Archive for the ‘Audio Free’ Category
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Mission: Impossible, Attila the Hun, and Vintage Fantasy Films
June 17th, 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 Adventures of Prince Achmed (Film, Germany, Lotte Reiniger, 1926) Heroic prince battles monsters and an evil magician to save the lovely ruler of a demon island. Cinema’s first animated feature is a straight up swords and sorcery yarn, shot in a beguiling, delicate style with articulated 2D silhouette figures.—RDL
Lost Horizon (Film, US, Frank Capra, 1937) Diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman) and four others get hijacked to the peaceful realm of Shangri-La. 21st-century viewers may find Capra slow going, not willing to relax into the scenic and cultural idyll he paints. But there’s a scorpion sting in the tail (and occasional other places) that provide the needed venom beneath the seemingly placid (and visually arresting) action.—KH
Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (Film, US, Christopher McQuarrie, 2025) Superspy Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) continues his quest for the source code that can unmake the Entity, a rogue A.I. destroying truth and threatening apocalypse. Alternately talky and taut, the film does a creditable job of rounding off the whole franchise with one last world-saving mission. Also worth examining as part of Cruise’s lengthy cri de coeur for reality and story in film over AI, CGI, IP, and the other besetting sins of the current age.—KH
Zvenygora (Film, Russia, Alexander Dovzhenko, 1928) During the 1917 German invasion of Russia, an old man and his grandson scheme to find the cursed treasure buried in a magic mountain. Allegorical fantasy with a weird hypnagogic intensity has a lot of mystical Ukrainian nationalism in it for a film its director thought would win over Party cultural apparatchiks.—RDL
Good
Attila the Hun: A Barbarian King and the Fall of Rome (Nonfiction, John Man, 2005) Historical biography traces the rise of the Huns, the impact exerted by the titular leader as he occupied the Balkans and threatened the 5th century Roman Empire(s), and his outsized role in later myth. A solid comprehensive treatment weighed down by putatively flavorful you-are-there-while-I-talk-to-this-museum-curator narrative flourishes.—RDL
Blue Light (Film, Germany, Leni Riefenstahl, 1932) Travelers in a mountain town read the story of Junta (Riefenstahl), a fey “witch” who could climb to the inaccessible blue crystal grotto, and the stranger Vigo (Mathias Wieman) who loves and destroys her. Magnificent climbing sequences provide the highlight of this alternately sententious and tender film, which aims for mysticism and achieves it only sporadically.—KH
Monkey Man (Film, US, Dev Patel, 2024) Man employed as a simian-masked human punching bag at underground MMA matches (Dev Patel) infiltrates a high end nightclub/brothel on a mission of vengeance. Intense actioner blunts its impact by withholding its revenge motivation sequence until the end of act two, instead of putting it up front where it belongs.—RDL
Okay
Destiny (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1921) A grief-stricken young woman (Lil Dagover) begs a weary, remorseful Death (Bernhard Goetzke) to spare her fiance, prompting him to show her vignettes of his inevitable power set in Arabia, Renaissance Italy, and a fanciful China. The heavy hand of Orientalism weighs down this mordant anthology film of the fantastic.—RDL
Fascinatingly Wrong
The Wizard of Oz (Film, US, Larry Semon, 1925) After henchmen from Oz arrive in a biplane to assassinate their unknowing rightful queen Dorothy (Dorothy Dwan), she is whisked there by a tornado, where her farmhand friends (Larry Semon, Oliver Hardy, Curtis McHenry) dress up as a scarecrow, a tin man and a lion. Now-forgotten slapstick star Semon ruined his finances and health with this massive flop, which audiences perhaps thought would bear some resemblance to L. Frank Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. CW: racism.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Andor, The Phoenician Scheme, Ballerina
June 10th, 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.
