Ken and Robin Consume Media: Deadpool & Wolverine, Longlegs, and the Best Hong Kong Martial Arts Film in Years
August 13th, 2024 | 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
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Film, HK/China, Soi Cheang, 2024) Undocumented, hard-punching newcomer to 80s Hong Kong (Raymond Chan) washes up in Kowloon’s lawless Walled City tenement, where he gains a benefactor in a benevolent triad boss (Louis Koo) with dangerous peers (Sammo Hung, Aaron Kwok.) Gritty crime melodrama (with a touch of the supernatural thrown in, because hell yes) harks back to the 80s-90s classics to dish up the best Hong Kong martial arts movie in years.—RDL
Recommended
Deadpool & Wolverine (Film, US, Shawn Levy, 2024) To save his timeline from extermination by a rogue time agent (Matthew Macfadyen), Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) recruits the worst Wolverine variant (Hugh Jackman) and takes an unwanted journey to a void populated by heroes and villains from discarded continuities. Dials up the self-referential quips, comic ultraviolence, and veering tonal shifts worthy of 80s-90s Hong Kong cinema to prove that mocking fan service is the most powerful fan service of all.—RDL
Deadpool & Wolverine (Film, US, Shawn Levy, 2024) Rather than abandon his doomed timeline for the “sacred” Marvel timeline, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) finds “the worst Logan” (Hugh Jackman) to serve as its new anchor. MCU continuity is finally garbage enough to let the original* Deadpool concept (mocking Marvel Comics continuity) work, and Levy has a meta-story big enough (Disney’s trashing of the Fox-Marvel franchises) to support a big quest picture. Lots of in-jokes and buddy murder-comedy bits fill in the run-time more than acceptably. [*Original to Keith Giffen, when it was called Ambush Bug.] —KH
Longlegs (Film, US, Osgood Perkins, 2024) Fledgling FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) joins veteran fed Bill Carter (Blair Underwood) to hunt a mysterious serial killer (Nicolas Cage) who instigates murder-suicides in Oregon. Perkins spends two acts building a thoroughly unsettling experience, full of too-wide angles and Monroe’s hyper twitchiness against an expressionist Nineties Northwest background, before kind of wrecking it with an over-expository final act. The performances (especially including Cage’s) and Andres Arochi’s camera work keep it Recommended even if it doesn’t achieve the full nightmare takeoff it maybe should have. —KH
Streetwalker (Film, Mexico, Matilde Landeta, 1951) Mercenary industrialist’s wife (Miroslava) toys with a lover (Ernesto Alonso), unaware that he is the pimp of the sister (Elda Peralta) she scorns. Noirish melodrama with skillful big acting reverses sex trade tropes.—RDL
Good
My Blueberry Nights (Film, France/Hong Kong, Wong Kar Wai, 2007) A break-up sets a young woman (Norah Jones) adrift and into the lives of a dreamy New York cafe owner (Jude Law), a Memphis cop (David Strathairn) trying to drink away the hurt of his failed marriage to an emotionally careless ex (Rachel Weisz) and a Vegas-bound poker ace (Natalie Portman.) The US setting and Anglo-American acting style mesh unevenly with Wong’s evanescent, hyper-romantic style but, boy, none of these performers has ever been better lit.—RDL
Okay
Living on Velvet (Film, US, Frank Borzage, 1935) Romantic socialite (Kay Francis) tumbles into an impulsive marriage with a charming pilot (George Brent) whose survivor guilt has left him irresponsibly directionless. Gives the actors an interesting relationship to play but, like many 30s movies, tosses off its third act with a sudden and unconvincing external resolution.—RDL
