Ken and Robin Consume Media: Cinema Purgatorio, Blackbeard, and the Archies

February 6th, 2024 | 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

Ambulance (Film, US, Michael Bay, 2022) Volatile bank robber (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his reluctantly inveigled Marine vet adopted brother (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) flee a job gone wrong in a hijacked ambulance with a hard nosed paramedic (Eiza González) and wounded cop on board. In a hyper-accelerated thriller that overtly namechecks his pre-Transformers career highlights, Bay shows that a film featuring a 70-minute vehicle chase is the exactly correct assignment for him.—RDL

The Archies (Film, India, Zoya Akhtar, 2023) In the Anglo-Indian town of Riverdale, fickle but beloved 60s teen Archie Andrews toys with the affections of best friends Bettie and Veronica, as the latter’s father schemes to replace their beloved park with a grand hotel. Sustains a sweet nostalgic tone over a 260 minute running time, with choreography and dancing notably better than the Bollywood norm.—RDL

Blackbeard: America’s Most Notorious Pirate (Nonfiction, Angus Konstam, 2006) The closest thing to an academic biography we’re likely to get of a man who left only a legend and a bunch of police reports behind him. Pirate historian Konstam pads out the thin historical record with chapters of Caribbean context; it could perhaps use tighter organization and one more editorial pass but it’s still the best there is on the topic.—KH

Call Me Chihiro (Film, Japan, Rikiya Imaizumi, 2023) An outwardly gregarious, inwardly alienated former massage parlor worker turned bento shop cashier draws a group of lonely people into her orbit. Sympathetic, subtly limned character study of a paradoxical personality.—RDL

Cinema Purgatorio: This Is Sinerama (Comics, Avatar, Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, 2021) Eighteen short (8-page) comics (mostly) recapitulating Hollywood tragedies, from the life of Willis O’Brien or Howard Hughes to the death of Thelma Todd or the Black Dahlia, usually in a style reminiscent of a film. Interspersed media-philosophical comics (and the framing sequence of a damned woman as our audience viewpoint) are clever enough but the real attraction is, e.g., Moore and O’Neill riffing on creative theft in the backstory of Felix the Cat, in the form of an animated cartoon, or telling the story of the Warner Brothers as if they were the Marx Brothers.—KH

The Money (Film, South Korea, So-Dong Kim, 1958) A farmer desperate to raise funds for his daughter’s wedding allows himself to be bullied into reckless gambling by the village loanshark. Rural melodrama uses dramatic irony of knowing better than the protagonist where this is all going to excruciatingly draw out the inevitable hammer blow.—RDL

Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead (Graphic Novel, Bill Griffith, 2019) Loving biographical portrait of the lifelong sideshow performer, best known for his appearance in Freaks, who inspired Griffith’s comics character Zippy.—RDL

Good

Bad Seed (Film, France, Billy Wilder, 1934) Cut off by his wealthy father, a brash spendthrift (Pierre Mingand) throws in with a car theft ring. While fleeing Germany for the US, Wilder stopped in Paris long enough to direct this breezy crime drama, revealing the insouciant cynicism that would come to full flower in his Hollywood classics. Freshly available on Blu Ray in a restored print.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Maestro, Women Write Horror, and Tomes About Grimoires

January 30th, 2024 | 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 Grimoire Encyclopaedia, Vols. 1 and 2 (Nonfiction, David Rankine, 2023) After a concise history of the pre-grimoire tradition, Rankine provides textual histories and discusses the contents of 99 grimoires, from the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri to a modern (1960) forgery and a sorcerous tome assembled in 2021. (The majority of the works covered do, however, fall into the grimoire mainstream 1250-1850.) This would be enough to make it the best single reference work on grimoires, but Rankine goes further and indexes every spirit (demon, angel, etc), stone or crystal, incense or oil, spell ingredient, plant, metal, or tool mentioned in those 99 grimoires. A staggering work of scholarship, fully accessible to gamers and wannabe warlocks alike.—KH

Recommended

Al Capone’s Beer Wars (Nonfiction, John J. Binder, 2017) Shelves of books retail the legends of Capone and the Chicago mobs, but Binder (as befits a University of Chicago professor) goes back to the documentary record of the 729 “gang-style killings” in Cook County from 1919-1933. On this bed of fact, he lays out essentially a military history of the Beer Wars between Capone’s Outfit and the other 11 bootlegging gangs in the city. It’s not the only book you need on the Chicago gangs, but it’s an essential touchstone, an actual history in a field full of (at best) movie tie-ins.—KH

