclastic restaurateur Chang brings in a dream team of food writers and fellow chefs to look at of change and tradition in food culture. Refreshingly takes the piss out of hagiographical food TV cliches while still getting the salivary glands vicariously flowing. If you’re going to watch out of order, start with the episode on the African American food experience and the fraughtness of fried chicken.—RDL

Good

Conflict (Film, US, Curtis Bernhardt, 1945) Engineer with a yen for his sister-in-law (Humphrey Bogart) thinks he’s successfully bumped off his wife, until a trail of strange clues starts to indicate otherwise. Exercise in pseudo-Freudian paranoia delivers the noir mood through the perspective of a then-unusual anti-hero protagonist.—RDL

Deadline at Dawn (Film, US, Harold Clurman, 1946) When a good-hearted but slow-thinking sailor (Bill Williams) gets mixed up with a blackmailer’s murder, a dance-hall girl (an unusually restrained Susan Hayward) and a philosophical cabbie (Paul Lukas) team up to find the real killer. Clifford Odets script, based on a Cornell Woolrich story, elevates an unmemorable storyline with pearls of hardboiled dialogue and a knack for quickly drawn, unexpected characterizations.—RDL

Detective Dee: the Four Heavenly Kings (Film, China, Tsui Hark, 2018) When the nation’s chief investigator (Mark Chao) is entrusted with the all-powerful Dragon Taming Mace, the ambitious Empress Wu (Carina Lau) schemes with sorcerers of the martial arts world to reclaim it from him. The plotting that connects the delirious action set pieces is on the labored side this time out, making this the slightest of the series. But, hey, we’re not here for the plot, and this does offer up the best, nuttiest “and now the CGI characters fight” sequence ever.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Pandemic Panic and a Regenerating Ronin

July 24th, 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

The Bar (Film, Spain, Álex de la Iglesia, 2017) Fear reveals who people really are when the government’s lethal suppression of a potential pandemic traps patrons and staff in a downtown cafe. De la Iglesia attacks the confined space thriller with his hallmark black humor and mastery of escalation.—RDL

Blade of the Immortal (Film, Japan, Takashi Miike, 2017) Weary ronin (Takuya Kimura), rendered unkillable by magic bloodworms that grant him regeneration powers, reluctantly agrees to assist a girl (Hana Sugisaki) in her quest for vengeance against the murderous dojo responsible for the deaths of her parents. Miike treats the original manga’s string of martial arts duels as a formal exercise in varying each fight and investing it with its own distinct emotional hook. Which is to say, many people in this movie need killing and and/or do not know who they are fucking with.—RDL

Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (Film, US, Lisa Immordino Vreeland, 2015) Newly rediscovered interview audio tapes form the nucleus of this bio-documentary of the legendary art collector and patron pivotal to the reception of both the surrealists and the American abstract expressionists. Having researched the indomitable, canny Guggenheim of the 30s and 40s, I found the portrait of her reserved, melancholy later self particularly moving.—RDL

Resurrection Science: : Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things (Nonfiction, M. R. O’Connor, 2015) Examines the ever-expanding technical, economic and philosophical obstacles arising from efforts to preserve, protect and perhaps revive extinct and dwindling species, from fast-evolving pupfish to war-depleted rhinos to the passenger pigeon.—RDL

Sorry to Bother You (Film, US, Boots Riley, 2018) Broke and searching for meaning, Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) hits the fast track to capitalist telemarketing success when he unleashes his “white voice” (David Cross), but discovers a conspiracy. Funny and unsettling in equal measure, this surrealist (or perhaps magic-realist) comedy holds its own with John Dies at the End or even Gremlins 2, combining the former’s studied weirdness with the latter’s political bite. –KH

Talking from 9 to 5: Men and Women at Work (Nonfiction, Deborah Tannen, 1994) Linguist examines the contrasting conversational styles of men and women and the pitfalls they introduce in the workplace, from who gets credit for ideas to participation in meetings. Way better written than most business/pop science books, providing insights usable by anyone employed at any occupation more social than woodland hermit.—RDL

Good

Neal Brennan 3 MICS (Stand-up, Netflix, 2017) Most famous for being Dave Chappelle’s writing partner (“like being on a basketball team with Michael Jordan. You just win more.”), Brennan tries out stand-up, or rather a combination of stand-up, one-liners, and deeper “emotional stuff,” each delivered at one of the titular three mics. Brennan’s attempted deconstruction of comedy succeeds on its merits (although only the stand-up bit about testosterone being like having a prison inmate in your head really killed for me) but doesn’t get inventive or playful enough to break out of what’s essentially three one-third-length comedy shows. –KH

Okay

War Plan Red (Non-fiction, Kevin Lippert, 2015) The subtitle says it all: “The United States’ Secret Plan to Invade Canada and Canada’s Secret Plan to Invade the United States.” Unfortunately, a slapdash treatment of the War of 1812 and various cross-border ructions since in the first two chapters only highlights the superficiality of Lippert’s research when he gets to his main topic. Both the initial brief for U.S. “War Plan RED” and Canada’s “Defence Scheme No. 1” (what’s left of it after the Canadian General Staff ordered it destroyed) appear in an Appendix in the back, at least. –KH