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Ken and Robin Consume Media: Maternal Madness and Puzzle Mysteries

September 19th, 2017 | 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 our new podcast segment, Tell Me More.

Robin has been off at the Toronto Film Festival. Check out his compendium of capsule reviews. Those capsules will reappear here when films get theatrical or home video releases over the next 18 months or so.

Recommended

Logan Lucky (Film, US, Steven Soderbergh, 2017) In its essentials a country & western Ocean’s 11, like every great cover version this film shows the core strengths of the original while reveling in the joy of a new riff. Channing Tatum and Adam Driver head a low-key superb ensemble cast, outshone only by David Holmes’ incongruous yet satisfying score and Soderbergh’s butter-smooth direction. A less confident director could have turned the comedy into condescension; it’s to Soderbergh’s great credit that instead the West Virginia milieu plays the hero. –KH

Mother! (Film, US, Darren Aronofsky, 2017) A poet (Javier Bardem) seeking a creative spark and his young wife and muse (Jennifer Lawrence) dwell in Edenic isolation until … Beginning as Polanski-esque psychological thriller and veering into full-blown Gnostic Buñuel in the third act, this is an almost paradigmatically Aronofsky film: shot with power and control, about a disintegrating character and the nature of inspiration, and likely to piss off at least half its audience. –KH

Night in Alachua County (Play, Jennifer Rumberger, 2017) Southern Gothic meets necromancy in this tale of three generations of Florida women (there are no male speaking parts) abandoned, abused, and trying to survive on their own terms. The cicada-toned dread builds strong through dark revelations, not all of them magical. — KH (Runs through October 7 in an intimate, eerie production by Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre.)

Good

The Spy and the Thief (Fiction, Edward D. Hoch, 1971) Fourteen Silver-Age mystery stories by the king of the puzzle-story, seven starring British crytpanalyst Jeffery Rand, seven starring smooth “thief of the worthless” Nick Velvet. The Velvet stories are always good, since they usually have a heist to go with the puzzle, and Hoch’s invention gets freer play. The Rand stories remain a mixed bag, although some of them show nice period detail. –KH

Okay

The Spy Who Read Latin (Fiction, Edward D. Hoch, 1990) This collection of seven Hoch puzzle mystery stories about British cryptanalyst Jeffery Rand doesn’t show Hoch at his best. The puzzles, which should be naturals for a cryptographer detective, are by and large too simple, and the spy atmosphere is less than convincing. –KH

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