Godard Mon Amour (Film, France, Michel Hazanavicius, 2017) Amid the political upheavals of late 60s Paris, lauded New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) leans into his worst character traits and strains his new marriage to actress Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin) by reconceiving himself as a Maoist revolutionary. As if narrative cinema itself is taking revenge on Godard for all the mean things he said about it, this satirical drama, based on his ex-spouse’s memoir, thoroughly skewers its protagonist, depicting his turn to radicalism as a profound act of professional and personal self-sabotage. Also known as Redoubtable; the US title strikes a further note of travesty, playing on not a Godard film but one by Resnais.—RDL

Klop: Britain’s Most Ingenious Secret Agent (Nonfiction, Peter Day, 2014)  Biography of Jona Ustinov, the Jerusalem born, Russo-Ethiopian who won multiple Iron Crosses fighting for Germany in WWI before becoming a ubiquitous operative, interrogator and analyst for MI5 and MI6 in WWII and the Cold War. Clear narrative is often lost as an overstuffed cast of characters take part in a series of murky incidents—which is to say that Day accurately evokes the world of espionage. Among Ustinov’s detractors was his son Peter, who saw the pain suffered by his mother, the painter and stage designer Nadia Benois, by his insistence on introducing her to his many girlfriends.—RDL

Maestro (Film, US, Bradley Cooper, 2023) Wunderkind conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) meets and weds Broadway actor Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) leading to a lifelong love complicated by his disinclination to conduct his affairs with men discreetly. Cooper skillfully handles an impressionistic script that evades biopic syndrome by making the marriage the throughline.—RDL

The Man with a Shotgun (Film, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1961) Capable hunter () vies for the position of sheriff in a lawless mountain logging town. Betrayals and counter-betrayals keep on coming in a Technicolor, Nikkatsuscope contemporary western.—RDL

Good

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction (Nonfiction, Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson, 2019) Brief sketches of 40+ female horror writers, plus five contemporary subgenre roundups, provide a decent primer of horror literature from the Gothic to now. Individual author treatments are wildly hit-or-miss, but the book as a whole benefits from its synoptic view and from superb book design by Andie Reid. Official nitpicks: No mention of Silvia Moreno-Garcia? Patricia Highsmith relegated to the “Related Work” section of Daphne du Maurier’s essay, and Mary Wilkins Freeman tossed off in a line? Tchah!—KH

Rich and Strange (Film, UK, Alfred Hitchcock, 1931) When they get an unexpected chance to go on a luxury cruise, a sullen office clerk (Harry Kendall) and his optimistic, underappreciated wife (Joan Barry) are drawn to new romantic partners. Mix of wry social comedy and domestic drama shows the Hitchcock energy outside of the suspense genre.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Reacher, May December, and Later Silver John

January 23rd, 2024 | 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 Box (Film, Mexico, Lorenzo Vigas, 2021) Stoic seventh-grader falls in with a textile factory recruiter he believes to be his supposedly murdered father, learning the brutal side of the business. Economical, beautifully shot social realist crime drama.—RDL

Jolly (YouTube channel, Josh Carrott & Ollie Kendal, 2017-present) A spinoff from the more focused (and also Recommended if you want to see a lot of Korean BBQ) Korean Englishman YT channel, Jolly features hosts Josh and Ollie usually (but not always) trying food from snacks or army rations to Michelin meals. The proven good-looking-straight-man, goofy-looking-funny-one combo works again, YouTube content at its most charming and addictive.—KH

The Man Who Spoke Snakish (Fiction, Andrus Kivirähk, 2007) In a fantastical medieval Estonia, a holdout from a beleaguered hunting culture, one of the last people who wields magical powers granted by the language of adders, recounts the tragic events of a life lived in the shadow of encroaching Christianity. Whimsy and brutality inventively intertwine in a tale of cultural transformation and the toll it exacts.—RDL

May December (Film, US, Todd Haynes, 2023) Canny actor (Natalie Portman) pays an extended research visit to a woman (Julianne Moore) she has been cast to play in a movie about the statutory rape trial triggered by her relationship with her now-adult, then seventh grade husband (Charles Melton.) An undertow of subtext seethes beneath the brittle surface of this powerfully acted domestic drama.—RDL

PG: Psycho Goreman (Film, Canada, Steve Kostanski, 2021) With her confederate slash whipping boy brother (Owen Myre) at her side, an unhinged grade schooler (Nita-Josee Hanna) gains control over a mighty evil alien overlord from the planet Gigax. Scrappy, blood-drenched indie tokusatsu flick spoofs E.T. and pays homage to the straight-to-VHS oeuvre of Charles Band.—RDL

