Ken and Robin Consume Media: No Other Choice, Hamnet, Jay Kelly

January 13th, 2026 | 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

No Other Choice (Film, South Korea, Park Chan-wook, 2025) Desperate to keep his home and family intact, laid-off paper mill manager Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) plans to kill a more successful paper mill manager, along with the superior candidates for the ensuing job vacancy. Son Ye-jin takes on the harder role as Man-su’s increasingly unhappy wife, and her grounded delivery keeps the movie from spinning out of control in Park’s increasingly daring and dissonant shots and Kim Sang-bum and Kim Ho-bin’s drum-snap edits. Gorgeous, innovative, clever, and mordant, a worthy Westlake adaptation for those who claim it can’t be done.—KH

Recommended

Death in Five Boxes (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1938) Four people at a table have been poisoned, and one of them has been fatally stabbed, and bizarre clues litter the crime scene: a worthy challenge for Sir Henry Merrivale. I have reluctantly turned back to the Merrivale mysteries as I run out of Carr, and find to my delight that the pre-1941 ones are almost all Recommendable. The mysteries run a little tighter and the atmosphere less Gothic than the classic Fell cases, and the early Merrivale is only intermittently a buffoon.—KH

Jay Kelly (Film, US, Noah Baumbach, 2025) In a bid to crash his daughter’s European trip, a self-absorbed movie star (George Clooney) abruptly accepts a film festival tribute invite, triggering reminiscence for him and a string of crises for his overly devoted manager (Adam Sandler.) Co-written by Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, the screenplay’s perfectly sculpted dialogue and scene construction provide the platform for brilliant performances from Clooney, Sandler, Laura Dern, and, in a barn-burner one-and-done, Billy Crudup.—RDL

No Other Choice  (Film, South Korea, Park Chan-wook, 2025) Desperate for a new job in the paper industry, a fired plant manager (Lee Byung-hun) hatches a plan to murder rival job applicants. Hyper-competitive South Korea makes a consummate setting for a barbed, masterfully composed adaptation of Donald Westlake’s The Ax. —RDL

The Phantom Atlas (Nonfiction, Edward Brooke-Hitching, 2016) Cartographic survey of nonexistent places that made it onto maps despite their origins in myth, misapprehension, or deception. Enjoyable, visually rich  roundup of past and future Cartography Huts.—RDL

The Silence of the Sea (Film, France, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1949) Required to billet a Francophile German officer (Howard Vernon) during the occupation, an old man (Jean-Marie Robain) and his adult niece (Nicole Stéphane) greet his attempts to ingratiate himself with absolute silence. Drama of resistance, based on a novel illicitly published during the war, gains power from bare bones simplicity.—RDL

Time to Die (Film, Mexico, Arturo Ripstein, 1966) After 18 years in prison a beaten-down man (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos) returns to his home village, where the sons of the man he slew have sworn to kill him. Western written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes portrays its inevitable showdown not as an act of clarifying order but as Greek tragedy.—RDL

Good 

Torso (Film, Italy, Sergio Martino, 1973) Jane (Suzy Kendall) and Dani (Tina Aumont) and their friends flee the serial killer stalking the University of Perugia but has the killer followed them to the remote villa? (Yes.) Crucial slasher-film precursor comes alive in the fourth-act cat-and-mouse stalking of Jane; if the rest of this giallo had shown the same mastery of space and suspense, it would be an all-timer.—KH

The Unicorn Murders (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1935) Former MI6 agent Kenwood Blake gives the right countersign to the wrong fellow agent in Paris and winds up dragged into an isolated chateau murder and into Sir Henry Merrivale’s attempt to show up the French police and catch France’s greatest thief. Carr’s espionage action is clunky even for 1935, although the eventual impossible murder nearly makes up for it. Merrivale is less annoying than either French antagonist, but only just.—KH

Not Recommended

Hamnet (Film, US/UK, Chloé Zhao, 2025) Forging a union later tested by grief, a witchy young woman (Jessie Buckley) marries a frustrated writer (Paul Mescal.) Almost nothing is known of Shakespeare’s family life, leaving room for the thudding cliches and back-projected concerns of this lyrically visualized, powerfully acted, preposterous poppycock.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Marty Supreme, Roofman, and the Patrick Petrella Stories

January 6th, 2026 | 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

Compulsion (Film, US, Richard Fleischer, 1959) The fates of 1924 Chicago Nietzschean thrill-killers Steiner and Straus (Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman) depend on crusading attorney Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles). Surprisingly good roman a clef of the Leopold and Loeb murders ends with an 18-minute speech against the death penalty based on the one given by Clarence Darrow at the historical sentencing. Your appreciation of Fleischer’s achievement depends on what you think of Welles’ monologue (the longest in film history to that point).—KH

Eephus (Film, US, Carson Lund, 2024) Two local recreational teams square off for one last game on a baseball diamond’s last day before demolition. Realistically observed yet also Beckett-like paean to the beautiful existential futility of competitive sports.—RDL

Every Patrick Petrella Story (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1959-2003) Gilbert’s longest-running serial character (two novels and 54 shorter stories), Petrella is a half-Spanish, poetry-reading London police detective. Not quite maverick cop, not quite cerebral detective, not quite procedural protagonist, Petrella gives his adventures a specific and hard-to-isolate flavor that not even Gilbert’s other police stories can match. Start where Gilbert started, with the puzzle-inside-a-procedural Blood and Judgement, and then sample the shorter Petrella in Petrella at Q.—KH

