Archive for the ‘Audio Free’ Category
Ken and Robin Consume Media: I Know What You Did Last Summer, My Mom Jayne, and the Best Killer Dog Movie to Watch on an Airplane
July 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
7 Faces of Dr. Lao (Film, US, George Pal, 1964) Greedy land speculator Stark (Arthur O’Connell) holds the town of Abalone, Arizona in a death grip until the mysterious Dr. Lao (Tony Randall) arrives with his Circus of wonders and oddities (all also Tony Randall). The great Charles Beaumont manages to adapt the barely-plotted (but highly Recommended) Charles Finney novel by adding the stock Western plot and a love story featuring Barbara Eden. William Tuttle’s makeup effects are stunningly good for the period, and (along with excellent performances by Randall and Eden) allow the strangely whimsical nature of this Taoist circus fable to come through. [CW: Yes Tony Randall is in yellowface, and yes it’s pretty jarring. Does it make it better that his Dr. Lao actually speaks perfect English, but uses stereotypical “coolie speak” to let fools fool themselves more thoroughly?]—KH
By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him (Film, Japan, Tai Katō, 1966) The surprise identity of an accident victim prompts a disillusioned doctor to recall his reluctant role in defending a ramshackle market from Korean gangsters during the violent postwar years. Blood soaked melodrama envisions gang warfare as a continuation of WWII.—RDL
Love Lies (Film, HK, Miu-Kei Ho, 2024) Police interviews with a widowed obstetrician (Sandra Ng) and a smooth-talking young man (Michael Tin Fu Cheung) suspected of ensnaring her in a dating app fraud scheme reveal an unexpected relationship. Romantic drama with a side dish of crime procedural provides a charming star vehicle for Ng.—RDL
Madame de Sevigne (Film, France, Isabelle Brocard, 2024) After rescuing her from scandal by marrying her off to a cash-strapped noble, a 17th century countess (Karin Viard) obsessed with her daughter (Ana Girardot) expects her to abandon her husband and return to life with her. Miniature-scaled literary biopic paints a portrait of incorrigible fixation.—RDL
My Mom, Jayne (Film, US, Mariska Hargitay, 2025) Actor Hargitay interviews family members in her attempt to understand her mother Jayne Mansfield, who died before her memories begin and whose exaggerated sex bomb persona has always troubled her. Affecting and illuminating autobiographical documentary weighs the price of family secrets and compromises made in pursuit of fame.—RDL
Good
I Know What You Did Last Summer (Film, US, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, 2025) Five former high-school besties (Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, et al.) negligently cause a fatal car crash and cover it up, but a year later find themselves stalked by a slicker-wearing killer. I remember the 1997 version being somewhat snappier and sharper, but Cline (and returning final girl Jennifer Love Hewitt) provide more depth to their characters than the previous bunch. A soft reboot that doesn’t offer any real surprises, though it annoyingly head-fakes and then soft-pedals the economic stratification that has hit even fictional towns over the last 30 years.—KH
Messiah of Evil (Film, US, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, 1974) Drawn to the beachside town of Point Dune by her father’s strange behavior, Arletty (Marianna Hill) falls in with occultist-playboy Thom (Michael Greer) and gets menaced by a cult of undead or something. How much of the incoherent, slow-moving action is down to missing scenes and low budgets, and how much is intentionally dream-like atmosphere is probably unknowable. The eerie happenings gain power and authenticity by their very inexplicability and incompleteness, and the movie theater scene is one of the best horror scenes ever filmed, so there you go.—KH
Project Silence (Film, South Korea, Kim Tae-gon, 2023) Unscrupulous aide to the security minister (Lee Sun-kyun) attempts to take charge when he, his daughter, and other survivors of a vehicle pile-up on a foggy bridge are attacked by escaped bioengineered attack dogs created by the military. Creature feature built on a disaster movie framework with a layer of distinctively Korean political cynicism loses tension due to inadequate animation of its killer canines. However if you see it offered on a seatback entertainment system, it does hit that sweet spot between watchability and too good to watch on a plane.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Superman, Eddington, Severance, Cloud
July 22nd, 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
Severance Season 2 (Television, US, Apple+, Dan Erickson, 2025) Seeking his supposedly dead wife, outie Mark (Adam Scott) attempts to communicate with his innie; the co-workers make a discovery about Helly (Britt Lower). Defies the sophomore slump of high-concept serialized TV with brilliant integration of SF thriller plot points and sublimely acted emotional beats.—RDL
Recommended
Cloud (Film, Japan, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2025) Malign forces close in on a shady online reseller (Masaki Suda.) Slow burn paranoia thriller escalates through several tones and genres, resulting in the rare film that warrants comparison to both Franz Kafka and Budd Boetticher.—RDL
