Ken and Robin Consume Media: Bill Burr, 80s Elmore Leonard, and a Martial Arts Crossover Event

April 8th, 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

52 Pick-Up (Film, US, John Frankenheimer, 1986) Steel company exec Harry Mitchell’s (Roy Scheider) philandering exposes him to blackmail by Alan Raimy (John Glover), setting off an escalating battle of wills and wits. Elmore Leonard co-wrote the script based on his novel, and the result feels tighter and smarter than the average 80s thriller, while not quite maintaining the tension Frankenheimer was capable of.—KH

Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Nonfiction, Amanda Vickery, 2009) Deep dives into 18th century household account books, letters, court records and commercial catalogues illuminate Georgian home life, with a particular eye to the roles assigned to women and men. If you don’t want an entire chapter on the 18th century wallpaper industry maybe this isn’t for you, but I am addressing a self-selecting crowd here.—RDL

Bill Burr: The Drop Dead Years (Stand-up, Hulu, Ben Tishler, 2025) At age 55, Burr begins to confront his “drop dead years” by attempting to modulate his “angry Everyman” persona. The best individual bits, by and large, still come from that old type, but the larger structure of the routine points to a key change that will either produce a whole new comedy or remove his teeth entirely.—KH

Escape from Mogadishu (Film, South Korea, Ryoo Seung-wan, 2021) When embassies in the Ethiopian capital come under attack during the 1990 overthrow of Siad Barre, the mutually distrustful delegations of North and South Korea band together to find a way out of the war torn city. Docudrama political thriller culminates in a heart-in-mouth suspense action set piece.—RDL

The Girl on a Broomstick (Film, Czechoslovakia, Václav Vorlícek, 1972) Bored by the prospect of a 144-year detention, an inattentive student witch (Petra Cernocká) splits for the mortal world, where her shaky grasp of magic wreaks havoc at a contemporary high school. Wacky, anarchic comedy with funny gags, beguiling credits sequence illustrations and a jazz-funk soundtrack. I theorize that Cernocká and her foxy witch outfit exerted a galvanizing effect on a generation of impressionable young Czechs.—RDL

Nickel Boys (Film, US, RaMell Ross, 2024) Studious teen (Ethan Herisse) unjustly sentenced to a corrupt, murderous reform school befriends a more realistic fellow inmate (Brandon Wilson.) Moments of evanescent, Malick-esque beauty juxtapose with memories of rage and horror in a confident adaptation of the novel by Colson Whitehead.—RDL

September 5 (Film, US/Germany, , 2024) The ABC sports team at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, led by obstacle-smashing exec Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and voice-of-caution Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) invents live crisis coverage on the fly when the Black September terror group attacks Israeli athletes and coaches. Journalistic procedural docudrama executes the shouting into phones genre with tension and clarity.—RDL

Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman (Film, Japan, Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1971) When samurai seeking to cover up a massacre hunt a high-leaping Chinese warrior (Jimmy Wang Yu), the swordcane-wielding blind masseuse yakuza punks can’t stop messing with (Shintaro Katsu) steps up to protect a young boy who knows what really happened. A martial arts crossover event for the ages becomes a fatalistic meditation on cultural barriers in this above-average entry in the long-running series.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Vourdalak, They Cloned Tyrone, Reacher

April 1st, 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

Mother and a Guest (Film, South Korea, Shin Sang-ok, 1961) An irrepressible yet vulnerable six year old (Yeong-seon Jeon) who lives with her mom (Choi Eun-hie), grandmother and maid, all of them widows, does not understand the adult emotions stirred by the arrival of a male teacher (Kim Jin-kyu) as a lodger in their guest house. Often funny, sometimes strikingly poignant domestic drama, told with a deceptive simplicity that veers away from melodrama toward emotional realism. Features one of cinema’s greatest child performances. See kbelow for more on the star and director.—RDL

