Ken and Robin Consume Media: Power Fantasy, Sci-Fi Tarot and the Count of Monte Cristo

February 18th, 2025 | Robin

Recommended

The Count of Monte Cristo (Film, France, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, 2024) On the verge of marriage above his station to Mercedes de Moncerf (Anaïs Demoustier), sailor Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) is betrayed by her jealous cousin and imprisoned in the Chateau d’If black site. Lushly filmed and produced swashbuckler strips down Dumas’ Pinnacle ur-revenge thriller to a mere three hours, staying mostly true to the original while softening some blows for modern audiences.—KH

Crime of Passion (Film, US, Gerd Oswald, 1956) After giving up her career to marry a homicide detective (Sterling Hayden), an erstwhile star reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) succumbs to Machiavellian mania to advance his career. Proto-feminist mix of cop and domestic noir follows the spiral of its flawed protagonist with acerbic abandon.—RDL

Kim’s Video (Film, US, David Redmon & Ashley Sabin, 2023) Documentarian examining the legacy of legendary, defunct NYC video store stumbles across the strange destination of its legality-skirting archive. Tongue-in-cheek celebration of cinephilia moves from investigation to active intervention in its storyline.—RDL

Power Fantasy Vol. 1: The Superpowers (Comics, Image, Kieron Gillen & Caspar Wijngaard, 2025) Beginning with the Trinity detonation, people started getting powers. Six of them have the power to destroy the planet. None of those six really get along. Gillen’s ongoing wrangling with what Watchmen did to the art form has produced a compelling comic that takes some big swings in terms of narrative consequences and risks to audience sympathy; Wijngaard’s art provides clarity of narrative with valuable emotional color contrast.—KH

Sci-Fi Tarot (Tarot, Todd Alcott, 2024) Not the slam dunk of his Pulp Tarot, but closer to that in its homage-collage tendencies than to his Horror Tarot, this tarot casts the traditional suits as glowing rods, ray guns, capsules, and very saucer-like pentacles. Inspirations come from all over SF art, with the strongest DNA from the 1930s to the 1970s. Visually thrilling and in one case (Death) literally breathtaking.—KH

So You Think You Can Be Prime Minister (Nonfiction, Ian Martin, 2024) Jaundiced satire of recent UK politics couched as a how-to manual for the shallow and ambitious, with quizzes and flow charts. Perfect Father’s Day or birthday reading for sarcastic dads who follow the news, from a key writer for The Thick of It and Veep.—RDL

Timecrimes (Film, Spain, Nacho Vigalondo, 2007) Fleeing an attack from a mysterious bandaged figure, an obdurate everyman (Karra Elejalde) jumps into a time machine, which takes him just far enough into the past to unleash a cascade of twisting consequences. Black comic twist on time travel tropes driven by the protagonist’s headlong insistence on the wrongest available decisions.—RDL

Good

Baba Yaga (Film, Italy, Corrado Farina, 1973) Milan fashion photographer resists the advances of a witchy rich lady. Style-obsessed adaptation of Guido Crepax’s erotica comic Valentina with reality horror theme plays like a giallo where the black-gloved killer never shows up. CW: incidental 70s leftist Euro-racism.—RDL

Heartbreak Motel (Film, Indonesia, Angga Dwimas Sasongko, 2024) Traumatized movie star (Laura Basuki) married to insecure, undermining husband (Reza Rahadian) is somehow connected to mousy hotel maid pursued by hunky financier (Chicco Jerikho.) Showbiz melodrama with noirish undertones and fragmented puzzle structure shifts back to convention for its resolution.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: I Saw the TV Glow, September 5th, The Brutalist

February 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

Becky (Film, US, Jonathan Milott & Cary Murnion, 2020) Sullen, grief-numbed teen (Lulu Wilson) awakens a talent for vengeance when a neo-Nazi prison escapee (Kevin James) and his confederates invade the family cottage. James makes a convincing heel turn in an economically drawn piece of elevated neo-exploitation.—RDL

