Ken and Robin Consume Media: Godzilla x Kong, Last Voyage of the Demeter, Haunting in Venice

April 23rd, 2024 | Robin

Recommended

The Pigeon Tunnel (Film, US, Errol Morris, 2023) Documentary companion piece to the memoir of the same name presents the life and work of David Cornwell, aka John le Carré. In the latest installment of his examination of cold war wreckage, master interrogator Morris meets his match in Cornwell, who knows exactly how much he intends to reveal and remains the author of his own narrative.—RDL

Priscilla (Film, US, Sofia Coppola, 2023) Lonely high schooler (Cailee Spaeny) at an American military base in Germany meets and falls for its most famous sergeant, Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), kicking off a love story in the penumbra of fame. Observant study of a doomed marriage in which fashion and decor serve as story beats.—RDL

Good

Cymbeline (Film, US, Michael Almereyda, 2014) The young protege (Penn Badgley) of a stubborn biker kingpin (Ed Harris) crosses him by having an affair with his daughter (Dakota Johnson.) In the style of Almereyda’s 2000 Hamlet, this is, save perhaps for Johnson’s unfortunate struggle with the text, the best postmodern film of Shakespeare’s worst play one could possibly make.—RDL

Old Henry (Film, US, Potsy Ponciroli, 2021) A taciturn farmer with a dark past (Tim Blake Nelson) shelters a wounded man on the run from a long-winded bank robber (Stephen Dorff.) Scores with well-staged shootouts and Nelson’s embodiment of the coot you don’t want to mess with, but leaves out the mythic resonance the western calls for.—RDL

Okay

A Haunting in Venice (Film, US, Kenneth Branagh, 2023) No-longer-bestselling mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) drags Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) out of retirement to investigate a medium, Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh). Apparently the only thing more tiresome than Branagh’s endless mugging Poirot is Branagh’s refusing-the-call Poirot, and even Tina Fey disappoints with uneven readings of a clunky script. The ghostly hugger-mugger and Venetian atmosphere are effective enough, though, and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos manages the difficult task of clearly shooting murky darkness on digital with something of the old Hollywood sheen.—KH

The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Film, US, André Øvredal, 2023) Medico Clemens (Corey Hawkins) signs on aboard the Demeter, carrying a crated cargo from Romania to England in 1897. The least imaginative treatment of the source material unfolds at a plodding two-hour pace. David Dastmalchian (who performs minor miracles with his minor part) is apparently the only human on board a resolutely non-claustrophobic ship inhabited by two-dimensional cutouts and a CGI vampire. Bear McCreary’s score belongs in a much better film.—KH

Saltburn (Film, UK, Emerald Fennell, 2023) Thirsty prole (Barry Keoghan) falls for his aristocratic Oxford classmate (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to the family estate for the summer. The script for this cover version of Pasolini’s Teorema remade in Ken Russell’s style seems not just crashingly obvious but also incoherent, at least until its full archconservative nihilism heaves into view.—RDL

Not Recommended

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Film, US, Adam Wingard, 2024) Kong’s search for kin and Godzilla’s hunt for the other Titans eventually intersect when the evil super-ape Skar King and his enslaved titan Shimo try to conquer the surface world. As fun as that may sound, the actual movie is about 90% exposition and 20% monster fights, and the monster fights are mostly MCU-style weightless light shows, with very sporadic touches of Toho grit. The entirely CGI interaction between Kong and baby super-ape Suko manages to feel more real than any of the alleged human characters can manage.  A real fall-off, even by Monsterverse standards.—KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Monkey Man, Morricone, and Studio Era Screenwriting

April 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.