Recommended

Ant Colony (Comics, Michael DeForge, 2020) Anomic ants ponder wretched insect existence and their illicit desires as catastrophe looms over their colony. Obsessively drawn, bleakly comic fable of deterministic fatalism set in a Herrimanesque arthropod hellscape.—RDL

Close Your Eyes (Film, Spain, Victor Erice, 2023) An unsolved mysteries-style TV show inspires a novelist (Manolo Solo) to follow up on the fate of a renowned actor (Jose Coronado), whose disappearance from set a generation ago ended his second career as a movie director. Erice, returning to filmmaking after a 31 year absence, infuses his ambiguous narrative of identity and loss with a complex, absorbing simplicity—not to mention a surprising homage to Rio Bravo.—RDL

The Lovers & the Despot (Film, UK, Ross Adam & Robert Cannan, 2016) Documentary recounts the astounding story of top South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his star actress ex-wife Choi Eun-hie, who were separately kidnapped from Hong Kong in 1978 at the behest of North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, a frustrated cineaste who held them captive until they were willing to make movies for him. Illuminates the many stunning turns of a wrenching incident often treated in Western media as a surreal joke.—RDL

They Cloned Tyrone (Film, US, Juel Taylor, 2023) Aided by a motor mouthed, has-been pimp (Jamie Foxx) and a streetwalker who learned detective skills from her Nancy Drew collection (Teyonah Parris), a taciturn mid-level drug dealer (John Boyega) chases down eyewitness reports of his own murder. Hyper-verbal, hazily shot weird science mystery joins the satirically conscious horror cycle ushered in by Get Out.—RDL

The Vourdalak (Film, France, Adrien Beau, 2023) Lost and robbed in the 18th-century Balkans, French Marquis d’Urfe (Kacey Mottet Klein) shelters in the home of Gorcha, who has become a vampirish vourdalak. Undeniably effective adaptation of the Alexei Tolstoy novella aims more for “cringe horror” than real dread, although Beau’s decision to show the vourdalak’d Gorcha as a marionette pays big dividends in the uncanny.—KH

Good

Reacher Season 3 (Television, US, Amazon Prime, Nick Santora, 2025) Seeking to revenge himself on a connected sadist who got away, Reacher (Alan Ritchson) goes along with a rogue DEA operation targeting the sadist’s partner Zachary Beck (Anthony Michael Hall). Although this season finds an even more enormous foe to pit against Reacher, it suffers from Reacher being fundamentally reactive (and run by pinhead feds to boot) and from a dearth of Reacher whaling on guys. At least it’s a tighter story than Season 2, but America wants real Reacher.—KH

You Can’t Buy Everything (Film, US, Charles Reisner, 1934) Querulous, wealthy miser (May Robson) forces her dutiful son (William Bakewell) to follow in her footsteps, until he falls for the daughter (Jean Parker) of the ex-fiancee (Lewis Stone) she loathes with obsessive fervor. Domestic melodrama takes a rare focus on a mother-son relationship, drawing its matronly antihero with unexpected realism, even when Robson is overacting a little.—RDL

Okay

The Amateur (Film, Canada, Charles Jarrott, 1981) CIA cryptographer Charles Heller (John Savage) blackmails the Agency into sending him behind the Iron Curtain to kill the terrorists who murdered his fiancee. Christopher Plummer embraces the role of the Czech secret policeman on the other side, animating as best he can the back half of the movie. A few set pieces provide intermittent thrills, but this is perhaps best watched as a hairy period piece.—KH

Piaffe (Film, Germany, Ann Oren, 2023) Forced to take over work as a foley artist from her hospitalized sister, a withdrawn woman (Simone Bucio) grows a horse tail and enters into a fetishistic affair with a fern expert (Sebastian Rudolph.) Solemn, surreal magic realist fantasy shies away from resolution, with cryptic, hermetically sealed results.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: A Different Man, Will & Harper, and Ghost Stories from a POW Camp

March 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.