Chasing Chasing Amy (Film, US, Sav Rodgers, 2023) Young queer filmmaker who credits the 1997 Kevin Smith film Chasing  Amy as a literal life-saver from the effects of high school bullying examines its creation and the complicated position it holds as a work of LGBT+ representation. What could be simply  a critical essay documentary with interviews and a personal perspective takes a couple of surprising, deeply emotional turns.—RDL

I Saw the TV Glow (Film, US, Jane Schoenbrun, 2024) In 1996, socially isolated teen Owen (Justice Smith) bonds with slightly older Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) over YA supernatural show The Pink Opaque. Absolutely crippling emotional realism grounds creeping reality horror; special shout-outs to Eric Yue’s cinematography, which looks far better than the budget allows, and the soundtrack of 2020s artists recording imaginary 90s songs.—KH

Mischief (Fiction, Charlotte Armstrong, 1950) Out of town hotel guests readying themselves for a prestigious banquet leave their 9 year old daughter with the wrong last-minute babysitter. Tense psychological thriller makes masterful use of incisively drawn multiple perspectives.—RDL

Red Rooms (Film, Canada, Pascal Plante, 2023) Techie fashion model Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) becomes obsessed with the trial of a man accused of livestreaming the torture-murder of three girls to dark web “red rooms.” Plante shows us neither the gruesome murders nor Kelly-Anne’s motivation, depicting both by inference. The result is a film about obsession as obsession; Gariépy’s chilly control gives nothing away to the viewer but something to obsess about.—KH

September 5 (Film, Germany/US, Tim Fehlbaum, 2024) Greenhorn producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) takes over the ABC Sports control room on a slow day during the Munich Olympics of 1972, only to be the man on the button when terrorists kidnap the Israeli Olympic team. This news-process thriller revels in period analog technology, going so far as to rough up its own digital footage to look like 16mm film. Magaro anchors the movie with his harried performance, backed up by a superb Peter Sarsgaard as Roone Arledge and Leonie Benesch as a German office assistant pressed into increasingly critical roles.—KH

Sleep (Film, South Korea, Jason Yu, 2023) Expectant mother (Jung Yu-mi) seeks an extreme explanation when medical treatment fails to fix her actor husband’s (Lee Sun-kyun) dangerous, sudden onset sleepwalking. The pursuit of marital perfection becomes a nightmare of released repression in this claustrophobic ghost horror.—RDL

Terra Formars (Film, Japan, Takashi Miike, 2016) Crew of convicts and outsiders lands on a terraformed Mars to battle its population of giant humanoid cockroaches with their own bizarre bioengineered insect powers. In what might be blurbed as “body horror Power Rangers,” Miike maintains his commitment to heightening the absurdity of his manga adaptations.—RDL

Good

The Policeman’s Lineage (Film, South Korea, Lee Kyu-maan) Young officer (Choi Woo-sik), whose cop father warned him to avoid the family business, accepts an Internal Affairs undercover assignment to investigate the apparently corrupt head of an organized crime squad (Cho Jin-woong.) Well executed treatment of familiar material.—RDL

Ire-Inspiring

The Brutalist (Film, US, Brady Corbet, 2024) Arriving in America after surviving Europe’s horrors, a Bauhaus-trained Hungarian architect (Adrien Brody) accepts a commission from an overbearing, mercurial shipping magnate (Guy Pearce) to build a monumental community center in small town Pennsylvania. Miserabilist Vistavision drama of a tormented artist battling the Man to realize his vision continually asserts its importance, features a third act turn that literalizes its theme in the most trite and puerile manner possible, and finally uses the Holocaust to aggrandize its suffering Mary Sue protagonist.—RDL

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

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Skeleton Crew, A Real Pain, and the Occult World of Song Collection