Tár (Film, US, Todd Field, 2022) Superstar conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) heads for the high point of her career, conducting Mahler’s Fifth with her Berlin Philharmonic, even as her tragic flaw (serial sexual predation) widens and is exposed. A classic tragedy, wonderfully acted (Noémie Merlant as Lydia’s resentful assistant is magnificently restrained) and composed, punctuated by sudden character reveals that rotate the story.—KH

This Happy Breed (Film, UK, David Lean, 1944) An optimistic WWI vet turned travel agent (Robert Newton) shepherds his loving but sometimes sharp-elbowed family through the ups and downs, personal and political, of the interwar period. Adaptation of a 1939 Noel Coward play focuses on character while also using four years of hindsight to bring an air of pointed irony to its morale boosting proceedings.—RDL

The Voice of the Mountain (Fiction, Manly Wade Wellman, 1984) Silver John decides to climb Cry Mountain to find the source of its cry, and discovers a black magician in this place of power. The resolution doesn’t quite match the wonder of the setup, and Wellman’s prose is not quite as well-joined as in his original 1951-1963 Pinnacle Silver John tales of Appalachian magic, but all that says is it’s merely an excellent occult adventure story..—KH

Good

Gangubai Kathiawadi (Film, India, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2022) Brothel-keeper Gangubai (Alia Bhatt) recalls her own rise to political power in the Mumbai red-light district of Kamathipura. Bhatt is always an actress worth watching, but she can’t elevate this relatively rote biopic very far out of its strangely sanitized channel.—KH

The Hanging Stones (Fiction, Manly Wade Wellman, 1982) Silver John investigates a businessman’s plan to build a reproduction of Stonehenge as a tourist attraction. Some superb supernatural ideas appear in this somewhat shapeless novel, and it’s always nice to see (one of Wellman’s other series occult-battlers) Judge Pursuivant as a guest star, but it needed another editing pass to bring it even up to the standard of later Silver John novels.—KH

No Man of Her Own (Film, US, Wesley Ruggles, 1932) Suave card sharp (Clark Gable) conceals his true profession when he goes on the lam to a small town and falls for a bored librarian (Carole Lombard.) Slight pre-Code romcom burns with the palpable heat between the leads, who don’t get together in real life for another four years.—RDL

Reacher Season 2 (Television, US, Amazon Prime, Nick Santora, 2023-4) Someone is killing off enormous former MP Jack Reacher’s (Alan Ritchson) less-enormous former MP team, and he starts looking into it. The fight choreography has really dropped off between seasons (with one exception in the last episode), and the lack of focus (between flashbacks and forgettable team members) badly weakens the brutal drive that Season 1 brought. It’s still Jack Reacher harming bad guys, but that climb to Justified-level purity I hoped for from last season has not even begun.—KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Devil in Folklore and Folklore in Horror

January 16th, 2024 | 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

Cloven Country: the Devil and the English Landscape (Nonfiction, Jeremy Harte, 2022) Starting in the 16th century English folktales explaining unusual landscape features underwent a switch, substituting a comic, thwartable Devil for the giants and fairies that previously starred in them. In a scholarly but wry and accessible voice, Harte comprehensively rounds these up, abjuring the temptation to theorize a grand cause for the shift and then bend the evidence to fit.—RDL

Ladies in Retirement (Film, US, Charles Vidor, 1941) Staid companion/housekeeper (Ida Lupino) to a fussy former actress (Isobel Elsom) resorts to desperate measures to keep her chaotic, mentally ill sisters (Elsa Lanchester, Edith Barrett) housed with her. Expressionistic Victorian-set gothic based on an English murder play.—RDL

No Hard Feelings (Film, US, Gene Stupnitsky. 2023) In danger of being priced out of her own home town and needing a vehicle to make her summer nut as an Uber driver, a beleaguered townie (Jennifer Lawrence) accepts an offer from worried rich parents (Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti) to relieve their introverted son (Andrew Barth Feldman.) Reaffirms the heartfelt raunchy comedy as the last vestige of realistic characterization in mainstream movies, with a healthy dollop of class awareness and something of a Mike Nichols vibe.—RDL

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (Film, US, Kier-La Janisse, 2021) The resurgent horror sub-genre gets a comprehensive, international and pancultural survey from critics and filmmakers. Long but meant to be consumed in chapter-length chunks, this will have you scrambling to JustWatch to see which obscure 70s British TV dramas are available for streaming in your region.—RDL