The Pinnacle

Danton (Film, France/Poland, Andrzej Wajda, 1983) In the second year of the revolutionary Republic, charismatic faction leader Georges Danton (Gerard Depardieu) challenges the tightening grip on power held by his icy, ruthless rival Maximilien Robespierre (Wojciech Pszoniak.) Stirring historical political thriller doomed by its incisiveness to a state of perpetual timeliness..—RDL

Recommended

The Alabaster Hand and Other Stories (Fiction, A.N.L. Munby, 1949) Collection of Jamesian horror tales written while Munby (an antiquarian bookseller by trade) was held in a German POW camp unsurprisingly amps up the nostalgic tone of James’ work, sometimes at the expense of horror. Munby’s ghosts prove more susceptible to laying than James’ do, but several of the stories (especially “Herodes Redivivus” and “The White Sack”) transmit real dread, and even the “happy ending” tales pass through excellent grue.—KH

A Different Man (Film, US, Aaron Schimberg, 2024) Would-be actor with extensive facial tumors (Sebastian Stan) undergoes treatment rendering him traditionally handsome, only to lose the playwright (Renate Reinsve) and starring role of his dreams to a chipper bon vivant (Adam Pearson) unfazed by his own similar condition. Mordant satire of inner versus outer acceptance with a 90s NYC indie vibe.—RDL

Trial Run (Fiction, Dick Francis, 1978) Bounced from the turf by a “no glasses” safety rule, astigmatic gentleman farmer and former steeplechaser Randall Drew succumbs to royal pressure and travels to Moscow to quash a rumor ahead of the Olympics. Francis’ thriller pace and well-sketched characters keep this not-quite-spy story intriguing, and make for a zippy read to boot.—KH

Will & Harper (Film, US, Josh Greenbaum, 2024) Will Ferrell goes on a heartland road trip with longtime co-writer Harper Steele to check on the status of their friendship, and her relationship to the down and dirty haunts she used to favor, now that she has come out as trans. Warm, funny buddy road documentary of awareness and acceptance triggers halcyon recollections of the late Biden era.—RDL

Good

Aavesham (Film, India, Jithu Madhavan, 2024) Seeking help against bullying upper classmen, three engineering students (Roshan Shanavas, Mithun Jai Shankar, Hipzster) establish a surprising bond with a flashy but insecure gang kingpin (Fahadh Faasil.) Punchy action comedy finds, in the neediness of its leading frenemy, a fresh spin on the in-too-deep-with-the-mob trope.—RDL

Korea: The Impossible Country (Nonfiction, Daniel Tudor, 2012/2018) Introductory survey of all things South Korean, from film to K-pop, from shamanism to an economy built from nothing to powerhouse on a structure of centrally-planned mercantilist capitalism. Useful and illuminating, though its arrangement by topic results in considerable repetition, as so many elements of South Korean life owe their character to the same events.—RDL

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (Film, US, Christopher McQuarrie, 2023) Ethan (Tom Cruise) and his team pursue a McGuffin granting control over a rogue AI which has hired an old enemy (Esai Morales) to counter him. McQuarrie expertly performs the mission he has assigned himself in his run on the series, to configure bedrock genre elements for maximum momentum and brio. Ironically this, the movie audiences decided to punish for two-parter syndrome, could have, with the merest of tweaks, stood on its own.—RDL

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Black Bag, A Noir Mambo Musical, and The John the Balladeer Movie

March 18th, 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

Black Bag (Film, US, Steven Soderbergh, 2025) Impassive, lie-hating MI6 agent (Michael Fassbender) conducts a mole hunt in which his blithely assured wife (Cate Blanchett) numbers among the suspects. Formally rigorous, mysteriously powerful—but I said Soderbergh already—chamber spy thriller built around a sly, incisive script by David Koepp that plays like a collaboration between John LeCarré and Alan Ayckbourn.—RDL

