Ken and Robin Consume Media: Book Thieves, Unreliable Narration, and a Yakuza Father
March 3rd, 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
Pan (Fiction, Knut Hamsun, 1894) Retired officer leading a hermit’s existence as a subsistence hunter falls into a love-hate relationship with the mercurial daughter of a well-off merchant. Haunting, enigmatic character study told from the distorted perspective of a protagonist who lacks awareness of himself and others. A generation ahead of his time in the use of modernist literary techniques, including the radical subjectivity seen here, Hamsun would be better remembered today if not for his later endeavors as a fervent Nazi quisling.—RDL
Thieves of Book Row: New York’s Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It (Nonfiction, Travis McDade, 2013) True crime and bibliophilia come together in an absorbing account of three overlapping theft gangs who pillaged the library shelves of the 1930s northeastern US, in an era when most such institutions left increasingly valuable first editions and rarities in the open stacks. A slim volume by Edgar Allan Poe stars as main McGuffin. Add a Necronomicon or two and you’ve got your Big Apple sequel to Bookhounds of London, complete with a police-accredited New York Public Library special investigator as a key player character.—RDL
Good
Highest 2 Lowest (Film, US, Spike Lee, 2025) Wealthy record exec (Denzel Washington) discovers that a kidnapper (A$AP Rocky) who intended to grab his son instead took his pal. Lee and screenwriter Alan Fox are less interested in the suspense beats of Kurosawa’s High and Low than in an expansive meditation on the pressures of black success. Deserves respect despite its bad case of Too Many Endings Syndrome.—RDL
Onimasa (Film, Japan, Hideo Gosha, 1982) A young girl (Nobuko Sendô) given away to serve as adopted daughter to a pigheaded yakuza boss (Tatsuya Nakadai) grows up to become an activist schoolteacher (Masako Natsume.) Memorable for Nakadai’s big yet controlled movement-based performance, although the second half loses emotional punch as it blitzes through the many developments of its decade-spanning source novel.—RDL
