Ken and Robin Consume Media: Heretic, The Beekeeper, and 80s Polish SF Satire
December 17th, 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.
Recommended
The Ark Before Noah (Nonfiction, Irving Finkel, 2014) After a snappy 101 on cuneiform tablets, the author, a noted British Museum curator, examines versions of the Babylonian flood myth later adapted into the Biblical story. Potentially dense material elucidated with self-deprecating wit and sweeping certitude.—RDL
Duckweed (Film, China, Han Han, 2017) Comatose after an accident caused by his beef with his father (Eddie Peng), a race car driver (Chao Deng) travels back in time to the months before his birth, meeting the mother he never knew (Zanilia Zhao) and a sweeter version of his dad. A light touch quietly elevates this dramedy of camaraderie and melancholy.—RDL
Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes (Film, Poland, Piotr Szulkin, 1985) Penal space program sends dissident to a planet of authoritarian sleazeballs, where he is expected to commit a spectacular crime justifying his scheduled human sacrifice. Scathing allegorical satire with Gilliamesque production design.—RDL
Heretic (Film, US, Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, 2024) LDS missionaries, one (Chloe East) bubbly, the other (Sophie Thatcher) reserved, step into the parlor of a hyper-verbal eccentric (Hugh Grant), who has prepared for their arrival with traps both theological and physical. Claustrophobic debate horror in which Grant, playing a character from his current villain phase who thinks he’s as charming as Grant in his leading man days, pounces on every morsel of the script, with East and Thatcher responding in kind.—RDL
Panique (Film, France, Julien Duvivier, 1946) Slick criminal (Paul Bernard) and his devoted, newly sprung girlfriend (Viviane Romance) scheme to pin a murder on an unpopular neighbor (Michel Simon.) Simon’s poignant performance as an unloved outsider anchors this dark tale of the dangers of community, based on a Georges Simenon novel.—RDL
Red Dog (Film, US, Casey Pinkston, 2019) Nashville songwriter interviews his mom, a freewheeling raconteur, and her erstwhile running buddies about their time as strippers, bouncers and hangers-on at Oklahoma’s notorious Red Dog Saloon in the oil-rich, hard-drugging 1980s. Warm-hearted documentary portrait of a wild scene that could have killed a lot more of its participants than it did.—RDL
Good
The Beekeeper (Film, US, David Ayer, 2024) When connected cyberscammers impoverish his only friend, beekeeper Adam Clay (Jason Statham) sets out to protect the hive by arson and mayhem. Raffi Simonian’s insane opening titles write a check no movie could cash, but Ayer and Statham try their best, producing some of the finest action tableaux of the century. Sadly the FBI B-plot is content to run the numbers from a much less bee-obsessed (and therefore worse) movie.—KH