Recommended

Black Bag (Film, US, Steven Soderbergh, 2025) MI6 counter-intelligence prodigy George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) investigates the theft of a dangerous software exploit, with his also-MI6 wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) an increasingly likely suspect. Perfect puzzlebox script masters the repeated revelation while the film actually rotates around the nature of loyalty (and marriage). A delight on every level, a controlled polygraph rather than the triphammer of his other near-Pinnacle spy flick, Haywire.—KH

A Lion is in the Streets (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1953) Rabble-rousing traveling salesman (James Cagney) cuts ethical corners as he discovers his flair for populist demagoguery during a run for Louisiana governor. Walsh’s energy and affection for the unruly common man propel this Technicolor political drama.—RDL

Victims of Sin (Film, Mexico, Emilio Hernandez, 1953) Vivacious cabaret dancer (Ninón Sevilla) sacrifices her promising career to adopt the abandoned infant son of a dangerous pimp (Rodolfo Acosta.) Potent mix of exhilarating mambo musical and gut-punching social melodrama.—RDL

Wild at Heart (Fiction, Barry Gifford, 1990) Released convict Sailor violates parole to skip town with his beloved Lula, pursued by her obsessed mother and her private detective beau. A tone poem of loopy Southern dialogue and storytelling, without the nightmarish noir elements added by David Lynch for his film adaptation.—RDL

Good

City of the Dead (Film, UK, John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960) Curiously intense history professor Driscoll (Christopher Lee) inspires his plucky student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) to visit witch-haunted Whitewood, Mass. in search of primary data about the cult. British actors doing American accents (and gallons of fake fog) notwithstanding, this is a nice little corker of proto-folk-horror hamstrung mostly by a micro budget and a fairly predictable script.—KH

Red Peony Gambler (Film, Japan, Kōsaku Yamashita, 1968) Her shoulder tattooed to mark her mission of vengeance, a refined 19th century yakuza (Junko Fuji) follows the trail of her father’s killer. Classically staged period action flick delivers in the first and last acts but sags in the middle with the doings of irrelevant tertiary characters. Start of a seven part series, newly restored by Eureka.—RDL

Ten Cents a Dance (Film, US, Lionel Barrymore, 1931) Good-hearted taxi dancer (Barbara Stanwyck) picks the wrong guy when she goes for a luckless striver (Monroe Owlsley) over a world-weary millionaire (Ricardo Cortez.) The secret to an early 30s romantic melodrama is to have Barbara Stanwyck in it.—RDL

Who Fears the Devil? (Film, US, John Newland, 1972) After the Devil beats his grandpappy (Denver Pyle) in a Defy, young John (Hedges Capers) sets out to defy the Devil’s servants with a silver-stringed guitar. Based on two of Manly Wade Wellman’s Pinnacle John the Balladeer stories, this hippified version still rings somewhat true to the Appalachian rhythms and folkloric horror of the original. The end kind of trails off, but a surprising number of great scenes and effective character moments go a long way; there’s not enough Hoyt Axton music, but there’s more than none. [Also released as The Legend of Hillbilly John.]—KH

Okay

Tombs of the Blind Dead (Film, Spain/Portugal, Amando de Ossorio, 1971) A woman’s pal and ex-girlfriend investigate her strange murder in an abandoned town allegedly haunted by the revenants of a Satan-worshipping Templars. On one hand, cool creepy zombie knights; on the other, exploitatively depicted sexual assaults.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Mickey 17, Superman: Space Age, Legends of the Condor Heroes

March 11th, 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

It’s What’s Inside (Film, US, Greg Jardin, 2024) Young couple with relationship problems (Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini) attends a gathering of old college friends where a long-estranged pal (David Thompson) proposes a game using his top secret body-switching machine. Fast-paced single location SF ensemble thriller dares the audience to keep up with its twists and convolutions.—RDL

Lee (Film, UK/US, Ellen Kuras, 2024) Captivating, abrasive ex-model and fashion photographer Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) sweeps the rules aside to cover WWII, from combat in France to the discovery of the Dachau death camp, as a war correspondent. Though its storytelling devices are overly wordy and literary, perhaps inescapably so due to Miller’s story and the many renowned figures who populate it, Winslet’s fierce commitment to the role holds its pieces together.—RDL

