Ken and Robin Consume Media: Asteroid City, M3GAN, Magic Mike, and a Noirish Giallo
June 27th, 2023 | 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
Asteroid City (Film, US, Wes Anderson, 2023) In a movie within a live TV recreation of a play, a numbed war photographer (Jason Schwartzman) takes his kids to a science fair award presentation in a crater-side desert motel. The discombobulations of the post-pandemic era permeate Anderson’s most direct, yet paradoxically most layered, examination of artifice as a containment vessel for overwhelming emotion, from the thunderbolt of first love to the shoals of grief.—RDL
Recommended
Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Film, US, Steven Soderbergh, 2023) A down-on-his-luck Mike Lane (Channing Tatum) agrees to assist a rich imminent divorcee (Salma Hayek) in a revenge scheme to transform a staid period play into a male stripper extravaganza. Cheekily proceeding as if they have heard of but not seen their original film, the director and screenwriter genre-shift it into a backstage musical, and vehicle for Soderbergh’s offbeat cool.—RDL
M3gan (Film, US, Gerard Johnstone, 2023) Tightly wound toy designer (Allison Williams) bonds with her newly adopted, orphaned niece by bringing her into the development of her latest project, an AI-driven robot doll. Topical Frankenstein riff plugs into the satirical spirit of 90s SF cinema and outputs a new horror icon.—RDL
Zigeunerweisen (Film, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1980) Id meets superego in Taisho-era Japan, as a pall of haunted weirdness hangs over the friendship and loves of a repressed academic (Kisako Makishi) and a brusque nonconformist (Yosho Harada.) Placidly surreal ghost story perched on the threshold between wakefulness and dream.—RDL
Good
The True Adventures of Raoul Walsh (Film, US, Marilyn Ann Moss, 2014) Documentary profile of the charming roughneck whose prodigious filmography includes such classics as White Heat, High Sierra, and The Roaring Twenties, anchored by extensive voiceover drawn from the subject’s autobiography.—RDL
Who Saw Her Die? (Film, Italy, Aldo Lado, 1972) When his daughter becomes the latest victim of an obsessed killer, sculptor Franco Serpieri (George Lazenby) investigates corrupt Venetian society. Moodier, with a fogbound noir feel, and far less lurid than other giallo, this almost seems like an inspiration for Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 Pinnacle Don’t Look Now. Ennio Morricone’s literal killer theme is another standout element. —KH
Okay
The Mummy (Film, US, Alex Kurtzman, 2017) Not-particularly-lovable rogue Nick (Tom Cruise) opens the tomb of Egyptian princess Ahmanet (Sophia Boutella), awakening her mummy and interfering with the plans of Henry Jekyll (Russell Crowe). Two not-objectively-terrible ideas for films clash here, a horror movie and an action romp, but the end result is far less than the sum of its parts. A few strong vistas and good production design indicate where the money not spent on endless rewrites went. –KH