Recommended

Ennio (Film, Italy/Belgium/Netherlands/Japan/HK, Giuseppe Tornatore, 2022) Tornatore turns his worshipful eye to the greatest film composer of all time, centering this conventional talking-heads doc on a long interview with Morricone running the gamut from pride to regret to just a hint of payback. What it misses in sharp edges it makes up for in breadth of coverage, 156 minutes from Morricone’s early pop arrangements to his final symphonic compositions on 9/11 and for The Hateful 8. Even discounting some of the doc’s extravagant claims, the result is a portrait of a Shakespearean talent. You’ll want to follow it up with one of the full-length Morricone concert films.—KH

Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (Film, Hong Kong, Chor Yuen, 1972) Kidnapped into a brothel, a defiant teacher’s daughter (Lily Ho) wins the love of her madam (Betty Pei Ti) and the kung fu training that goes with it, preparing her to wreak systematic revenge. Sadomasochistic sexploitation martial arts melodrama frames inescapably skeezy material and the standard building blocks of the Shaw Brothers production system with lush aestheticism of color, staging and movement.—RDL

It’s the Pictures that Got Small: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood’s Golden Age (Nonfiction, Charles Brackett, edited by Anthony Slide, 2015) Selections from the journals of screenwriter and producer Brackett document the draining and rewarding 15 year collaboration that yielded such films as Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, and Ninotchka, with early Academy Awards politics and barbed portraits of movie legends sprinkled in along the way. More than just a record of one notable partnership, this provides an invaluable look at the nuts and bolts of film production under the studio system. One notable example: although Brackett sometimes mentions a three act setup, he more often refers to a five-sequence structure as the screenplay default.—RDL

Monkey Man (Film, Canada/US, Dev Patel, 2024) Hanuman-obsessed orphan turned underground fight stooge (Dev Patel) seeks revenge. Patel constantly risks throwing the viewer out of the movie with tonal jumps, most critically while his character levels up in a temple refuge, but the balletic and brutal action keeps you watching.—KH

What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears? (Film, US, John Scheinfeld, 2023) To keep their lead singer’s green card, the biggest band in the world (they beat the Beatles for the 1970 Album of the Year Grammy) agreed to tour Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland in 1970 for the U.S. State Department. Assembled from (highly watchable) footage of that trip shot, censored, lost, and recovered, this doc argues (not quite convincingly) that the proto-cancel-culture fallout from that trip is why BS&T stopped being the biggest band in the world.—KH

Good

Drive-Away Dolls (Film, US, Ethan Coen, 2024) Lesbian besties, motormouth Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and repressed Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) sign on to drive a car from New York to Tallahassee, unaware that the trunk contains a mysterious briefcase and a severed head. Good-natured, goofball road comedy is looser and more cosmically forgiving than Coen’s work with his brother Joel.—RDL

The Wet Parade (Film, US, Victor Fleming, 1932) An empathetic southerner (Dorothy Jordan) and restrained New York hotel keeper (Robert Young) are drawn together, in part by their experience with alcoholic fathers, against the background of America’s experiment with Prohibition. Ensemble social drama based on an Upton Sinclair novel provides a contemporaneous look at the evils of drink and the worse evils of trying to ban it.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Perfect Days, a Cuban Cinema Classic, and Chilean Martial Arts

March 26th, 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

Memories of Underdevelopment (Film, Cuba, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1968) Dispossessed sophisticate (Sergio Corrieri) muses on the ex-wife who left him to emigrate and the deflated state of the nation as he pursues a naive would-be actress (Daisy Granados.) Indispensable snapshot of post-revolutionary malaise deftly transposes the discursive, interior structure of the literary novel into cinema.—RDL

Perfect Days (Film, Japan/Germany, Wim Wenders, 2023) Uncommunicative Shibuya public toilet cleaner (Kôji Yakusho) fends off periodic interruptions to the stripped-down purity of his daily routine. The ultimate expression of a directorial career spent chasing the moments of moving transcendence from the works of Ozu, made possible by the supreme craft and presence of Japan’s greatest active actor.—RDL

Spoiled Children (Film, France, Bertrand Tavernier, 1977) Seeking isolation to crack his latest screenplay, a distinguished film director (Michel Piccoli) rents an apartment, only to become involved in a tenant’s committee against an exploitative landlord and an affair with a conflicted young job-hunter (Christine Pascal.) Slice-of-life drama is unusual for an autobiographical work in presenting its protagonist as essentially distant and opaque.