Mickey 17 (Film, US, Bong Joon-ho, 2025) Expendable operative and guinea pig (Robert Pattinson) used by a project to colonize the frosty world of Niflheim survives a mission only to discover that his next self has already been bio-printed and implanted with his memories. Pattinson gets to play two character roles in an emphatic, satirical SF look at identity, alien contact, and authoritarian malfeasance. Mark Ruffalo and Toni Colette play the despotic villains as ridiculously cartoonish, which is to say with absolute documentary accuracy.—RDL

Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature’s Bounty (Nonfiction, Craig Welch, 2010) In their pursuit of poachers overfishing the geoduck, an expensive clam of absurd phallic aspect, wildlife officers enlist a larger than life informant up to shenanigans of his own. Eye-opening, colorfully reported exposé reveals the mechanics of marine animal piracy.—RDL

Superman: Space Age (Comics, DC, Mark Russell and Mike Allred, 2022-2023) Soon after the JFK assassination brings Clark Kent off the farm, he learns from Pariah that the world will end in twenty years. Lexcorp and WayneTech dueling for Pentagon contracts is one of the better bits in this “DC Universe but with history in it” story, but the core is Superman figuring out what heroism means on a doomed planet. Mike Allred, of course, is born to do Silver Age art, and this is some of his best work.—KH

Wildcat (Film, US, Ethan Hawke, 2023) Worsening illness forces young aspiring writer Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke) to move from New York City to the small town Georgia home of her conventional, undermining mother (Laura Linney.) Hawke’s angry, thwarted dignity as O’Connor anchors a nonlinear biopic, which addresses the problem of its subject’s outwardly uneventful life by threading in dramatized excerpts of her most famous stories.—RDL

Woman of the Hour (Film, US, Anna Kendrick, 2024) Struggling actress Sheryl Bradshaw (Anna Kendrick) agrees to appear on The Dating Game in 1978, unaware that Bachelor #3 is serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto). A solid true-crime flick that centers Kendrick’s Everywoman experience in the sexist vortex of LA, and does not romanticize the killer at all, which is the best commentary on The Dating Game (and LA) that one could ask for. Like many actor-directors, Kendrick prefers to shoot actors emoting rather than locations, which harshes her period vibe a bit.—KH

Good

Enquiry (Fiction, Dick Francis, 1969) Warned off the track for allegedly fixing a race, jockey Kelly Hughes goes about investigating and reversing the titular enquiry by the unfathomable tactic of asking direct questions. In Britain, this counts as hard-boiled detection. Not as polished as later Francis thrillers, this one still has the Swiss-watch pacing that a true thriller writer needs more than anything else. But it doesn’t really have surprise, shock, or particularly well drawn characters; Hughes seems a little more Mary Sue than Francis’ later protagonists.—KH

Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants (Film, China, Tsui Hark, 2025) Honorable martial artist raised by Mongols as an exile from the Song Dynasty (Zhang Xiao) seeks reunion with the love he unjustly scorned (Dafei Zhuang) and tries to prevent war between his ancestral and adopted peoples. Overly intent on epic scale, and ungainly, as attempts to squish the elaborately plotted fiction of Louis Cha into feature length often are, but the climactic action set piece is what you want from a Hark film. The same material has been made into three different TV series.—RDL

Okay

Mickey 17 (Film, US, Bong Joon-ho, 2025) On the run from a loan shark, whiny schlimazel Mickey (Robert Pattinson) joins a colony ship as an Expendable, to be killed and cloned and reprinted over and over at need. An interminable succession of ultimately toothless satire, tell-don’t-show storytelling, and random things Bong thought were neat (and many of them in fact are) follows. Nothing interesting gets followed up or built upon; the absolute best bit is Toni Collette committing to the role of sauce-obsessed Melania/Lady Macbeth manque, but that’s because Toni Collette is always great.—KH