The Pinnacle
Andor Season 2 (Television, US, Disney+, Tony Gilroy, 2025) Run by an increasingly ruthless Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard), Cassian earns his spurs as an Alliance intelligence officer; Dedra (Denise Gough) and Syril (Kyle Soller) assist a genocidal Imperial resource extraction scheme. Packed with incident, constantly forwarding its story, this suspenseful, incisive meditation on authoritarianism and the compromises needed to defeat it does serialized television right.—RDL
Recommended
Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney (Television, Netflix, John Mulaney, 2025) This second season of Mulaney’s talk show sadly proves less wonderfully shambolic than the first, but Letterman-style stunts (lining up 25 men by height, Mulaney fighting three 14-year-olds) go some distance to erase the second-season polish. The live remotes are much missed (replaced by clearly producer-driven “Mulaney in the wild” type segments), the taped comedy hits a peak early (a focus group entirely made up of actors who have played Willy Loman) and doesn’t quite hit thereafter. But given the desuetude of the American talk show nowadays, Mulaney still provides a joyful refresher.—KH
Hilma (Film, Sweden, Lasse Hallström, 2022) Obsessive painter Hilma af Klint (Tora Hallström/Lena Olin) flummoxes the 1880s Swedish art establishment by inspiring a collective of spiritualist women, including jealous lover Anna Cassel (Catherine Clark), to fashion her pioneering works of abstract art. Hallström’s script avoids biopic syndrome by rigorously hewing to its emotional and thematic throughline. Due to vagaries of film financing this extremely Swedish film is in English.—RDL
Juror #2 (Film, US, Clint Eastwood, 2024) Doting expectant father and recovering alcoholic (Nicholas Hoult) gets seated on a murder jury, only to realize that he’s the responsible party in the victim’s death. Calmly observant courtroom drama plays its melodramatic premise straight, more moral fable than thriller.—RDL
The Monk and the Gun (Film, Bhutan, Pawo Choyning Dorji, 2023) When election officials arrive in a remote village to stage a practice vote prior to Bhutan’s transition to democracy, a lama orders his junior monk to find him a pair of guns, so he can make things right. Gently amusing, breathtakingly photographed social realist comedy.—RDL
The Order (Film, US, Justin Kurzel, 2025) Reassigned to a rural field office, an FBI agent on the edge (Jude Law) investigates an Aryan Nations terrorist splinter group led by a charismatic young philanderer (Nicholas Hoult.) Tense true crime police procedural mirrors its characters against expansive landscape.—RDL
The Phoenician Scheme (Film, US, Wes Anderson, 2025) Unscrupulous arms dealer-fixer Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) survives his sixth plane crash and decides to name his novitiate daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) as his heir, so that his scheme to bring water and transport to Phoenicia will outlive him. Behind a series of sketches presented as business negotiations, Anderson tells a story of morality and redemption; his most Coen-Brothers-esque film can’t be his finest, but it’s great great fun.—KH
The Phoenician Scheme (Film, US, Wes Anderson, 2025) After yet another assassination attempt resulting in a fiery airplane crash, a ruthless businessman (Benicio del Toro) plucks his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton) from her impending vows as a nun to accompany him as he attempts to knit back together a massive infrastructure deal in a fictive Saharan nation. With less grief and fewer layers than usual for Anderson, this journey into recondite silliness plays like one of his animated features, albeit with actors who move more than a frame at a time.—RDL
Wasp (Fiction, Eric Frank Russell, 1957) Inserted into the hostile and totalitarian Sirian Combine, James Mowry begins a one-man campaign of propaganda, sabotage, and distraction to tie down the enemy forces long enough for Earth to strike a fatal blow. Barring a few super-chemicals and an interstellar radio, the SF level of this WWII war story is almost nonexistent, but as a thrilling adventure it’s hard to beat. Unlike many similar works, Russell constantly conveys the danger of enemy countermeasures; both Mowry and his foes get lucky just enough for verisimilitude.—KH
Good
Ballerina (Film, US, Len Wiseman, 2025) To avenge her father’s death at the hands of the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) joins the Ruska Roma to learn the assassin’s art. The marketing tag “From the World of John Wick” tells you everything wrong with this movie: it slogs through a bunch of Wickiverse world-building before it gets to the bang-bang. The fights are universally great to jaw-dropping; Stahelski (who allegedly re-shot them in post) convincingly sells tiny Ana fighting guys whose legs weigh more than she does. Two of the fight scenes in here are all-timers, but Keanu looks tired of the whole idea in both his cameos.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Last Bullet, Die Nibelungen, and John Buchan’s Template for Folk Horror
June 3rd, 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.
