Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nirvanna the Band, Sirāt, The Perfect Neighbor
March 31st, 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
Keep in Touch: the Serendipitous Life of Canadian Arts Icon David Silcox (Nonfiction, Nancy Silcox, 2025) Confident, accident-prone young lad raised in hardscrabble locations as a preacher’s kid grows up to become a glamorous, personable arts administrator, including top posts in both the federal and provincial culture ministries. Admiring, deeply researched biography by the subject’s sister-in-law provides a glimpse into the personal relationships behind the funding of artists and institutions.—RDL
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (Film, Canada, Matt Johnson) In a bid to get themselves booked at a prestigious music club, two perennial wannabes, voluble Matt (Matt Johnson) and reserved Jay (Jay McCarrol) attempt a dangerous stunt at the CN Tower and time travel to 2008. Audacious, surprising comedy made on a shoestring budget, incorporating real bystanders and situations into the action, joins the select sub-genre of films shot in my neighborhood.—RDL
The Perfect Neighbor (Film, US, Geeta Gandbhir, 2025) Bodycam footage reveals months of incidents in which a pathologically territorial Florida woman calls police to complain that neighborhood children are playing on an adjacent property, culminating in her fatally shooting one of their mothers. A masterful formal achievement in documentary construction examines American fear culture while honoring the community devastated by its impact.—RDL
Sirāt (Film, Spain/France, Óliver Laxe, 2025) Searching for his missing daughter, Luis (Sergi López) and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) follow two bands of ravers into the Moroccan desert. This existential road movie seems simultaneously real and fantastic, an onslaught of cinematographer Mauro Herce’s images and techno composer Kangding Ray’s soundtrack battering the viewer and enveloping them at the same time. Try and see it in a theater with a good sound system; like EDM it needs a crowd and amplifiers to work.—KH
Good
Fascination (Film, France, Jean Rollin, 1979) On the run from ex-accomplices, an arrogant thief (Jean-Marie Lemaire) hides out at a chateau inhabited by a pair of mysterious, alluring lovers (Franca Maï, Brigitte Lahaie). Gothic horror sexploitation powerfully reminds us to believe women when they make it abundantly clear they are blood cultists and we should leave before their guests arrive.—RDL
Who Killed Dick Whittington? and Death of a Frightened Editor (Fiction, E. & M.A. Radford, 1947 and 1959) The sixth and eleventh in the “Doctor Manson” series, featuring the head of Scotland Yard’s Crime Research Laboratory, both feature seemingly impossible poisonings: on stage during a “Dick Whittington” pantomime, and in a Pullman carriage. The language is stilted, especially for the postwar era, and Doctor Manson hearkens back to the Doctor Thorndyke model of the pre-WWI era, full of smugness and amply-described chemical tests. But the stories themselves have a sprightly tone even if they don’t move as rapidly (or puzzle as fairly) as a classic Golden Age novel: the Radfords were apparently feeling their way toward the procedural, which makes the books interesting in themselves.—KH