The Stone Flower (Film, USSR, Aleksandr Ptushko, 1946) Young Urals malachite carver (Vladimir Druzhnikov) forsakes his devoted fiancé (Yekaterina Derevshchikova) for the supernatural Mistress of the Copper Mountain (Tamara Makarova), hoping to gaze upon her stone flower and gain ultimate inspiration. Hard-edged Russian fairy tale with spectacular moving sets and a theme of artistic obsession aimed at an adult sensibility.—RDL
Superman (Film, US, James Gunn, 2025) Aided by Daily Planet colleagues, including new girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Superman (David Corenswet) fights back against Lex Luthor’s (Nicholas Hoult) campaign to discredit and destroy him. Neither Gunn’s sense for the character’s intrinsic idealism or his sincere embrace of a kooky, overstuffed comic book universe would mean much without his grasp of kinetic action and story momentum.—RDL
Superman (Film, US, James Gunn, 2025) Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) mounts a multi-pronged assault on Superman (David Corenswet), whose friends (including an insanely lovable CGI dog, if somehow you missed the words “James Gunn” at the front) help him survive and win. In earnest conversation with best-of-Iron-Age DC and with Richard Donner’s 1978 Pinnacle, Gunn charts a new-old Superman by sticking the fights, the story, and the character. Not every swing is a hit, but it’s one of Gunn’s best at-bats overall.—KH
Sylvia and the Ghost (Film, France, Claude Autant-Lara, 1946) To cheer up his beloved teen daughter (Odette Joyeux) after selling the family painting of a dashing noble her fancies revolve around, a cash-strapped baron (Pierre Larquey) hires a motley trio to pose as his ghost at her coming-out party, not realizing that the actual phantom (Jacques Tati) has also manifested. This spectral farce would be utterly charming even without periodic appearances by its ghostly spaniel.—RDL
The Tales of Hoffmann (Film, UK, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1951) Believing himself jilted by his love, the poet Hoffmann (Richard Rounseville) regales the bar with fantastic tales of his three previous lost loves (Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tcherina, and Ann Ayars). Vertiginously and lushly filmed English-language performance of the Offenbach operetta, an artifact of a time when you could just have a filmed opera as a major cinema release, and when our ecology of the fantastic still supported automatons, reflection-stealing magicians, and singing statues. A magnificent spectacle that must be seen (and heard) to be believed.—KH
Terrified (Film, Argentina, Demián Rugna, 2017) A former pathologist (Norberto Gonzalo), a parapsychologist (Elvira Onetto) and a ghost-breaker (George L. Lewis) team up with a police detective (Maximiliano Ghione) to investigate overlapping haunts in a suburban Buenos Aires neighborhood. Rugna loves to play with perspective, such that no two sightings (or two parts of the same sighting) quite align, adding even more uncertainty to the horror mix. The last act in particular is just unrelenting, perfectly calibrated terror.—KH
Good
Eddington (Film, US, Ari Aster, 2025) In May 2020, asthmatic sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is driven to confront and challenge Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the connected technoliberal mayor of Eddington, New Mexico. I was much more invested in the first half of the film, a tooth-grindingly painful (and well-aimed) satire of the various insanities of 2020, than I was in the whipsaw-shift into an entirely different (and flatter and much less interesting though also less painful) movie. (The satire does return a bit, at the end.) In the final analysis, the superlative score by Bobby Krlic and Daniel Pemberton, and the compelling cinematography by Darius Khondji, eke it over the Good line.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: F1, 28 Years Later, and a Restored Wax Museum
July 15th, 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
28 Years Later (Film, UK, Danny Boyle, 2025) Trained too young as a biozombie-hunting warrior by his gung ho dad (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), 12 year old Spike (Alfie Williams) forsakes the safety of his island enclave to find a doctor for his ailing mom (Jodie Comer.) Takes care of its Brexit metaphor obligations early to then take the series and genre in big, unexpected directions.—RDL
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse (Film, US, Molly Bernstein & Philip Dolin, 2025) Arts profile doc shows the shadow Maus has cast over its subject’s life, and how his wife Francoise Mouly transitioned 60s comix into 90s high culture.—RDL
The Bride of Newgate (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1950) To secure her inheritance, haughty gentlewoman Caroline Ross marries condemned man Dick Darwent, convicted of murder, the day before his scheduled execution in June 1815. When reprieved by a stroke of luck, Darwent must try to find the real killer while avenging himself on Caroline and her bully-boy. Breathless historical mystery never slows down, action and fight scenes piled on occasional deduction, buoyed by Carr’s top-notch (if slightly obvious) historical research.—KH
The Cassandra Cat (Film, Czechoslovakia, Vojtech Jasný, 1963) A small town panics when a magician’s troupe arrives with a feline who, when his cool sunglasses are removed, literally reveals the true colors of everyone caught in its gaze. Gently barbed whimsical fantasy captures a mood of evanescent magic. AKA When The Cat Comes.—RDL
