Ken and Robin Consume Media: Anora, Conclave, and the Fine Art of Financial Fraud
February 25th, 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
Anora (Film, US, Sean Baker, 2024) Stripper Ani (Mikey Madison) hits the jackpot when she connects with oligarch spawn Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) thanks to her familial Russian language skills. Cinderella story turns to dark farce when his parents send the Armenians (Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Yuri Borisov) after the happy couple. Baker’s sympathetic eye for character drives both the comic and moral elements of a story both personal and archetypal, while his editing and direction keep the movie popping.—KH
Conclave (Film, UK/US, Edward Berger, 2024) Self-effacing cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) discovers ecclesiastical intrigue as he steers his colleagues through the election of a new pope. A pellucid interior performance from Fiennes anchors a crackling drama of ambition versus principle.—RDL
The Last Stop in Yuma County (Film, US, Francis Galluppi, 2024) Agitated salesman (Jim Cummings) looks on helplessly as bank robbers take the patrons of a roadside diner hostage. Sun-baked noir spirals into disaster like the Coens with half a cup less of cosmic joke.—RDL
Lying for Money (Nonfiction, Dan Davies, 2018) Witty, lucid survey of large scale financial frauds recent and historical breaks them into categories and finds the elements that unite them. Portrays big frauds as colorful, destructive but rare events exploiting points of vulnerability in a system that can’t monitor everything without hampering legit commerce.—RDL
Sugarcane (Film, US, Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie, 2024) Documentarian depicts the impact on generations of people in his British Columbia indigenous community of the abuse and unreported deaths at a government-mandated, Catholic-run residential school designed to deculturate its students. Tells a story that in news coverage can read as an impersonal atrocity through shattering individual experience.—RDL
Wolves, Pigs and Men (Film, Japan, Kinji Fukasaku, 1964) Freshly released convict (Ken Takakura) enlists his angry younger brother in a scheme to rob the yakuza clan their weaselly older brother works for. Betrayal and cruelty reign in a tight, confrontational crime thriller from the director of Battle Royale.—RDL
Good
La Chimera (Film, Italy/France/Switzerland, Alice Rohrwacher, 2023) British archaeologist/dowser Arthur (Josh O’Connor) returns to rural Tuscany and his crew of tomb robbers. Isabella Rosselini as a local matriarch is a delight, but her story and Arthur’s seem arbitrary together. The “magic realist tomb raider heist movie” vibes should work better than they play out, possibly because Rohrwacher cannot ideologically cut extraneity, leading to a somewhat leaden story weighing down the fairy tale proceedings.—KH
Okay
Heroes Shed No Tears (Film, Hong Kong, John Woo, 1984) With his young son and sister-in-law unwisely nearby, an intrepid Chinese mercenary seeking a new life in America (Eddy Ko) leads a ragtag strike team to capture a Thai general/drug lord. On the threshold of Woo’s mature operatic style, this gonzo festival of mayhem draws cruel inspiration from the grindhouse jungle warfare cycle of the 70s and early 80s.—RDL
