Ken and Robin Consume Media: Elizabeth Hand’s Hell House Sequel, Please Don’t Destroy, Quiz Lady

November 28th, 2023 | 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

Black Sheep (Film, US, Allan Dwan, 1935) Suave gambler (Edmund Lowe) and kicky actress (Claire Trevor) team up to rescue a swell young fellow from the clutches of a predatory jewel thief. Effervescent shipboard con artist comedy.—RDL

Christine (Film, US, Antonio Campos, 2016) Troubled local TV news reporter (Rebecca Hall) spirals as her drive to succeed collides with her inability to read and interact successfully with her colleagues. Hall gives a precise and heartbreaking performance in this evocative character portrait docudrama.—RDL

A Haunting on the Hill (Fiction, Elizabeth Hand, 2023) Playwright Holly Sherwin rents the empty Hill House with her cast and tech designer to workshop her new witch-trial play, adapted from a Jacobean original, in this (estate-approved) sequel to Shirley Jackson’s Pinnacle novel. Hand was never going to equal the greatest horror novel of all time, so she writes a different story about human frailty colliding with the unnatural, rich in metafiction, drama, and “I just can’t read this next part” dread. It’s not a remake or even a cover version, and it’s barely even a sequel, but it’s another deeply satisfying (and horripilating) Elizabeth Hand novel. —KH

Madame Freedom (Film, South Korea, Hyeong-mo Han, 1956) Reserved woman (Jeong-rim Kim) stifled by her self-centered wet blanket husband (Am Park) falls into the arms of a young jazz fan neighbor and a wealthy politician. Subtly drawn domestic drama of yearning for more in an age of modernization.—RDL

Please Don’t Destroy: the Treasure of Foggy Mountain (Film, US, Paul Briganti, 2023) Underachieving sporting goods retailers (Martin Herlihy, John Higgins, Ben Marshall) test their childhood friendship when they discover a legendary artifact and must defend it from disaffected park rangers (Megan Stalter, X Mayo) and a purple-clad cult leader (Bowen Yang.) Joke-packed, loopy comedy updates the SNL movie to the kindly mores of the cozy generation.—RDL

Quiz Lady (Film, US, Jessica Yu, 2023) When loan sharks kidnap her dog, a repressed accountant (Awkwafina) gives in to the urgings of her voluble train wreck older sister (Sandra Oh) and auditions to become a contestant on the quiz show that has obsessed her since childhood. Smart, affectionate buddy comedy flips expectations on who will play which side of the mythic Felix/Oscar opposition.—RDL

Okay

The Devil is a Sissy (Film, W.S. Van Dyke & Rowland Brown, 1936) English boy (Freddie Bartholomew) enrolls in a tough NYC school and falls in with budding delinquents (Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper.) Strongly characterized comedy-drama seeks social responsibility but winds up showing that we prefer our onscreen rogues unreformed.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: A Killer, An Antimemetic World-Slayer, and Belle Epoque Investigations

November 21st, 2023 | 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

In Which We Serve (Film, UK, Noel Coward & David Lean, 1942) Clinging to a life raft and periodically strafed by German planes, the captain (Noel Coward) and other crew members of the sinking destroyer Torrin recall the role it played in their lives since the beginning of the war. Coward plays against his bon vivant persona as a wholly admirable naval officer in this stirring achievement in British wartime propaganda.—RDL

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (Film, Italy, Luciano Ercoli, 1970) A chilling encounter with a spear-cane wielding blackmailer (Simón Andreu) leaves an ennui-ridden woman (Dagmar Lassander) thinking that her driven businessman husband (Pier Paolo Capponi) is a murderer. Giallo without gore killings exerts a strange hold despite its plot absurdities, in part via the stylish unease of its Ennio Morricone score.—RDL

The Killer (Film, US, David Fincher, 2023) Hit man (Michael Fassbender) who obsesses about process repeatedly finds himself improvising as his process hits the skids of unpredictable humanity. On one level a (perfectionist) film about a professional, on another a wry self-examination by a process-obsessed director. Its leitmotif of the killer concealed within (or emergent from) a commercial monoculture of sitcoms, gig work, and global branding seems almost beside the point. —KH

The Law According to Lidia Poët Season 1 (Television, Italy, Netflix, Guido Iuculano & Davide Orsini, 2023) In 1883 Turin, a law school grad who is forbidden to enter the courtroom (Matilda De Angelis) solves murders, aided by her stuffy attorney brother (Pier Luigi Pasino) and a handsome journalist (Eduardo Scarpetta.) De Angelis smolders with smarts, glamor and barely contained rage in a lavishly mounted historical case-of-the-week mystery show. YKRPG fans will appreciate its Belle Époque (or stile floreale if you insist) decor and costumes, particularly in the episode featuring spiritualism and a sinister masked ball.—RDL

Skinamarink (Film, Canada, Kyle Edward Ball, 2023) Preschool siblings wake up in the middle of the night to find their home transformed by an otherworldly incursion. Trance-inducing experimental horror, where figures appear dimly or obliquely when they occupy the screen at all, owes more to Stan Brakhage than it does to Tod Browning or John Carpenter. If you’re not on its wavelength after 15-20 minutes, know that it is going to stick with its aesthetic all the way through.—RDL

There Is No Antimemetics Division (Fiction, qntm, 2021) Marion Wheeler, the head of the SCP Foundation’s Antimemetics Division, battles an antimemetic world-killer in a series of layered, interrelated short narratives. Qntm takes a great spec-fic high concept and rings plenty of clever changes on it, while continuously raising the stakes from Clancyesque competence porn to Lovecraftian apocalypse. Mandatory reading for Madness Dossier GMs. —KH

