Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nouvelle Vague, an Obscure New Wave Gem, and The Brain Stealers
November 25th, 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.
Recommended
The Brain Stealers (Film, Hong Kong, Umetsugu Inoue, 1968) A scientist’s daughter (Lily Ho) uses judo to protect him from a megalomaniacal supervillain intent on using his plant growth tech to create an army of giants. Fast moving entry in the Shaw Brothers cycle of kooky Bond tributes packs in enough outlandish plot elements for three normal movies. Mind switching! Snake charming! The acid pit! A giant attack owl!—RDL
Happy as Lazzaro (Film, Italy, Alice Rohrwacher, 2019) Beatifically naive young farm worker (Adriano Tardiolo) befriends the feckless son of the Marquise (Nicoletta Braschi) who has tricked his family and neighbors into believing they owe her their labor as sharecroppers. Evanescent portrait of rural life takes a turn into allegorical magic realism.—RDL
Love at Sea (Film, France, Guy Gilles, 1964) A trusting young Parisian office worker (Geneviève Thénier) corresponds with her brooding sailor boyfriend (Daniel Moosmann), who is stationed in gloomy Brest. Beguiling New Wave mood piece, stunningly photographed in both color and black & white, once a meditation on nostalgia for the present, now a time capsule of France at its epitome of cool.—RDL
Madame White Snake (Film, South Korea, Shin Sang-ok, 1960) An eager snake spirit in human form (Choi Eun-hee) wreaks unintended havoc when she falls for a human merchant (Jo Hyeong-geun.) This version of the oft-adapted legend casts it as a melodrama, with the divine laws separating the mortal and immortal realms standing in for the oppressive social conventions bringing suffering to the heroine. As discussed in Episode 642, the director and leading lady were later abducted by North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il.—RDL
Nouvelle Vague (Film, France/US, Richard Linklater, 2025) In 1959, frustrated critic Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) gets his chance to direct his debut film, Breathless. Linklater shoots and cuts this love letter to Godard’s work in completely un-Godardian fashion (although in black-and-white and in French and in a 4:3 aspect ratio), which explains much of why I found myself engrossed in the story and sympathizing with the characters. Much of the rest is Zoey Deutch’s star turn as a frustrated Jean Seberg, who cannot believe she’s stuck doing this movie for this jerk.—KH
Paint, Gold, and Blood (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1989) The impecunious schoolboy Peter Dolamore stumbles over an art theft, and with his chum Stewart Ives eventually investigates. I am a sucker for all three of the strands of this novel: “boys’ adventure” school story, Hitchcockian “wrong man” thriller, and art theft, and by now I’m less surprised (though no less impressed) when Gilbert eventually but seamlessly weaves three seemingly random separate types of novel into one. As is common with Gilbert, the last quarter of the book clicks up into superb suspense.—KH
The Shanghai Free Taxi (Nonfiction, Frank Langfitt, 2019) Journalist portrays everyday life in Xi’s China by following the lives of people he meets by offering free car rides in Shanghai. Sympathetic first person social storytelling with an eye for illuminating detail.—RDL
Good
Moon (Film, Austria, Kurdwin Ayub, 2024) Washed-up MMA fighter (Florentina Holzinger) finds her new gig training the teen daughters of a wealthy family in Jordan increasingly troubling . Hard-edged observational drama from the point of view of a character unable to fully penetrate its core dilemma.—RDL