F1 (Film, US, Joseph Kosinski, 2025) Desperate for a win, Formula 1 team owner Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) hires long-faded prodigy driver Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) to partner his rising star Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). Like Formula 1 itself, this sports movie zooms along a familiar track, and the handling makes all the difference. Hans Zimmer’s EDM-infused score and the spectacle of real race cars really racing provide the boost to pro performances from Pitt (whose eye work has never been better), Bardem, and Kerry Condon. It’s nothing special, done very well, which in 2025 is something special.—KH
A Gentleman and a Thief (Nonfiction, Dean Jobb, 2024) Biography of suave, prolific 1920s jewel purloiner Arthur Barry is well-told, well-researched and packed with telling detail to import into your Call or Trail of Cthulhu game.—RDL
Hour of the Gun (Film, US, John Sturges, 1968) When one brother is murdered and the other wounded as a reprisal for the Gunfight at the OK Corral, self-contained marshal Wyatt Earp (James Garner) and his caustic death dealer pal Doc Holliday (Jason Robards) hunt those responsible, commanding cattle rustler Ike Clanton (Robert Ryan) included. Laconic, lavishly cast take on the west’s defining vendetta assigns Earp the dramatic poles of law versus vengeance.—RDL
Mystery of the Wax Museum [Restored Version] (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1933 [2020]) Fast-talking reporter (Glenda Farrell), chasing a scoop about missing bodies, snoops around a wax museum run by crippled genius Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill). Glorious two-strip Technicolor is the main attraction in this restored pre-Code thriller, but Farrell is terrifically game. Fay Wray belts out a few good screams, too.—KH
Spaceship Earth (Film, US, Matt Wolf, 2020) Documentary profiles the not-quite-a-cult eccentrics who attracted media buzz and controversy with their Biodome 2 enclosed environment project. Look behind the scenes of a category-defying enterprise intrigues despite the reluctance of interview subjects to let their guards down.—RDL
Okay
The Black Windmill (Film, UK, Don Siegel, 1974) Arms smuggler (John Vernon) abducts the son of MI5 officer Tarrant (Michael Caine) to get a stash of diamonds used by MI5 as a slush fund. For the first two thirds of this strangely inert spy thriller, the only thing worth watching is Donald Pleasance’s tic-filled performance as Tarrant’s superior. It lurches back to life when Tarrant starts back on the kidnappers’ trail, but by then it’s too late. How Don Siegel of all people let this happen is a bigger mystery than anything in the film.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: 28 Years Later, Captain America, and the Occult Detective Who Went Mundane
July 9th, 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
28 Years Later (Film, US/UK, Danny Boyle, 2025) 28 years after the rage virus depopulated Britain, a 12-year-old boy (Alfie Williams) sets out with his ailing mother (Jodie Comer) from their increasingly medieval home on Holy Island in search of a cure for her. Remarkably beautiful film pits a mythic English remnant against brutish monsters, hitting notes of legend amidst the horror. The score by Young Fathers drives the action, along with brilliant edits by Jon Harris.—KH
The Devil’s Envoys (Film, France, Marcel Carné, 1942) Immortal troubadours with infernal powers (Alain Cuny, Arletty) arrive at a castle in 1485 to torment residents with their seductive wiles on behalf of their master, the Devil (Jules Berry). Fantasy of courtly love drapes a captivating fairy tale atmosphere over a fatalistic view of romantic obsession.—RDL
Dream Scenario (Film, US, Kristoffer Borgli, 2023) Self-centered nebbish biology prof (Nicolas Cage) goes viral when he inexplicably begins to appear in peoples’ dreams. The queasy specter of Charlie Kaufman hangs over this dark comic fable about the hubris of the small.—RDL
Now Beacon, Now Sea (Nonfiction, Christopher Sorrentinno, 2021) Novelist examines his tortured relationship with his angry, unappeasable, self-isolating mother. Memoir of a life shaped by intractable parents told with rueful rigor.—RDL
The Red Dance (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1928) In the lead up to the Russian Revolution, a stalwart young arch-duke (Charles Farrell) and a political prisoner’s passionate daughter (Dolores del Rio) fall In love. Rollicking historical melodrama with energetic action set pieces.—RDL
Speaking of Murder (Film, France, Gilles Grangier, 1957) Gruff garage owner who runs a robbery crew on the side (Jean Gabin) tries to keep his parolee younger brother (Marcel Bozzufi) away from a gold-digging manicurist (Annie Girardot.) Tough, compact crime drama populated by a deep cast of Gallic mugs.—RDL
A Wounded Fawn (Film, US, Travis Stevens, 2022) Museum curator (Sarah Lind) goes to the remote cabin of her new beau (Josh Ruben) for a romantic weekend, not knowing that he is a serial killer planning her murder, or that a being of mythic vengeance waits in the surrounding woods. Stylized vengeance flick fortified with art historical and mythological references and the rare awareness that the typical real serial killer is a pathetic drip.—RDL.
