Ken and Robin Consume Media: Star Trek Section 31, A Complete Unknown, and Shaw Brothers Bondmania
January 28th, 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.
The Pinnacle
Paris Frills (Film, France, Jacques Becker, 1945) Womanizing couturier (Raymond Rouleau) pursues the young fiancee (Micheline Presle) of his friend and supplier (Jean Chevrier.) Melodrama brilliantly portrays a bygone fashion world on its way into noir territory, with a layer of piquant irony supplied by its unstated context as a film produced during the Nazi occupation. Aka Falbalas.—RDL
Recommended
The Beatle Bandit (Nonfiction, Nate Hendley, 2021) Peaceful Canada recoils in shock when a young bank armed robber’s 1964 raid on a neighborhood bank branch leads to a shootout on a quiet suburban Toronto street that leaves a hotheaded intervening civilian dead. Laudably restrained just-the-facts recounting of the crimes and punishment of Matthew Kerry Smith, a misfit with some sort of borderline mental illness whose nickname derived from the Beatle wig he wore to his most notorious holdup.—RDL
Destiny’s Son (Kiru) (Film, Japan, Kenji Misumi, 1962) Swordsman(Raizô Ichikawa) who has invented a heretical, unbeatable fighting stance is buffeted by the ill fate decreed for him at birth. Philosophical chanbara with an unsettling narrative structure and striking, graphic visual compositions.—RDL
Rivals Season 1 (Television, UK, Disney+, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, 2024) Sexy business machinations ensue when a superstar interviewer (Aidan Turner) ditches the BBC for a regional ITV franchise run by a tyrannical mogul (David Tennant) hoping to humiliate a womanizing, aristocratic cabinet minister (Alex Hassell.) Ensemble comic drama updates the 80s daytime soap to the streaming era with dimensioned characterizations and full-on nudity.—RDL
Good
A Complete Unknown (Film, US, James Mangold, 2024) Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) chafes at the restraints put on his art by avuncular Stalinist folkie Pete Seeger (Edward Norton). Yes it’s a jukebox biopic, with all the leaden notes that entails, but Chalamet manages to convey the joy of being an asshole genius, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez displays genuine onscreen chemistry with him, which is two points in its favor. Throw in a lovingly recreated early 60s lower Manhattan and Boyd Holbrook chewing scenery as Johnny Cash and that’s a Good right there even though I probably would have preferred a movie solely about the recording of Highway 61 Revisited.—KH
The Golden Buddha (Film, Hong Kong, Wei Lo, 1966) An unscheduled Bangkok layover and an accidental briefcase switch pits a two-fisted businessman (Paul Chang Chung) against the Skeleton Gang in pursuit of three linked Buddha statuettes. Part of Shaw Brothers’ bid to get in on Bondmania, this endearingly nutty spy romp doesn’t have any actual spies in it but does feature the lowest-stakes archvillain plot ever.—RDL
Mock Up on Mu (Film, US, Craig Baldwin, 2008) From his Mu base on the Moon in 2019, an exiled L. Ron Hubbard (Damon Packard) sends a memory-wiped Marjorie Cameron (Michelle Silva) to Earth to seduce defense contractor Lockheed Martin (Stoney Burke) and flip reclusive scientist Jack Parsons (Kal Spelletich) to his somewhat-incomprehensible plans. This collage film incorporates snippets of industrial film, advertisements, and pirated footage to string together its “Babalon Working sequel” story. The effect is delightfully hallucinatory and off-kilter, and probably Recommended for true fans of the subject matter, but too many bits don’t actually work or pay off for the un-Thelemated cineaste.—KH
Enjoyable Nonsense
Sea Devils (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1953) Unaware of her true mission, a wily smuggler (Rock Hudson) sneaks an adventurous woman (Yvonne De Carlo) into Napoleon’s France. Walsh’s rambunctious energy wrassles a visibly collapsing script, half hearty period adventure, half bondage-curious psychosexual portrait of an obsessive relationship, where the female lead advances the plot and her male counterpart obstructs it, into ironic watchability.—RDL
Okay
Laapataa Ladies (Film, India, Kiran Rao, 2023) A crowded train and traditional veils lead to a mix up for a new groom (Sparsh Shrivastav), who takes home someone else’s less than willing bride (Pratibha Ranta) and loses his own (Nitanshi Goel.) Ingratiating comic drama known for snaffling India’s Oscar nomination slot at the expense of the glowingly reviewed All We Imagine as Light.—RDL
A Study in Terror (Film, UK, James Hill, 1965) Sherlock Holmes (John Neville) and Dr. Watson (Donald Houston) investigate the Ripper murders. The first Holmes vs. Ripper film, and intended to be the first of a Holmes series; Neville gives excellent Rathbone-lite, and the script shows genuine attention to the Doyle canon. Robert Morley steals the picture as Mycroft and a young Judi Dench delights as the niece of a moody Whitechapel surgeon. But the story is basically arbitrary when it’s not inert and plodding, adding none of the weird touches later treatments did. Hill’s attempts to make the killings lurid seem both tepid and desperate.—KH
Not Recommended
Star Trek: Section 31 (Television, US, Paramount, 2025) Mirror Universe dictator turned club owner (Michelle Yeoh) gets pulled back into wetwork by a weirdo team of Federation spies seeking a mysterious doomsday weapon. If you’re thinking that Mission Impossible in the Star Trek universe starring Michelle Yeoh is a tough brief to screw up, the way to do it is to whipsaw between grimdark melodrama and stupid Whedonesque hijinks. Though billed as a retooling into a standalone movie, it absolutely remains the pilot to a show that wasn’t picked up.—RDL
