Ken and Robin Consume Media: Banshees of Inisherin, The Maestro Nostradamus Trilogy, and a Hollywood Double Agent

January 31st, 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.

Recommended

The Banshees of Inisherin (Film, Ireland, Martin McDonagh, 2022) On an isolated Irish Ireland during the Civil War, a brooding would-be songwriter (Brendan Gleeson) goes to extremes to end all interaction with his sweet natured bore of an erstwhile drinking buddy (Colin Farrell.) A substrate of Beckett underlies the pictorial naturalism of this bleak existential political parable.—RDL

Hollywood Double Agent (Nonfiction, Jonathan Gill, 2020) While working for Paramount as music director in the 1930s, clownish charmer and peripatetic striver Boris Morros signs on to spy for Stalin, later turning on his handlers as an FBI mole. Acutely reported account of a true story full of lies shows that any realistic account of the espionage world resembles the works of Armando Iannucci and the Coens more than it does John le Carré.—RDL

The Maestro Nostradamus Trilogy (Fiction, Dave Duncan, 2007-2009) Three mystery novels featuring the alchemist, astrologer, seer, etc. Nostradamus (the nephew) and his apprentice Alfeo in a 1590s Venice where magic works. Engaging pastiche of Nero Wolfe offers moderately compelling mysteries and rich setting and occult detail. Definitely inspirational for Swords of the Serpentine players. –KH

Reservation Dogs Season 1 (Television, US, FX/Hulu/Disney+, Sterlin Harjo, 2021) Four teens on an Oklahoma reservation plot their escape from rural despond to an imagined bright future in Los Angeles. Funny, moving, real, and occasionally magically real, this half-hour dramedy sets out a throughline and then structures each episode as its own evanescent short story.—RDL

Good

The Crazy Ray (Film, France, René Clair, 1923) Eiffel Tower attendant discovers a time-stopped Paris, meets a few other still-awake folks, and eventually discovers the mad scientist responsible. The first ever “awake in an empty city” movie deftly shifts emotional tone while depicting a fantasy of Paris, but its last act drags out to little purpose. Still, several individual scenes and shots retain surprising power even leaving aside their inspiration on later films.  –KH

Woman in the Moon (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1929) Even though his project has been hijacked by an evil gold cartel, and the woman he loves (Gerda Maurus) has agreed to marry his second-in-command, a determined astrophysicist (Willy Fritsch) persists with his rocket flight to the moon. Because this is Lang, the first film to depict the romance of space exploration technology is also fundamentally about being trapped—physically, and, more importantly, with other people. A modern remake would radically collapse the ninety minutes of pre-blastoff setup.—RDL

Okay

Aelita, Queen of Mars (Film, USSR, Yakov Protazanov, 1924) As a corrupt supply official turns the head of his new bride, an astrophysicist daydreams of class revolution on Mars. Relegates the science fiction of its source novel to a dream sequence in favor of a satirical melodrama about people struggling to live up to revolutionary ideals in post-revolutionary hard times, and thus more of greater interest as a piece of early Soviet cinema than as a genre precursor.—RDL

The Crazy Ray (Film, France, René Clair, 1923) A handful of unaffected individuals enjoy a brief idyll when a scientific experiment plunges Paris into a time-stopped state. An exercise in futurist whimsy serves as a footnote in science fiction cinema and the career of its director.—RDL

Not Recommended

TÁR (Film, US, Todd Field, 2022) The supreme self-assurance that carried a superstar conductor (Cate Blanchett) to the directorship of the Berlin Philharmonic prevents her from adjusting to the reality of a looming scandal. Character study, written from a position of moral superiority over the protagonist it devotes two and half hours to, slowly descends from ambiguity to obviousness.—RDL