The Pinnacle
Die Niebelungen Part I: Siegfried (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1924) Teutonic hero Siegfried (Paul Richter) kills a dragon and steals the cursed treasure of the Niebelungs on his way to woo Kriemhild (Margarete Schön), princess of the Burgundians. Richter is a stiff, but even that might be on purpose in Lang’s obsessively composed, highly stylized take on the medieval epic poem. Nearly every shot is one that generations of filmmakers will later swipe, which makes watching the original an experience in fantastic deja vu.—KH
Die Niebelungen Part II: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1924) When her weakling brother King Gunther (Theodor Loos) refuses to execute his adviser Hagen (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) for the murder of Siegfried, Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) marries Attila the Hun (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) to get revenge on her countrymen. As wild and dark as Part I was orderly and bright, this film strips the fantasy from legend, leaving behind only cruelty. Schön’s superb face-acting carries and centers the film, which might otherwise fly apart in chaos; even Klein-Rogge’s Attila is weirdly passive despite a lot of shouting.—KH
Recommended
Last Bullet (Film, France, Guillaume Pierret, 2025) Hard-kicking, high-speeding driver Lino (Alban Lenoir) returns from custody in Spain to reluctantly help ex-partner Julie (Stéfi Celma) protect Areski (Nicolas Duvauchelle), killer of his mentor and his brother, until he can testify against his even worse corrupt cop boss. Astutely starting in mid-action and letting us catch up on the plot reset as we go along, this rounds out the Bullet trilogy in a suitably rousing rain of shattered vehicle parts.—RDL
My Heart is That Eternal Rose (Film, HK, Patrick Tam, 1988) Now an assassin for hire, a man (Kenny Bee) returns to Hong Kong to reunite with his teenage love (Joey Wang), who became a gangster’s girlfriend to secure his safe escape from the city. Dreamy heroic bloodshed in which romance replaces brotherhood as the central motif, with Christopher Doyle cinematography, a baby-faced Tony Leung Chiu Wai in the Nick Carraway role, and Gordon Liu cast against type as a sleazeball.—RDL
T’n’T: Telzey and Trigger (Fiction, James H. Schmitz, 2000) Eight stories, mostly written between 1970 and 1972, continue Schmitz’ super-tech, psionic, interstellar “Federation of the Hub” future to its near conclusion. Three superb novellas (“Child of the Gods,” “Ti’s Toys,” and “The Symbiotes”) effectively blur the line between seemingly omnipotent SF and stark horror; the only flaw of “Glory Day,” the promised team-up between super-psi Telzey and crack shot Trigger, is that it’s only novelette length. In “Compulsion,” the two tackle a threatening ecology from both ends, a little less thrilling if a little more clever.—KH
Trigger & Friends (Fiction, James H. Schmitz, 2001) A different, not quite as perfectly blended mix of heist adventure and space-monster (“Lion Loose”) and the somewhat opaque (not well served by Eric Flint’s edits) novel Legacy are the high points of this collection of six tales written between 1956 and 1974. Effectively spanning Schmitz’ career without showcasing it as well as the other three collections in the Baen series, this is perhaps the least essential. That doesn’t make it bad at all, and the hero of “Lion Loose” runs a fun version of the Yojimbo maneuver worth reading on its own.—KH
Violent Streets (Film, Japan, Hideo Gosha, 1974) Retired yakuza (Noboru Andô) just wants to run his Ginza district flamenco bar, but the botched kidnapping of a singer managed by his now-corporate ex-bosses pulls him back in. Poetically lurid gangster flick builds to a crescendo of bloodshed.—RDL
Witch Wood (Fiction, John Buchan, 1927) During the War of the Three Kingdoms, an idealistic neophyte minister assigned to a rural village discovers that the elders of his church perform Satanic rites in the surrounding deep woods. Theologically minded historical novel dense with Scottish lingo and references is not folk horror but nonetheless sets the template for it.—RDL
Good
The Passionate Friends (Film, UK, David Lean, 1949) Conflicted woman (Ann Todd) gets a surprise second reunion with the loving academic (Trevor Howard) she spurned to marry a dispassionate, wealthy banker (Claude Rains.) Affecting, thanks to Lean, Rains, and Howard, even as the Eric Ambler script carefully excises the entire point of the H. G. Wells source novel, and with it any chance of understanding the protagonist’s behavior.—RDL
Psychomania (Film, UK, Don Sharp, 1974) Aided by their sly sorcerer butler (George Sanders), the insolent scion of a wealthy occultist family (Nicky Henson) enlists his motorcycle gang in his scheme to wreak further havoc after returning from death by sheer force of will. Like most UK delinquent flicks, this odd fusion of the bike gang and folk horror genres regards youth rebellion with appalled disgust. I see the vibes responsible for its recent critical revival but due to its cursory narrative development can’t fully get on board. —RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Pseudo-Pagan Goddesses, 60s K-Horror, and the Science Fiction of James H. Schmitz
May 27th, 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.
