Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Naked Gun, Murderbot, Dead Talents Society, Riddle of Fire
August 5th, 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
Dead Talents Society (Film, Taiwan, John Hsu, 2024) Self-effacing ghost (Gingle Wang) joins the entourage of a fading urban legend (Sandrine Pinna) in hopes of earning the haunting license she needs to continue her spectral existence. Supernatural found family comedy spoofs reality TV and the attention economy.—RDL
Hero (Film, China, Shaohong Li, Joan Chen, Sylvia Chang, 2022) During the terrifying early weeks of COVID, a Wuhan nurse (Xun Zhou) butts heads with her oppressively self-sacrificing mother-in-law (Xu Di), a student visiting her Beijing family (Miyi Huang) worries about her infected fiancé, and a Hong Kong photojournalist (Sammi Cheng) confronts her estranged husband. With greater unity of tone and theme than the typical anthology film, this trio of female-centred domestic dramas builds a time capsule for a period the world is hellbent on forgetting.—RDL
Murderbot Season 1 (Television, US, Apple+, Paul Weitz & Chris Weitz, 2025) A security robot who has secretly deactivated his anti-autonomy features in order to watch his favorite streaming television (Alexander Skarsgard) grudgingly assists a party of naive scientists (, David Dastmalchian, et al) surveying an unexpectedly dangerous planet. Self-aware, satirical SF envisions an enshittified future while also working as a successful version of the kind of show it’s poking fun at. Based on the first of a book series by Martha Wells.—RDL
Riddle of Fire (Film, US, Weston Razooli, 2023) Equipped with dirt bikes and paintball guns, a trio of preteen hellions quest for a speckled egg needed for a blueberry pie recipe, battling a poacher gang led by a witch (Lio Tipton.) Blissfully kooky contemporary fantasy comedy wrings laughs from its young protagonists’ singleminded delinquency.—RDL
World’s End (Fiction, Upton Sinclair, 1940) Ingratiating, art-loving teen from a family of munitions manufacturers becomes a witness to history and the bafflement’s of love as WWI sweeps across Europe. Witty, epically observant and influential in its nesting of recent public figures in a fictional narrative.—RDL
Good
The Naked Gun (Film, US, Akiva Schaffer, 2025) Taken off the case but still drawn into it, violent knucklehead cop (Liam Neeson) romances a murdered coder’s sister (Pamela Anderson) and matches half-wits with a sinister tech mogul (Danny Huston.) Spends more time than it needs to on the mechanics of its spoof technothriiler plot, but Neeson makes sense as a successor to Leslie Nielsen, and it’s refreshing to see a jokes-first comedy these days.—RDL
Sadko (Film, USSR, Aleksandr Ptushko, 1956) Lantern-jawed bard confounds the merchants of Novgorod by recruiting a doughty crew to sail to parts unknown questing for the bird of happiness. Impressive, chaotic set pieces and the coolest, creepiest phoenix committed to celluloid stand out in a fitfully paced fantasy adventure.—RDL
Ken was at Gen Con this week.
