Ken and Robin Consume Media: Companion, The Shrouds, Dr. Mabuse
May 13th, 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.
The Pinnacle
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (Film, Germany, Fritz Lang, 1924) Impulsive, none-too-bright hero Siegfried (Paul Richter) gains invulnerability from dragon blood and makes an underhanded bargain in exchange for the hand of a king’s sister (Margarete Schön). As he did for so many genres, Lang creates a foundational text of fantasy cinema, in this case slyly undercutting the nationalist overtones of the source material.—RDL
Recommended
Agent of Vega and Other Stories (Fiction, James H. Schmitz, 2001) Thrilling SF tales of intrigue seem strong but unremarkable until you check the dates and discover that Schmitz is writing near-transhuman stories of duplicated consciousness, technical and informational near-omnipotence, human-weapon-ship symbiosis, and borderline nanotech between 1949 and 1963, mostly with female protagonists. The Agents of Vega sequence (included) handles the seemingly impossible task of cracking good espionage-adventure in a universe with omnipresent telepathy; Schmitz’ first (1943) story “Greenface” by contrast is just very capable man vs. monster horror-SF.—KH
Companion (Film, US, Drew Hancock, 2025) A shocking incident at a Russian mogul’s secluded manor reveals leads a drippy dude’s (Jack Quaid) devoted girlfriend (Sophie Thatcher) to the awful discovery that she is in fact an android programmed to adore him. Thatcher’s yearning, quicksilver performance goes straight to the horror hall of fame in this ingeniously twisty, comic reversal of robot terror tropes.—RDL
Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages (Nonfiction, Andrew F. Smith, 2013) The development and reception of 15 beverages from cider to bottled water reflects on key developments in US history. Food historical overview dense with shareable factoids.—RDL
Escape (Film, South Korea, Lee Jong-pil, 2024) On the final day of his decade-long military deployment, a determined North Korean sergeant (Lee Je-hoon) makes a break for the south, pursued by a childhood friend turned twisted high-ranking officer (Koo Kyo-hwan.) High-energy chase thriller set against the soul-killing backdrop of the present Kim regime.—RDL
The Shrouds (Film, Canada/France, David Cronenberg, 2025) When his weird high-tech cemetery is vandalized and hacked, a grief-stricken entrepreneur (Vincent Cassel) becomes enmeshed in conspiracy, which his late wife’s neurotic sister (Diane Kruger) and her paranoid ex-husband (Guy Pearce) might help him solve, or might be implicated in. Cerebral, dialogue driven technothriller, unsettling in its placidity, strips body horror of its metaphorical layer.—RDL
Good
Kill Me Again (Film, US, John Dahl, 1989) In debt to a loan shark, a traumatized Reno P.I. (Val Kilmer) agrees to fake the death of an alluring client (Joanne Whalley) who has not told him about her briefcase full of stolen mob cash. Sparely written neo-noir, shot in a restrained version of 80s style, suffers from a couple of ending problems, one of character motivation and the other of genre philosophy.—RDL
The Return of Dr. Mabuse (Film, West Germany, Harald Reinl, 1961) Newly collected on Blu-ray with the other 1960s Mabuse films, this first non-Fritz-Lang chronicle of the criminal mastermind/disguise artist rackets along from murder to murder as Inspector Lohmann (Gert Fröbe) and FBI agent Joe Como (Lex Barker) doggedly piece together the somewhat over-complicated truth. Seldom a dull moment, but not a particularly exciting film.—KH
Okay
The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (Film, West Germany, Harald Reinl, 1962) The third in the revived Mabuse postwar series is something of a misfire, with the mastermind going all out to get an invisibility device from its inventor, who uses it mostly to creep on an actress (Karin Dor). The low stakes, decentering of Mabuse, and galumphing presence of Lex Barker (returning as FBI agent Joe Como) in the lead all contribute to an air of pointless effort rather than Lang’s cool surveillance paranoia.—KH
Knight and Day (Film, US, James Mangold, 2010) Rogue manchild/superspy Roy Miller (Tom Cruise) uses, meets cute, and then serially rescues and endangers bystander June Havers (Cameron Diaz) in what Mangold apparently intended to be an action update of (near-Pinnacle) 1963 screwball thriller Charade. Cruise and Diaz pour their considerable charm into a black hole of a script, relieved by the occasional cool spy bit. Potentially recoverable if you watch it as a blackly humorous parody of every other 1990s/2000s action movie.—KH