The Pinnacle
Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe: An Investigation (Nonfiction, Ronald Hutton, 2022) Hutton applies his forensic scholarship to the genesis and spread of mythology concerning Mother Nature, the Fairy Queen, the Lady of the Night and the Cailleach, with an expose of the Green Man as a 20th century invention for dessert. Through these examples, and thorough kickings to the ideas of surviving paganism and the Frazerian monomyth, Hutton provides a compact, indispensable guide to the relative newness of supposedly ancient traditions, the surprising migratory paths of folkloric concepts, and the rapidity of their adoption, expiration, and revival.—RDL
Recommended
A Bloodthirsty Killer (Film, South Korea, Yong-min Lee, 1965) The undead revenant of a mining magnate’s first wife wages a campaign of murder and mayhem against his family. A constant stream of supernatural bedlam hurtles from the screen in this wild, dreamlike serving of early K-horror.—RDL
Bullet Train Explosion (Film, Japan, Shinji Higuchi, 2025) Intrepid crew members and station managers of the Kyoto to Tokyo bullet train discover that, copycatting a 1975 incident, someone has planted a bomb that will explode if it decelerates to 100 km/hr. The director of Shin Godzilla reverses its institutional nihilism with a celebration of can-do on-the ground management in a rail travel thriller that keeps the obstacles coming.—RDL
Cartouche (Film, France, Philippe de Broca, 1962) Puissant 18th century street thief (Jean-Paul Belmondo) becomes head of a brazen gang of Parisian bandits and wins the heart of a loyal counterpart (Claudia Cardinale) but can’t shake his yearning for the security minister’s wife (Odile Versois.) Glamorous satirical swashbuckler shifts into a study of existential compulsion.—RDL
The Hub: Dangerous Territory (Fiction, James H. Schmitz, 2001) These ten stories, written between 1955 and 1969, range from the amiable what-was-it “A Nice Day For Screaming,” through the brilliant heist-plus-alien-monster mashup “The Searcher,” to the absolute Pinnacle novel The Demon Breed, which pits one of Schmitz’ trademark capable heroines against an invasion force of water-worlders. Ecology, bluffing, and mutant otters: this novel has everything.—KH
I Called Him Morgan (Film, US, Kasper Collin, 2016) Documentary recounts the heartbreaking story of jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan and his wife Helen, who rescued him from the dregs of heroin addiction but wound up fatally shooting him.—RDL
Telzey Amberdon (Fiction, James H. Schmitz, 2000) In six pieces written between 1961 and 1971, Schmitz introduces us to his psionic super-heroine Telzey at the beginning of her adventures. The long novelette “The Lion Game” is an outstanding re-skin of “Red Nails” to psionic SF adventure; its (non-Telzey) prequel “The Vampirate” (1953) appears here under a differently bad title. Schmitz’ sense of scope, comfort with his future, story geometry, and believable heroines manifest throughout to good effect.—KH
Good
One Cut of the Dead (Film, Japan, Shin’ichirō Ueda, 2017) Realism-obsessed director Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) tries to shoot a low-budget one-shot zombie film during a zombie attack, but things aren’t what they seem. Without giving away the twist, go into this movie expecting more comedy and camaraderie than your standard zombie film and you’ll probably find yourself charmed if not precisely enchanted.—KH
Okay
I Met Him in Paris (Film, US, Wesley Ruggles, 1937) After saving for years for a trip to Paris, a sensible clothing designer (Claudette Colbert) is whisked to snowy Switzerland by a glib novelist (Robert Young) and his pal, a sardonic playwright (Melvyn Douglas) bent on keeping them apart. Winter sports hijinks pad out a charming but slight love triangle romcom.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Thunderbolts*, Final Destination, Daredevil
May 20th, 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.
