Ken and Robin Consume Media: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Night Patrol, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
January 20th, 2026 | 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: The Bone Temple (Film, UK/US, Nia DaCosta, 2022) Young Spike (Alfie Williams) finds himself “adopted” into Sir Lord Jimmy’s (Jack O’Connell) underage bandit gang while Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) tries to calm rage-alpha Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). Wisely not trying to match Danny Boyle’s visionary exuberance, DaCosta ably blends a horror story with a philosophical escape. The clattering, urgent score by Hildur Guðnadóttir keeps the danger in our heads throughout.—KH
Cover-Up (Film, US, Laura Poitras & Mark Obenhaus, 2025) Documentary profiles archetypal investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the My Lai massacre story and filled in key details on Watergate and Abu Ghraib. The filmmakers get past the defenses of their reluctant subject to reveal the emotional person behind the bylines, and to grapple with the reliability issues of a reportorial method heavily dependent on confidential sources.—RDL
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Film, US, Mary Bronstein, 2025) An emergency relocation to a crummy motel further unravels a harried therapist (Rose Byrne) at the breaking point burdened with all of the care for a demanding kid with an eating disorder. White-knuckle portrait of a crackup features Conan O’Brien in an unexpected dramatic role as the protagonist’s withholding therapist.—RDL
Mission Impossible: the Final Reckoning (Film, US, Christopher McQuarrie, 2025) Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and team take on one last mission, completing their battle against an AI planning to nuke Earth. A final hour of superbly wrought, quadrupled action-suspense pays off an hour of setup.—RDL
Night Patrol (Film, US, Ryan Prows, 2026) When his partner Hawkins (Justin Long) gets tapped for the elite gang-hunting Night Patrol, LAPD cop and former Crip Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler) has to decide where his loyalties lay. At times in the first act I had the giddy thought that I was seeing a Pinnacle vampire film, but it doesn’t pay off those expectations, instead becoming merely great. Freddie Gibbs’ occult-minded Blood gang leader Bornelius should have his own movie.—KH
Punishment (Fiction, Linden MacIntyre, 2014) Forcibly retired corrections officer, returned to his insular Nova Scotia community, tries to steer clear of its scapegoating of an ex-con for a teen’s overdose death. Character-driven literary crime novel with authoritative eye for rural dynamics.—RDL
The Red Widow Murders (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1935) When Lord Mantling hosts a gathering to test the curse of the Widow’s Room in his house, a young student dies of intravenously administered poison in the cursed chamber without a mark on him, the only exit under constant watch throughout. A “locked corpse” mystery inside a locked-room mystery, with a Carr historical flashback to boot, this underrated triumph even withstands Sir Henry Merrivale’s mulishness.—KH
Storm Warning (Film, US, Stuart Heisler, 1951) A traveling clothes model (Ginger Rogers) visiting her sister (Doris Day) in a small southern town sees the Klan murder a reporter, but resists a dogged prosecutor (Ronald Reagan) who wants her to testify, because one of the killers is her new brother-in-law. Aimed at a white audience prior to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, this hardboiled political thriller focuses on the KKK as a tinpot racket that exploits its own people.—RDL
Good
Nine—And Death Makes Ten (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1940) When an adventuress is killed on a liner crossing the Atlantic through U-Boat hunting grounds, the murderer’s fingerprints match nobody’s on board. The haunted atmosphere of the nearly-empty ship in wartime winter is the real seller here, the mystery less compelling. Sir Henry Merrivale uncharacteristically remains (mostly) sensible throughout.—KH
Okay
Honey Don’t! (Film, US, Ethan Coen, 2025) Acerbic PI (Margaret Qualley) investigates the death of a would-be client, crossing paths with a drug dealing evangelist (Chris Evans) and hopping into bed with a sullen cop (Aubrey Plaza.) Separately entertaining scenes fail to cohere in this tongue-in-cheek, lesbian gaze film noir riff.—RDL
