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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Brie Goes Kree

March 12th, 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

Russian Doll Season 1 (Television, Netflix, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler & Leslye Headland, 2019) After Nadia (Lyonne) dies on her birthday, she enters a time loop, and what’s worse, her cat is missing. So New York you can smell the urine, this amazingly deft comedy assembles influences, music cues, and incisive, natural performances (especially Elizabeth Ashley as Nadia’s surrogate mother figure) into a story about human damage that (almost) never kills its own buzz. –KH

Recommended

Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East (Nonfiction, Gerard Russell, 2014) A survey of minority religions in the Middle East and Central Asia looks at offshoots from the big three (Samaritans, Copts), esoteric faiths (Mandaeans, Yazidis, Druze), the monotheistic Zoroastrians and the polytheistic Kalasha. Scholarship and first person reportage illuminates details of theology and daily life that news stories of sectarian conflict can’t help but gloss over.—RDL

The Laughing Heirs (Film, Germany, Max Ophuls, 1933) Misunderstandings proliferate as the young inheritor to a Rhine Valley winery, commanded by the will to abstain for a month, woos the daughter of its main competitor. Fizzy ode to German wine culture and the joy of living, rendered retrospectively poignant by its release date.

Who is Harry Nilsson? (and Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) (Film, US, John Scheinfeld, 2010) Documentary profiles the beloved singer-songwriter, whose life heartbreakingly follows the all too familiar pattern of self-destructive genius. Formally straightforward but delivers the emotion of Nilsson’s life with access to both the superstar friends who accompanied him on his wild sprees and an audio memoir he recorded prior to his death.—RDL

Good

The Blue Gardenia (Film, US, Fritz Lang, 1953) With a conflicted newspaper columnist (Richard Conte) on her trail, a jilted switchboard operator (Ann Baxter) fears arrest after an encounter with a creepy date (Raymond Burr) ends in his death. Uneven mix of light business and noir, with Lang bringing his full attention to the latter and indifferently staging the former.—RDL

Captain Marvel (Film, US, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019) Alien warrior (Brie Larson) crashes on grunge-era earth in pursuit of enemies, teams with SHIELD agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson.) Script blunts its emotional arc by hiding its setup from both hero and audience. Kicks up a notch whenever Larson and Jackson get to play buddy cop beats.—RDL

Dave Made a Maze (Film, US, Bill Watterson, 2017) Woman returns from business trip to find that her creatively blocked boyfriend (Nick Thune) has trapped himself in a cardboard labyrinth/pocket dimension he built in their living room. Whimsical horror-comedy plays as a Gondryesque remake of Cube. No, not that Bill Watterson.—RDL

Okay

Captain Marvel (Film, US, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2019) Kree super-weapon Vers (Brie Larson) flees the shapeshifting Skrull general Talos (“Mendo” (are you happy now Travis Johnson)) to Nineties Earth where she meets Nick Fury (CGI and Samuel L. Jackson) and discovers her true past. Cookie-cutter Marvel origin flick saddled with truly awful, choppy, murky fight scenes criminally wastes Annette Bening, but sporadically comes to life when Larson gets to play a human. –KH

Odd Thomas (Film, US, Stephen Sommers, 2013) The ominous appearance of spectral fear-eaters puts a small town psychic detective (Anton Yelchin) on the trail of an imminent massacre. Hyped up direction merely emphasizes the flaws of a script weighed down by the expository demands of its source material, a series novel by Dean R. Koontz.—RDL

Not Recommended

Occult Features of Anarchism (Nonfiction, Erica Lagalisse, 2019) Intended as a (needed) corrective to the hyper-materialist secular consensus of left-anarchism, this slim tract shies away from specifics and (as in the case of the witchcraft trials) sometimes gets the generalities embarrassingly wrong. (Lagalisse at least cites James Webb’s The Occult Underground, which did all this much better, in 1974 no less.) There’s the germ of a good long-read in the concluding essay, on the notion of conspiracy theories as revolutionary consciousness in ovo, but it feels tacked on. –KH

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