The Pinnacle
Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1924) With her brother King Gunther (Theodor Loos) refusing to turn over her husband Siegfried’s killer, his aggrieved widow (Margarete Schön) marries Attila the Hun (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), setting in motion her inevitable retribution. The second part of Lang’s seminal epic sets aside the fantasy tropes of part one for historical human tragedy with a mass-scale conclusion.—RDL
Recommended
Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 (Television, US, Disney+, Dario Scardapane, 2025) The assassination of friend Foggy Nelson and the rise of the Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio) to the mayor’s office test the determination of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) to put his vigilante past behind him at a new law firm. Surprisingly coherent for a show that underwent a conceptual correction in mid-shoot, this doesn’t reach the heights of the original first season but at least understands what was great about it. Unusually for Marvel, which usually vaguebooks its politics, this not only deals with authoritarian criminality in high office but, in a subplot showcasing the Punisher (Jon Bernthal), addresses rogue cops’ co-optation of the character’s insignia.—RDL
The Gilded Lily (Film, US, Wesley Ruggles, 1935) When the charming stenographer (Claudette Colbert) he loves falls for an incognito English lord (Ray Milland) a cynical reporter (Fred MacMurray) turns her into a tabloid sensation. Smart romcom tackles such classic 30s themes as reality stardom and the friend zone.—RDL
Horse Under Water (Fiction, Len Deighton, 1963) Jaundiced MI6 agent accepts a dodgy-seeming mission to retrieve counterfeit currency from a sunken U-boat near the Portuguese coast. Applies knowing bureaucratic realism to a pulpy spy mystery.—RDL
No Greater Glory (Film, US, Frank Borzage, 1934) A put-upon boy strives to prove himself to his military-styled kid gang as dirt bomb warfare with older rivals approaches. Borzage’s depth of feeling lifts this anti-war parable, based on a Ferenc Molnar novel, from stifling didacticism.—RDL
Good
Background to Danger (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1943) American visitor to Turkey (George Raft) accepts the plea of a distressed traveler (Osa Massen) to smuggle an envelope into the country, placing himself in the crosshairs of a voluble Nazi operative (Sydney Greenstreet) and the excitable Soviet counterpart (Peter Lorre) opposed to his disinformation scheme. One wonders what Cagney, Bogie or Flynn would have done with the material, and whether writers W. R. Burnett and William Faulkner pared it down to fit the limitations of its stolid, once-popular star. Nonetheless, Walsh moves this wartime Eric Ambler adaptation along and gives Greenstreet and Lorre plenty of room to play.—RDL
Final Destination Bloodlines (Film, US, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, 2025) Fifty-plus years after a premonition of disaster allows her to prevent mass fatalities in a skyview restaurant in 1968, Iris’ (Brec Bassinger and Gabrielle Rose) granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) inherits the premonition and (along with the rest of Iris’ bloodline) Death’s Rube-Goldbergesque attentions. From the heightened surrealism of the initial disaster to the cunning sadism of the multiple kills throughout, this is exactly what one wants from the franchise, plus a touching farewell from semi-regular Tony Todd. Recommended for fans of the series, so Good for more character- or motive-focused horror fans.—KH
Okay
A Guilty Conscience (Film, HK, Wai-Lun Ng, 2023) Irresponsible jerk lawyer (Dayo Wong) seeks a redemptive underdog win after an influential family frames his client for her young daughter’s murder. Part of the recent cycle of Hong Kong courtroom dramas, this gets you rooting for the comeuppance of the bad guys while showing as much concern for legal procedure as wuxia films do for gravity.—RDL
Thunderbolts* (Film, US, Jake Schreier, 2025) Duplicitous biotech corpo turned CIA director Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) inadvertently creates a new albeit underpowered team when she tries to get her various loose-end semi-super contractors (Florence Pugh, et al.) to kill each other off. While superior to the recent ruck of Marvel outings, it’s not actually Good despite the presence of a Theme (depression), one (1) interesting super-encounter (Winter Soldier vs. three (3) Humvees), and Pugh’s actual acting chops. Moments of joy amid a tiresome slog are on theme, though, I guess.—KH
Rare Opportunity to Advertise on Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff
May 13th, 2025 | Robin
For the first time in years the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast has a free ad slot coming up.
Our podcast about tabletop gaming, history, strangeness, cinema and, oddly enough, food, gets 15,000 unique downloads per episode. An unknown but large number of people listen through aggregators and outside platforms such as Spotify who do not generate unique downloads.
We prefer to deal with long-term advertisers and sell ad space in 26-episode blocks. You can supply audio ads of your own, give us a script to read from, or send bullet points which we will turn into a script to read.
The show has one available slot, for the ad that runs between the third and final segments of each episode.
We’re seeking to partner with advertisers who fit the content and ethos of our generally family-friendly show.
Bidding for the first 26 week block purchase starts at $1,000 USD. If interested ask questions or submit your bid at robinlaws AT robindlaws DOT com. Note the variation between address and domain.
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Companion, The Shrouds, Dr. Mabuse
May 13th, 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.