Good

Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through the World’s Strangest Brains (Nonfiction, Helen Thomson, 2018) Journalist visits people who live with such rare neurological conditions as mirror neuron synesthesia, clinical lycanthropy, and Cotard’s syndrome, whose sufferers believe that they have died. An eye-opening look at anomalies of the brain, padded with the anodyne anecdotes pop science editors insist on.—RDL

Satan’s Slaves: Communion (Film, Indonesia, Joko Anwar, 2022) Four years after their first brush with demons summoned by an infernal pact, a family faces a new incursion from beyond—this time, in a flood-threatened Jakarta housing project. The creepy slow burn plays more strongly than the conclusion in a second installment that establishes the series’ core evil as emanating from the sins of the Suharto regime .—RDL

Okay

The Medium (Film, Thailand, Banjong Pisanthanakun, 2021) Shaman discovers that her niece has been possessed by a malign entity. Pseudodocumentary is at its most interesting early on, transposing the tropes of the exorcism subgenre to the animist Isan culture, before it revs up into standard scare stuff.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Loki, The Killer, and Telephonic Time Travel

November 14th, 2023 | 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

Gaslit (Television, US, Robbie Pickering, 2022) Backwash from the Watergate break-in engulfs the lives of pill-popping grande dame Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts), her attorney general husband John Mitchell (Sean Penn), aspiring flunky John Dean (Dan Stevens), and extremist nutball black bagger G. Gordon Liddy (Shea Whigham.) Wry retelling of America’s most entertaining mega-scandal captures its mix of absurdity and danger.—RDL

The Killer (Film. US, David Fincher, 2023) Nondescript assassin (Michael Fassbender) reminds himself of his dedication to icy indifference as he pursues his pursuers after a hit gone wrong. Beige, ultra-controlled fable of perfectionism under threat is Fincher’s most personal film to date.—RDL

Loki Season 2 (Television, US, Disney+, Eric Martin, 2023) Loki and his TVA pals struggle to prevent a time explosion that threatens to destroy the multiverse. Although the characters spend the season tackling a single obstacle, in a budget-conscious season mostly occurring on existing sets, the excitingly executed and genuinely conclusive ending justifies much.—RDL

Mad God (Film, US, Phil Tippett, 2021) A soldier undertakes a mission in a post-industrial hell of production, consumption, and destruction. Stop motion predominates in a mixed media animated journey through a goopy, repellent landscape invoking Giger and Bosch. —RDL

Mark Antony (Film, India, Adhik Ravichandran, 2023) Honest mechanic (Vishal) uses a phone that can make calls to the past to discover the truth about his hated gangster father and his ex-partner (S. J. Suryah), now our hero’s surrogate dad. Energetic action comedy science fiction musical features both leads in dual roles, and also a snake howitzer.—RDL

Okay

Secrets in the Hot Spring (Film, Taiwan, Kuan-Hui Lin, 2018) With a pair of unwelcome classmates in tow, a punch-happy high schooler visits his grandparents at their tourist hotel, finding it not only run down but also haunted. If you want to see what a Chinese ghost comedy looks like these days, here you go.—RDL

Ken was on the road this week.

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Only Murders in the Building, The Fall of the House of Usher, and Every Miss Marple Novel

November 7th, 2023 | Robin

Recommended

Common Wealth (Film, Spain, Álex de la Iglesia, 2000) Stifled realtor (Carmen Maura) tries to get a hoard of cash found in the apartment of a dead shut-in past the rapacious neighbors who have been waiting for years to steal it. Suspenseful black comedy takes a more gradual trip to chaos town than your typical Iglesia outing.—RDL

Every Miss Marple Novel (Fiction, Agatha Christie, 1930-1976) Busybody spinster Jane Marple combines thorough (and pessimistic) knowledge of human nature with a fine logical mind to solve a dozen murders in Christie’s best series by far. Although a few of the early novels suffer from Christie’s fondness for misdirection and minutiae, her decision to hinge Marple’s successes on human nature meant that Dame Agatha had to actually depict human characters in these. The later Marples (especially A Caribbean Mystery and its sequel Nemesis) show real ingenuity in approach, as well. —KH

Hidden Blade (Film, China, Er Cheng, 2023)  Enigmatic Secret Service head for the wartime Chinese puppet government under Japanese occupation (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) plays a double game. Fragmented, recursive historical spy drama staged with tripwire stillness..—RDL

Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make Believe (Film, Canada, Robert McCallum, 2023) Retrospective arts documentary celebrates the legacy of childrens’ TV host Ernie Coombs, aka the tirelessly affirming and gentle master of crafts and costumes, Mr. Dressup. Probably means nothing to you if you aren’t of the several generations of Canadians who grew up on his show, but if you did, get ready for crashing waves of deep nostalgia. And of course some absolutely devastating emotional material at the end.—RDL

Only Murders in the Building Season 3 (Television, US, Hulu/Disney+, Steve Martin & John Hoffman, 2023) When the star (Paul Rudd) of Oliver’s (Martin Short) shot at Broadway redemption is murdered, Mabel (Selena Gomez) starts an investigation, leaving Charles (Steve Martin) to choose between his role in the play and his duties as true crime podcaster. A shift to backstage mystery not only affords the opportunity to bring Meryl Streep in for an extended guest role, but also provides a fresh setting for the show’s exploration of loneliness and comradeship.—RDL

Not Recommended

The Fall of the House of Usher (Television, US, Netflix, Mike Flanagan, 2023) Opioid magnate Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) confesses at length to the strange series of labyrinthine events that led to the deaths of his entire family. The heavily telegraphed wedging together of Poe’s most famous stories might work in a campy tongue-in-cheek way, but Flanagan is deadly serious and  utterly loathes his ensemble of protagonists.—RDL