Good
Every Lucius Leffing Story (Fiction, Joseph Payne Brennan, 1962-1990) Lucius Leffing began as Brennan’s occult detective, and morphed into a more regular detective when the mystery magazines wouldn’t buy ghost stories. The result, a not-entirely-Holmes pastiche on the borders of mystery and weird tales, the nostalgia of the ghost story reinforced by the nostalgia of the Holmesian short in the age of the crime novel. I found myself entranced, yes even by the hokey Lovecraftian convention novella Act of Providence (1979), but I cannot convince myself that everyone (anyone?) will be as susceptible, so I dropped it a grade.—KH
Okay
Captain America: Brave New World (Film, US, Julius Onah, 2025) Captain America (Anthony Mackie) and newly-elected President “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) find themselves at odds as a conspiracy undermines a key treaty. Abandoning not just the political but the narrative coherence of the previous two Cap films proves disastrous for a film already drowning in the new Marvel slurry. One or two good fight scenes and an intermittently game Ford don’t rescue it.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Films Adapted from Haggard, Heinlein, and Dunsany
June 24th, 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
100 Yards (Film, China, Haofeng Xu & Junfeng Xu, 2023) Resentful, pushed-aside martial artist (Jacky Heung) decides to wrest his late father’s organization from the shady rival (Andy On) who inherited it. Stylized staging and restrained delivery convey distinctly mainland take on the fight for supremacy trope.—RDL
The Door Into Summer (Film, Japan, Takahiro Miki, 2021) Swindled out of his share in the robotics company he helped found and into a cryosleep chamber, a young genius resorts to fringe science to regain what he lost. Glossy romantic beats add feeling to the tricky plotting of its Robert Heinlein source novel.—RDL
It Happened Tomorrow (Film, US, Rene Clair, 1941) Turn of the century reporter (Dick Powell) advances his career and woos a charming mentalist’s assistant (Linda Darnell) when an older colleague starts giving him newspapers from one day in the future. Comedy of the fantastic with a light touch as magical as its subject matter. One of the two feature films ever adapted, in this case extremely loosely, from the work of Lord Dunsany.—RDL
She (Film, US, Lancing Holden & Irving Pichel, 1935) Following in the footsteps of a 16th century ancestor he strongly resembles, a jut-jawed explorer (Randolph Scott) finds a hidden civilization in the Arctic, ruled by a ruthless despot (Helen Gahagan) who has been longing for him for five hundred years. The best adaptation of the H. Rider Haggard fantasy classic features glorious art deco production design and an unforgettable climactic ritual dance sequence.—RDL
The Wedding (Fiction, Gurjinder Basran, 2024) The impending, lavish nuptials of a perfection-seeking bride and checked out groom heighten the tensions between public face and inner self for a large cast of characters from B.C.’s Sikh community. Generous, expansively observed social novel of values both traditional and Instagrammed.—RDL
Good
Phantom (Film, Germany, F. W. Murnau, 1922) Weak-willed clerk with poetic ambitions (Alfred Abel) spirals into degeneracy after a fleeting interaction with a rich young woman sparks an obsessive romantic fixation. Moral drama with expressionistic touches and an early example of the blatantly tacked-on happy ending. Sometimes classified as a fantasy film, due to a couple of symbolic shots that last a few seconds.—RDL
KARTAS Live at Gen Con Now Booking
June 19th, 2025 | Robin
The KARTAS Live event at Gen Con is now booking. Thanks to everyone who exercised patience waiting for this event to appear in the listings. It took us some extra time to figure out how to do it in Robin’s absence.
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