The Pinnacle
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1924) Impulsive, none-too-bright hero Siegfried (Paul Richter) gains invulnerability from dragon blood and makes an underhanded bargain in exchange for the hand of a king’s sister (Margarete Schön). As he did for so many genres, Lang creates a foundational text of fantasy cinema, in this case slyly undercutting the nationalist overtones of the source material.—RDL
Recommended
Agent of Vega and Other Stories (Fiction, James H. Schmitz, 2001) Thrilling SF tales of intrigue seem strong but unremarkable until you check the dates and discover that Schmitz is writing near-transhuman stories of duplicated consciousness, technical and informational near-omnipotence, human-weapon-ship symbiosis, and borderline nanotech between 1949 and 1963, mostly with female protagonists. The Agents of Vega sequence (included) handles the seemingly impossible task of cracking good espionage-adventure in a universe with omnipresent telepathy; Schmitz’ first (1943) story “Greenface” by contrast is just very capable man vs. monster horror-SF.—KH
Companion (Film, US, Drew Hancock, 2025) A shocking incident at a Russian mogul’s secluded manor reveals leads a drippy dude’s (Jack Quaid) devoted girlfriend (Sophie Thatcher) to the awful discovery that she is in fact an android programmed to adore him. Thatcher’s yearning, quicksilver performance goes straight to the horror hall of fame in this ingeniously twisty, comic reversal of robot terror tropes.—RDL
Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages (Nonfiction, Andrew F. Smith, 2013) The development and reception of 15 beverages from cider to bottled water reflects on key developments in US history. Food historical overview dense with shareable factoids.—RDL
Escape (Film, South Korea, Lee Jong-pil, 2024) On the final day of his decade-long military deployment, a determined North Korean sergeant (Lee Je-hoon) makes a break for the south, pursued by a childhood friend turned twisted high-ranking officer (Koo Kyo-hwan.) High-energy chase thriller set against the soul-killing backdrop of the present Kim regime.—RDL
The Shrouds (Film, Canada/France, David Cronenberg, 2025) When his weird high-tech cemetery is vandalized and hacked, a grief-stricken entrepreneur (Vincent Cassel) becomes enmeshed in conspiracy, which his late wife’s neurotic sister (Diane Kruger) and her paranoid ex-husband (Guy Pearce) might help him solve, or might be implicated in. Cerebral, dialogue driven technothriller, unsettling in its placidity, strips body horror of its metaphorical layer.—RDL
Good
Kill Me Again (Film, US, John Dahl, 1989) In debt to a loan shark, a traumatized Reno P.I. (Val Kilmer) agrees to fake the death of an alluring client (Joanne Whalley) who has not told him about her briefcase full of stolen mob cash. Sparely written neo-noir, shot in a restrained version of 80s style, suffers from a couple of ending problems, one of character motivation and the other of genre philosophy.—RDL
The Return of Dr. Mabuse (Film, West Germany, Harald Reinl, 1961) Newly collected on Blu-ray with the other 1960s Mabuse films, this first non-Fritz-Lang chronicle of the criminal mastermind/disguise artist rackets along from murder to murder as Inspector Lohmann (Gert Fröbe) and FBI agent Joe Como (Lex Barker) doggedly piece together the somewhat over-complicated truth. Seldom a dull moment, but not a particularly exciting film.—KH
Okay
The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (Film, West Germany, Harald Reinl, 1962) The third in the revived Mabuse postwar series is something of a misfire, with the mastermind going all out to get an invisibility device from its inventor, who uses it mostly to creep on an actress (Karin Dor). The low stakes, decentering of Mabuse, and galumphing presence of Lex Barker (returning as FBI agent Joe Como) in the lead all contribute to an air of pointless effort rather than Lang’s cool surveillance paranoia.—KH
Knight and Day (Film, US, James Mangold, 2010) Rogue manchild/superspy Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) uses, meets cute, and then serially rescues and endangers bystander June Havers (Cameron Diaz) in what Mangold apparently intended to be an action update of (near-Pinnacle) 1963 screwball thriller Charade. Cruise and Diaz pour their considerable charm into a black hole of a script, relieved by the occasional cool spy bit. Potentially recoverable if you watch it as a blackly humorous parody of every other 1990s/2000s action movie.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Slow Horses, Blitz, and a Benedictine Occult Investigator
May 6th, 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
Blitz (Film, UK, Steve McQueen, 2024) Worried single mom (Saoirse Ronan) sends her son (Elliott Heffernan), who is sometimes bullied because he is black, out of London to avoid German bombardment, only to have him jump from the evacuation train to return to the city. Stunning depiction of life under falling bombs pairs the epic with the personal.—RDL