Good

The Black Report  (Fillm, Japan, Yasuzô Masumura, 1963) Cops and prosecutors confront bribes and perjury in the case of a murdered, philandering CEO. Cynical courtroom drama beats Dick Wolf to the Law & Order structure by 30 years.—RDL

Okay

Sakra (Film, China/HK, Donnie Yen) Stalwart leader of a Song Dynasty bandit gang (Donnie Yen) battles his own allies when he is framed for the murders of his parents and a subordinate. Setup for a franchise fails to untangle a convoluted plot it has presumably inherited from its wuxia source novel.—RDL

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Poor Things, Ferrari, Silent Night

January 9th, 2024 | 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

Poor Things (Film, UK, Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023) Over the misgivings of the weird scientist (Willem Dafoe) who reanimated her, a sheltered woman (Emma Stone) whose brain has yet to catch up with her body elects to see the world with a vain cad (Mark Ruffalo) as her guide. Frankenstein motifs come out to play in a satirical art nouveau steampunk fable of innocence and experience wrapped around Stone’s astounding performance.—RDL

Recommended

Blood & Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (Nonfiction, Ronald Hutton, 2009) After demonstrating with his customary gentle, systematic authority that next to nothing can be conclusively proven about druids, Hutton lays out the various British projections, suppositions and outright fabrications about them that started with a revival of interest in the subject that began in the early modern period. An indispensable politico-aesthetic history of Britain as seen through the lens of a constantly reimagined, bloodthirsty and/or benevolent caste of priests and/or magicians and/or scientists.—RDL

Ferrari (Film, US, Michael Mann, 2023) In 1957, Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) may lose his company to deeper-pocketed competitors, and wreck his marriage to Laura (Penélope Cruz) over his infidelity with Lina (Shailene Woodley). Mann unreels the story of what happens when two crises collide in one man, in an unusually internal film for him—even the racing scenes deliberately seem stepped down. Driver and Cruz (of course) play metal and fire off each other wonderfully.—KH

Incredible But True (Film, France, Quentin Dupieux, 2022) Bourgeois couple (Alain Chabat, Léa Drucker) who have a duct in their house that allows one to travel ahead twelve hours in time while also de-ageing by three days are nonplussed to learn that their friend, his boss, has had an electronic penis installed. Droll cautionary tale pays homage to Buñuel.—RDL

Silent Night (Film, US, John Woo, 2023) Rendered mute by the gangsters whose shootout claimed his young son’s life, an ordinary family man transforms himself into a traumatized instrument of vengeance. Contrary to the action romp promised by its marketing, this dialogue-free pure cinema subversion of the Death Wish formula is Woo’s darkest film since Bullet in the Head.—RDL

Trapeze (Film, US, Carol Reed, 1956) Injured trapeze artist (Burt Lancaster) returns to the rigging to train a promising protege (Tony Curtis), but a fame-starved performer (Gina Lollobrigida) comes between them. Briskly staged Technicolor circus melodrama with noirish undertones. DramaSystem players might take note of how economically it resolves its many dramatic petitions, stacking them on top of each other in quick succession.—RDL

The Unknown Man of Shandigor (Film, Switzerland, Jean-Louis Roy, 1967) Teams of spies violently vie for possession of a nuke-neutralizing device designed by a misanthropic scientist (Daniel Emilfork.) Bold compositions resonate with semiotic fatalism in this deconstructed spy spoof. Serge Gainsbourg appears as a chic French spymaster and sings his composition “Bye Bye Mister Spy.”—RDL

Good

Merry Little Batman (Film, US, Mike Roth, 2023) When Bruce Wayne (Luke Wilson) gets called out of Gotham, his son Damian (Yonas Kibreab) is left home alone—and prey to the Joker’s (David Hornsby) plan! What could have been a simple “Home Alone in Wayne Manor” cartoon leaves that setup behind by Act Three for an ambitious if not fully successful “meaning of Christmas” story. Art designer Guillaume Fesquet’s combo of Tim Burton and Ronald Searle works wonders at keeping cliche material fresh.—KH

Okay

Candy Cane Lane (Film, US, Reginald Hudlin, 2023) Noel-loving neighborhood dad Chris Carver (Eddie Murphy) unwisely makes a deal with a rogue elf (Jillian Bell) to win a Christmas-decorating contest, and madcap hijinks ensue. A baseline acceptable, even wacky, “Christmas is family” movie downright angered me when a Murphy ad lib in the end-credits blooper reel was orders of magnitude funnier and more real than anything I had just watched.—KH