Ken and Robin Consume Media: Sentimental Value, More Locked Room Mysteries, and the Submarine Movie that Obsessed Howard Hughes
January 27th, 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
Coherence (Film, US, James Ward Byrkit, 2013) Dinner party attendees suffer reality entanglement after a passing comet knocks out power in an LA neighborhood. Indie-budget SF makes the most of its deliciously twisty premise.—RDL
The Inheritance (Film, Japan, Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) Restrained secretary (Keiko Kishi) waits for opportunity when her dying boss (Sô Yamamura) bids her and other underlings to find the three illegitimate children he might want to include in his will. Chilly, acidic drama of greed and skulduggery.—RDL
The Reader is Warned (Fiction John Dickson Carr, 1939) When thought-reader Herman Pennik predicts the killing of his host Sam Constable, Sir Henry Merrivale is typically too late to prevent the murder. A truly brilliant tour-de-force of misdirection, only slightly marred by Merrivale’s dramatics and a farcical “international crisis” side plot, although both of those also count as misdirection, so touché, JDC. [CW: Weirdly unnecessary racism right at the end.]—KH
Sentimental Value (Film, Norway, Joachim Trier, 2026) Anxiety-prone actress (Renate Reinsve) refuses her long absent auteur father (Stellan Skarsgård) when he drops back into her life to offer her a leading role he has written for her. Observant, trenchantly acted family drama leaves room for viewers to find their own understanding of its characters.—RDL
The Ten Teacups (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1937) Vance Keating is shot twice in an attic room with a policeman outside the only door and ten teacups on the table with him, echoing an earlier unsolved crime. Sir Henry Merrivale reasons it out bumptiously, but the addition of Sergeant Pollard (the man outside the door) as well as Merrivale’s regular foil Chief Inspector Masters makes much more entertaining detection. Carr’s abilities with atmosphere and puzzlecraft take point here, as does (sadly) his occasional disinterest in realistic characters.—KH
Under Capricorn (Film, US, Alfred Hitchcock, 1949) Seeking a new start in Sydney, a charming Dublin failson (Michael Dublin) falls in with a gruff ex-con made good (Joseph Cotten) and tries to revive his depressed, alcoholic wife (Ingrid Bergman), who he remembers from his childhood. Class-conscious period melodrama features a tangled, ambiguous love triangle and only a brief sequence of Hitchockian suspense. Despite the characters’ supposed Irish upbringing, the actors mercifully stick with their English, American and Swedish accents. —RDL
Good
Building Material (Nonfiction, Stephen Bruno, 2024) Young man tames the wild streak he earned growing up in a demon-believing Dominican-Puerto Rican household by becoming a Park Avenue doorman. At its most interesting when focused on its insider view of a rarefied world of class interaction, where the workers most value tenants who are kind to them and know what is expected of the rich.—RDL
Ice Station Zebra (Film, US, John Sturges, 1968) U.S. sub commander James Ferraday (Rock Hudson) and British agent “Jones” (Patrick McGoohan) clash on a supposed mission to rescue a British Arctic research station. McGoohan is great in this, as is a lengthy sub-in-danger sequence, but Sturges can’t keep the tension up in this two-and-a-half-hour wannabe spy movie that ignores or avoids its own plot. It’s really more a filmic meditation on how cool submarines are, and the Oscar-nominated Daniel Fapp cinematography and swelling Michel Legrand score bring it up to Good periscope depth.—KH
Okay
See How They Run (Film, UK/US, Tom George, 2022) In 1953 London, Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell and about a third of a British accent) and Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) investigate the murder of film director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody) in the theater where Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap has just hit 100 performances. If you think naming the detective Stoppard is hilarious, then you will love this movie. If you want jokes to be funny and mysteries to be interesting, well, Saoirse Ronan is in there swinging for the fences.—KH
Not Recommended
Ballad of a Small Player (Film, UK/Germany, Edward Berger, 2025) Spiraling gambler (Colin Farrell) wheedles for one last chance in Macau, pursued by oddball private investigator (Tilda Swinton.) Ditches the most interesting element of the Lawrence Osborne source novel, its precise observation of a marginal social milieu, making the rest glossier, bigger, and dumber.—RDL