Honor Among Lovers (Film, US, Dorothy Arzner, 1931) Playboy financier (Fredric March) makes a clumsy play for his beloved personal assistant (Claudette Colbert), driving her to the altar with her weaselly beau (Monroe Owlsley.) Concisely told drama of power and class highlights the pained realism of Arzner’s treatment of romance.—RDL
Slow Horses Season 4 (Television, Apple+, 2024) An assassination attempt on his mentally failing grandfather (Jonathan Pryce) takes River (Jack Lowden) on a rogue mission to France and an unwelcome family secret. Strips away the large scale threat part of the series formula for character-driven suspense, though that means Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and Diana Taverner (Kristen Scott Thomas) have less to do this time.—RDL
Good
24×36: A Movie About Movie Posters (Film, Canada, Kevin Burke, 2016) A new generation of illustrators pay homage to the classic pre-90s movie poster era, inflaming collectors’ passions and wallets with hip, stunning screenprints. Zippy, historically tethered arts scene documentary.—RDL
HIT: The Third Case (Film, India, Sailesh Kolanu, 2025) Supercop on the edge Arjun Sarkaar (Nani) gets embroiled with a serial-killing cult, and even his trusty interrogating bat may not be enough to get the answers. City-hopping crime flick expands into melodramatic gore, ending in a festival of edged weapon combats and cameos from the first two HIT (Homicide Intervention Teams) films. Fans of picking a lane and sticking to it likely bump this bloody mulligatawny down to Okay.—KH
The Horror of Abbot’s Grange (Fiction, Frederick Cowles, 1936) A collection of (mostly) ghost stories misleadingly marketed as “in the M.R. James tradition.” Cowles, a folklorist rather than an antiquarian by tendency, provides blunt and often physical horrors in tales with simple structure and language. The best of them, “The House on the Marsh,” “One Side Only,” and “The Bell,” are quite effective shorts; others provide good scares somewhat vitiated by explanations or exorcisms. The Benedictine Father Placid delivers some of both, in several tales; he’s an under-rated ghost-breaking occult detective.—KH
Okay
The Empty Man (Film, US, David Prior, 2020) Guilt-stricken ex-cop (James Badge Dale) investigates the disappearance of his ex-lover’s daughter and its connection to an urban legend and a conspiratorial cult. Compelling composition and staging distinguish a graphic novel adaptation packed with competing elements. I really wanted to like this, for its Esoterror vibe and another reason I shouldn’t spoil.—RDL
Not Recommended
The Phantom Carriage (Film, Sweden, Victor Sjöström, 1921) The drinking buddy (Tore Svennberg) who started a disease spreading reprobate (Sjöström) on the road to perdition appears on New Year’s Eve as the Grim Reaper to explain why he must now step in as next year’s herald of death. Lauded as a world classic and early fantasy essential, but the script is a straight-up Salvation Army temperance tract.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Sinners, Havoc, Wolfs
April 29th, 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
Broken Rage (Film, Japan, Takeshi Kitano, 2025) Shambling hit man (Beat Takeshi) comes under police pressure to lure his clients into a drug bust. Kitano’s ongoing ethical struggle with the popularity of his violent yakuza films gives rise to a dual structure, where the same story is told twice, first seriously and then absurdly.—RDL
Dodes’ka-den (Film, Japan, Akira Kurosawa, 1970) Poverty grinds down the residents of a Tokyo shantytown. Kurosawa’s fundamental humanism and wild color design leaven the bleakness of the source material.—RDL
Havoc (Film, UK, Gareth Evans, 2025) In a city of corruption, a remorseful cop (Tom Hardy) races to scoop up the son of the politician who owns him (Forest Whitaker) before vengeful triads get to him. Thundering, kinetic action set pieces and Hardy’s left-field acting choices ring variations on classic cop noir themes.—RDL
Layer Cake (Film, UK, Matthew Vaughn, 2004) Cocaine trafficking middleman (Daniel Craig) seeking to get out instead gets two annoying-to-impossible assignments from mercurial mob boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), and things spiral thusly. Somewhat more straight-faced and straightforward than Guy Ritchie’s earlier London crime films, Vaughn relies instead on propulsive energy and the real stakes of the plot. Colm Meaney’s turn as Jimmy’s second-in-command is only the top of the superb supporting roles on display, along with the tannest Michael Gambon has ever been.—KH
