Ken and Robin Consume Media: Fantastic Four, Weapons, Nobody 2
August 19th, 2025 | 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 Case of the Crumpled Knave (Fiction, Anthony Boucher, 1939) Card-collecting chemist Humphrey Garnett is found dead by cyanide with a crumpled jack of diamonds in his hand. Surely rookie private eye Fergus O’Breen can solve the case! Boucher, a long-time critic of the mystery novel, turns his hand to an “Ellery Queen” style murder with great felicity and ingenuity, although O’Breen belongs to a more flamboyant detective tradition than modern readers (or Ellery Queen) prefer.—KH
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Film, US, Matt Shakman, 2025) Global heroes the Fantastic Four (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Eben Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn) face the destruction of their mid-60s Earth by Galactus (Ralph Ineson). Although suffering from a dearth of superheroics during the long, pipe-laying first act, the movie comes alive once the threat of Galactus appears. A super-fight set in daylight featuring live action and models instead of entirely empty CGI murk, character development, and humor that (mostly) comes from the circumstances instead of the script make this a surprising Good Marvel movie; the zippy Michael Giacchino score and loving retro production design by Kasra Farahani elevate it to Recommended.—KH
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You (Nonfiction, Neko Case, 2025) Singer-songwriter Case recounts her process of self-assembly, necessitated by a childhood of abject neglect that includes at least one plot twist straight out of a film noir. Acutely written rock autobiography serves up another reminder that many of the arts figures we admire have spent much of their lives hanging on by their teeth and fingernails.—RDL
Nine Times Nine (Fiction, Anthony Boucher, 1940) Writer Matt Duncan has just landed the job of assistant to anti-fraud crusader Wolfe Harrigan when Harrigan is shot in a locked room by a man in the yellow robe of LA cult leader Ahasver—who admits that his astral double committed the murder. Boucher tries to out-impossible John Dickson Carr, including a bravura sequence in which LAPD detective Terence Marshall goes through Carr’s classic “Locked Room Lecture” to try and solve the case; the actual solution falls to Sister Ursula, a nun friend of the Harrigan family. The LA occult scene also gets a lively portrait in this terrific mystery.—KH
Nobody 2 (Film, US, Timo Tjahjanto, 2025) Formerly retired hitman Hutch Mansell’s (Bob Odenkirk) waterpark vacation with his wife (Connie Nielsen) and family hits a snag when fate once again confronts him with goons who don’t know not to mess with him. A sequel script that knows how much and how little to extend the original lends action maestro Tjahjanto a solid launchpad for his Hollywood debut.—RDL
Sadie Thompson (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1928) Stuck on a South Seas island, a woman with a past (Gloria Swanson) romances a handsome sergeant (Walsh) but finds herself in the sights of a hypocritically pious reformer (Lionel Barrymore.) The broad strokes of the silent era fuel Walsh’s fire as he expresses his sympathy for the underdog and hatred of petty tyrants. First of several adaptations of Somerset Maugham’s story “Rain.”.—RDL
Weapons (Film, US, Zach Cregger, 2025) A spiraling teacher (Julia Garner) and rage-driven parent (Josh Brolin) separately seek 17 primary school kids who simultaneously ran from their homes in the middle of the night. A perspective-hopping, fragmented structure keeps the audience off-balance and primed for creepy scares.—RDL
Good
Timestalker (Film, UK, Alice Lowe, 2024) Life gets no easier across successive reincarnations for a self-absorbed woman (Lowe) fatally attracted to a handsome but gorm-deficient man (Jacob Anderson) and entangled with an abusive partner (Nick Frost.) Barbed era-spanning comedy of obsessive, unrewarding love.—RDL
Ire-Inspiring
The Last Showgirl (Film, US, Gia Coppola, 2024) When the long-running Vegas show she dances in announces its imminent cancellation, a veteran showgirl (Pamela Anderson) heads for a crack-up, exacerbated by her disapproving daughter (Billie Lourd) and mournful ex-flame (Dave Bautista.) Poignant performances from Anderson and Bautista, and Coppola’s grasp of mood make the script’s unremitting cruelty toward its characters all the more gear-grinding.—RDL