January 21st, 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

The Hop Pickers (Film, Czechoslovakia, Ladislav Rychman, 1964) As their high school class fulfills its summer duties as harvesters of the titular beer ingredient, a nonconforming intellectual (Vladimír Pucholt) competes with a virile striver (Milos Zavadil) for the attentions of an independent-minded beauty (Ivana Pavlová.) Infectiously charming swingin’ 60s musical comedy with a dissident text and gay subtext celebrates youth rebellion from the other side of the Iron Curtain.—RDL

Recommended

All You Need Is Death (Film, Ireland, Paul Duane, 2023) Two song collectors (Simone Collins and Charlie Maher) track down an ancient Irish song for its alchemical power but unleash a deadly curse. This occult world of folk song collection, with its selfish gurus and dodgy money-men, could fuel a whole Unknown Armies campaign. The great thing about this movie is that, even on its threadbare budget, it lives up to its terrific high concept and manages some genuine shocks along with the creeping horror.—KH

David Lynch: the Art Life (Film, US/Denmark, Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, 2016) Lynch works on his visual art and narrates the events of his life from boyhood to Eraserhead. Intimate arts documentary shows that his work’s layering of bucolic Americana and bubbling darkness is wholly autobiographical.—RDL

A Real Pain (Film, US, Jesse Eisenberg, 2024) In tribute to their recently deceased Holocaust survivor grandmother, two cousins, one (Eisenberg) uptight and settled, the other (Kieran Culkin ) gregarious but volatile, join a Jewish history tour in Poland. Culkin takes a star turn in a dialogue-driven indie dramedy that astutely refracts its two-hander structure through a chorus/ensemble.—RDL

The Return of Munchausen (Fiction, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, 1927) Deposited by a mischance in the early 20th century, the famed adventurer and fabulist Baron Hieronymus von Munchausen accepts a lucrative mission from the British Foreign Office to visit the USSR incognito and report back. Only a liar may tell the truth in this absurdist satire of the early Soviet Union, which went unpublished until glasnost.—RDL

Skeleton Crew Season 1 (Television, US, Jon Watts, 2024-2025) Quartet of hoverbike-riding kids on technologically sheltered coin-minting planet discover a buried spaceship, accidentally blasting off into danger, with a scheming pirate (Jude Law) as either their protector or exploiter. Fast-moving, structurally coherent, with new, interesting antagonists, recognizably in the setting but untethered to the Skywalker narrative line, and just plain fun, this show leaps over all the pitfalls of recent Star Wars television.—RDL

Good

The Accountant (Film, US, Gavin O’Connor, 2016) Genius forensic accountant on the autism spectrum (Ben Affleck) unleashes his hidden other side as an ultra-efficient killing machine when his latest client targets him and one of their own employees (Anna Kendrick) for elimination. Entertaining action thriller devotes a surprising amount of B-plot time to its hero’s backstory, as if setting up a series, which it has finally spawned, with a second installment due in 2025.—RDL

A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery Season 1 (Television, UK, BBC, Michael Chapman, 1987) Adapts three of the four Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries featuring his love light, mystery novelist Harriet Vane, the most successful self-insert in fiction. Harriet Walter is note-perfect as Vane; Edward Petherbridge makes the most of his strong physical resemblance to Wimsey, though he plays Lord Peter less energetically than Ian Carmichael did. The adaptations start very strong (Strong Poison), then good with flashes of greatness (Have His Carcase), but end with an odiously cut and compressed Gaudy Night missing nearly all the Oxford business that elevates the source novel.—KH

Roman Special Forces & Special Ops (Nonfiction, Simon Elliott, 2023) After defining his “special forces” terms (elite, selective, special skills and esprit de corps, operate beyond friendly lines, deniable) Elliott runs through a number of candidate forces in the Roman army from late Republic to early Byzantium, concluding that only the exploratores truly fit the bill. More details on their (few) known missions, and less padded history of the Empire and its foes, would have improved the book, but it’s good to see the comprehensive assessment.—KH