Sinners (Film, US, Ryan Coogler, 2025) The Smokestack Twins (Michael B. Jordan) return to their Mississippi Delta hometown from WWI and Capone’s Chicago to open a juke joint with secret weapon pure bluesman Sammie (Miles Caton). But you know what happens when you reject Chicago: God punishes you with Irish vampires. Coogler and composer/music coordinator Ludwig Göransson synthesize music, action, and story in a way that even most musicals struggle to achieve, while also providing a rich slice of Delta life and a superb vampire movie. If anything, it feels almost over-full of goodness; I await the inevitable three-hour-plus director’s cut with anticipation.—KH
Sinners (Film, US, Ryan Coogler, 2025)Twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Mississippi after a stint in Chicago’s 30s gangland to open a juke joint, little suspecting that their opening night star attraction (Miles Caton) has drawn the attention of music-appropriating vampires. Delta blues culture nerdtroped with patient assurance and passionate energy.—RDL
Good
Diamond Island (Film, Cambodia/France, Davy Chou, 2016) WIthdrawn young man from a rural village gets a construction job in the big city and reunites with his secretive brother, who has joined a circle of rich kids. Chou pushes against the limitations of contemporary neorealism in a lushly photographed slice of life drama.—RDL
Okay
Pontianak 100kg (Film, Malaysia, Shuhaimi Lua, 2023) A food-obsessed girl (Aya Amiruddin) returns to her native village as a plus-sized pontianak, who devours the locals’ food while the mayor (Kazar Saisi) frets. Ostensible comedy defangs the female-revenge horror of the cannibal-vampire ghost into a series of fat jokes and Scooby-ish fleeing. As a core sample of Malay horror-comedy, I hope it’s a flawed one.—KH
Wolfs (Film, US, Jon Watts, 2024) Both called to the same hotel room to clean up the same dead not-prostitute (Austin Abrams), two fixers (George Clooney, Brad Pitt) trade dick-measuring bits and bits of information. A tonal mess that compulsively vitiates its own meager stakes for mild approval, it eerily embodies the “made for streaming” slop movie despite the considerable charm Clooney and Pitt exhibit throughout.—KH
Wolfs (Film, US, Jon Watts, 2024) All is not what it seems when two fixers (George Clooney, Brad Pitt) are forced to work together to whisk away a hotel room corpse (Austin Abrams.) Genial reminder of how good the movies that inspired it are.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Crisis on Infinite Lupins
April 23rd, 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 Adventures of Arsene Lupin (Film, France, Jacques Becker, 1957) Notorious gentleman thief (Robert Lamoureux) flirts with an aristocratic spy (Liselotte Pulver) while hoodwinking rich art collectors, eager-to-please jewelers, and the German Kaiser (O. E. Hasse.) Lavish celebration of style and luxury in glorious fifties color.—RDL
Noryang: Deadly Sea (Film, South Korea, Kim Han-Min, 2023) As the 16th century Imjin War drags to a close, genius admiral Yi Sun-Sin (Kim Yoon-seok) defies his Ming allies by demanding a final engagement to destroy withdrawing Japanese fleet. Final installment in the Yi Sun-Sin trilogy devotes a long first act to complicated three-way politicking, with factions within each force, all of which are needed to fully follow the rousing, extended naval combat sequences that follow.—RDL
Good
Arsene Lupin (Film, US, Jack Conway, 1932) Crusty Sûreté chief (Lionel Barrymore) pursues a spendthrift duke (John Barrymore) who he suspects is the wily gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. Agreeable pre-Code crime romp uses the Maurice Leblanc character to occasion a double shot of Barrymore.—RDL
Lady of the Train (Film, Egypt, Youssef Chahine, 1952) On discovering that she has not in fact been killed in a train crash, the degenerate gambler husband of a beloved singer pressures her to lay low so he can collect the insurance money. Wild plot turns keep coming in this noir-adjacent musical melodrama.—RDL
Oh, Canada (Film, US, Paul Schrader, 2024) Dying of cancer, an American expat who made a career for himself as a documentarian in Canada (Richard Gere) sits for an hijacks an interview conducted by a former student (Michael Imperioli) into a confession to his wife (Uma Thurman.) Adapting the structure of the Russell Banks source novel (Foregone) to film is a heavy lift, though Gere turns in an impressive performance. Set in the slightly alternate universe that vibrates into being whenever Americans set movies in Canada.—RDL
Okay
Lupin Season 3 (Television, France, 2024) When a mysterious foe kidnaps his long absent mother, Assane again follows in the footsteps of fictional master thief Arsene Lupin to fake his demise. Dutiful recapitulates the structure of season 1 & 2, making some off-putting choices for its protagonist without asking him to reckon for them.—RDL
Ken and Robin were both on the road this week. Like a true gentleman mastermind, Robin banked some capsule reviews for this exact eventuality.
