Ken and Robin Consume Media: Star Trek, Thunderbolts*, The Ballad of Wallis Island
September 23rd, 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
Ladies’ Paradise (Film, France, Julien Duvivier, 1930) Pure-hearted girl (Dita Parlo) reluctantly takes a job in the bustling department store putting her uncle’s fabric shop out of business, catching the eye of its ambitious owner (Pierre de Guingand.). Densely visual, with a quick cutting style that will be obliterated by the coming of sound film and not return for half a century, this modernist melodrama appears to take aim at progress but is actually after an older adversary. Based on an Emile Zola novel.—RDL
Marilyn’s Eyes (Film, Italy, Simone Godano, 2021) Sentenced to remedial behavioral therapy at an outpatient clinic, a chef with anger issues (Stefano Accorsi) and a would-be actress / pathological liar (Miriam Leone) contrive to turn its lunchroom into a high-end restaurant. Psychological rom com features plenty of complications and the magnetic performances essential to the genre.—RDL
The Martyred (Film, South Korea, Yu Hyun-mok, 1965) As the South maintains a precarious hold on Pyongyang during the war, an army officer investigates a Northern massacre of Christian pastors to confirm that it suits his superior’s propaganda objectives. Solemn debate drama examines the ethics of fighting despair with deception.—RDL
Good
The Ballad of Wallis Island (Film, UK, James Griffiths, 2025) Exasperated singer-songwriter (Tom Basden) discovers that his lucrative gig on a remote island is for an audience of one, an awkward superfan (Tim Key), who has also invited his ex (Carey Mulligan) to put their band back together. Adapted from a short, this has too little story for a feature, and strives to ingratiate, albeit with appealing characters and performances.—RDL
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 (Television, US, Paramount+, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, 2025) The Enterprise crew battles the Gorn and encounters an ancient evil. Everyone’s favorite starship continues its drift from TOS to TNG as its model, which is a problem for a couple of reasons: 1) the structure is built for a longer per season episode order and 2) the freaking holodeck.—RDL
Not Recommended
Thunderbolts* (Film, US, Jake Schreier, 2025) When her high-handed boss (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) hires other expendable operatives to dispose of her, despondent assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) teams up with them, and Bucky (Sebastian Stan), to keep an amnesiac metahuman (Lewis Pullman) out of her hands. Second and third tier characters battling the personification of clinical depression in the hollowed-out ruins of Avengers HQ supply an inadvertently apt summation of the state of the mega-franchise.—RDL