Good

The Wandering Princess (Film, Japan, Kinuyo Tanaka, 1960) Out of duty to when aristocratic family is pressured by the fascist military, a demure young woman (Machiko Kyô) sets aside her artistic ambitions to marry the brother of Japanese-occupied Manchuria’s puppet emperor Puyi. Biographical melodrama depicts tumultuous events with a stately authority, but races through a key development in the protagonist’s later life that cries out for the full treatment.—RDL

Okay

The Fist of the Condor (Film, Chile, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, 2023) After an overlong retreat from the warrior path, a photophobic martial artist (Marko Zaror) battles the minions of his evil twin. Despite an over reliance on training sequences and mentor aphorisms, the cross-cultural vibe and acrobatic fight style are fresh enough to make me root for the team behind this scrappy effort to discover suspense beats and narrative momentum.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Dune, Monarch, Monsieur Spade

March 19th, 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

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (Television, US, Apple+, Chris Black, 2023) Kaiju-traumatized teacher (Anna Sawai) and failed artist (Ren Watabe) discover that they are half-siblings and that their supposedly dead father had yet another secret life as a monster hunter, which leads them to the cashiered co-founder of his former organization (Kurt Russell), whose backstory is told in flashback, with Wyatt Russell taking on his role. Though the latter-day sequences over-rely on changes in allegiance to keep the plot gyrating, the flashback half satisfyingly backfills the Monsterverse continuity. Wyatt Russell embraces the stunt casting with a dead-on version of his dad’s mannerisms and then transcends it, bringing human pathos and longing to all the monstering. Godzilla occasionally pops by, like the Cigarette Smoking Man or Newman, to inject a jolt of energy.—RDL

Good

Along with Ghosts (Film, Japan, Kimiyoshi Yasuda & Yoshiyuki Kuroda, 1969) In samurai-era Japan, supernatural beings come to the aid of a little girl on the run from curse-flouting yakuza. According to the essential metric of how many cool yokai are onscreen doing cool yokai things, the last film in the Yokai Monsters trilogy receives the lowest marks.—RDL

Badland Hunters (Film, South Korea, Heo Myeong Haeng, 2024) In post-catastrophic Seoul, an ex-boxer (Ma Dong-Seok) sets out to rescue a young neighbor (No Jeong-ee) from the clutches of a bioengineering cult leader. In this first film from a fight choreographer, the action direction outshines everything else, giving Ma plenty of people to punch but nothing to play.—RDL

Ballerina (Film, South Korea, Chung-Hyun Lee, 2023) Ex-bodyguard (Jeon Jong-seo) arms up for revenge against the traffickers who killed her best friend. Applies a gloss of Ridley Scott style to a straightforward vigilante actioner with an exploitation movie ethos.—RDL

Incomplete

Dune: Part Two (Film, US, Denis Villeneuve, 2024) Genetic messiah Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) goes native on Arrakis, worried that embracing his destiny means galactic war. Like most second halves of movies, this coasts on the intrigue and buy-in created in the first half; only the Harkonnen home planet gives us anything new or interesting. Unlike Rebecca Ferguson, Chalamet isn’t a strong enough actor to hold his half together even against a deliberately nerfed Emperor (Christopher Walken). The inevitable (and invited) comparison to Lean’s Pinnacle Lawrence of Arabia does Villeneuve no favors either; I presume if I watched both halves of Dune together in IMAX it would come out a high Good.—KH

Not Recommended

Monsieur Spade (Television, US/France, Scott Frank & Tom Fontana, 2024) Former private detective Sam Spade (Clive Owen), now retired to a small French town on his late wife’s estate, must pick up the gun again when he is drawn into a case involving a missing Algerian boy, murdered nuns, and the daughter (Cara Bossom) of former flame Brigid O’Shaunessy. The first five episodes establish Owen as a convincing Spade who references Bogart without imitating him and places the character in a refreshing new context. Then the finale sidelines him, parachutes in a deus ex machina who does nothing and solves nothing, and otherwise places the series in the all-time Terrible Endings Hall of Fame right next to Lost and Game of Thrones.—RDL