Marty Supreme (Film, US, Josh Safdie, 2025) Hustling New York punk Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) climbs and slips on his way to global table-tennis fame, and over his girl Rachael (Odessa A’Zion) and anyone else in his way. Nonstop energy (weirdly punctuated with ‘80s classics for a film set in 1952) and grift-a-minute action keep you riveted to a character you quite probably (and rightly) despise. Chalamet deserves all the acting plaudits he gets for this, though non-professional actors Abel Ferrara (as a Jewish gangster) and Kevin O’Leary (as a cuckolded industrialist) more than hold their own.—KH

Opera (Film, Italy, Dario Argento, 1987) A mysterious masked killer stalks understudy-turned-superstar Betty (Cristina Marsillach) during an avant-garde staging of Verdi’s Macbeth, complete with ravens. A psychologically wrenching riff on The Phantom of the Opera, it features effortlessly (and endlessly) bravura shots and camera moves. (Ronnie Taylor is the kind of brilliant cinematographer Argento deserves but seldom got.) Often (and perhaps rightly) called Argento’s last masterpiece, it’s also perhaps the last great giallo.—KH

Roofman (Film, US, Derek Cianfrance, 2025) Goodhearted prison escapee (Channing Tatum) dates a devout Toys R Us employee (Kirsten Dunst) after uses his penchant for breaking into businesses through their ceilings to hide out in the store. Socially observant true crime indie comedy permeated with the melancholy of stolen happiness.—RDL

Good

The Paradine Case (Film, US, Alfred Hitchcock, 1947) An aggressive barrister (Gregory Peck) risks his career and marriage when he succumbs to an obsession with an uncooperative murder defendant (Alida Valli.) Straining against producer David Selznick’s florid prestige picture aesthetic, Hitchcock infuses this courtroom drama with a troubling psychosexual undercurrent. The emotional logic would track better if Valli had turned out to be, as Selznick hoped, a screen presence to rival Garbo.—RDL

Wake Up Dead Man (Film, US, Rian Johnson, 2025) Sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) works to clear the obvious suspect in the murder of a grandiose Monsignor (Josh Brolin), an earnest priest with rage issues (Josh O’Connor.) Juxtaposes the artificial mystery of the locked room murder story with the metaphysical mystery of faith,  hobbled by the usual structural problems of the cinematic whodunnit.—RDL

Okay

The Flanders Panel (Fiction, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, 1990) A restorer’s discovery of a Renaissance murder mystery in a Flemish painting depicting a chess match becomes an element in a current slaying. Erudite mystery thriller of art and gamesmanship with an emotionally implausible final revelation.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Wake Up Dead Man, Predator: Badlands, The Whole Kill Bill, and a Giallo Tarot

December 16th, 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

Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (Film, US, Quentin Tarantino, 2006/2025) Gunned down during her wedding rehearsal, former assassin Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) survives to take revenge on her would-be killers (Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah), especially her former mentor Bill (David Carradine). Watched as a complete whole, this most visually arresting of Tarantino’s films also builds surprising weight and momentum from a “nothing but the good bits” tribute to martial arts cinema. Thurman’s acting likewise accumulates power at length; only the jackdaw soundtrack suffers a bit at four-and-a-half-plus hours. [Main changes: Deletes the cliffhanger and recap sequences that ended and started the two films, lengthens the “Origin of O-ren Ishii” anime, restores color and adds violence to the House of Blue Leaves segment, adds a post-credits animated “Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge”]—KH

Recommended

The Body of a Girl (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1972) Newly promoted to Chief Inspector and stationed in the remote suburb of Stoneferry, Bill Mercer investigates a dead body found in a drift island in the Thames. Combines police procedural with a touch of “man vs. town” thriller to superb effect; the Gilbert dry humor here runs a little blacker than his usual. Mercer also stars in a very tight three-novelette series in The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Stories, also Recommended.—KH

Predator: Badlands (Film, US, Dan Trachtenberg, 2025) After his father orders him killed for supposed weakness, a dogged predator (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) heads to a planet populated by deadly animals to seek the ultimate trophy, reluctantly teaming with a damaged, unusually chipper Weyland-Yutani android (Elle Fanning.) Rousingly constructed adventure thriller makes clever use of the established crossover between Predator and Alien and showcases Fanning in a gift of a dual role as it hits one great beat after another.—RDL

Tarocchi Gialli (Tarot, Nick Ribera, 2024) An 83-card tarot (adding five more Major Arcana) cast as posters for giallo movies, mostly using strong design and photomontage well. Although the Minor Arcana all have their own images they don’t always depict their suit (Eyes, Candles, Knives, Skulls) which slightly annoys my inner A.E. Waite.—KH

Thief (Film, US, Michael Mann, 1981) Hardboiled safecracker (James Caan) softens his lone wolf credo to court a wary waitress (Tuesday Weld) and work for a persuasive Chicago gangster (Robert Prosky.) From dazzling rainswept cityscapes to its existential fatalism, Mann’s first theatrical feature finds his auteurist hallmarks already fully in place.—RDL

Good

The Cock-Eyed World (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1929) Pugnacious marine master sergeant (Victor McLaglen) competes with chancer comrade (Edmund Lowe) for the affections of party girls in New York and Latin America. With unusual dynamism for an early talkie, Walsh portrays war as labor and soldiers as irrepressible working stiffs.—RDL

Wake Up Dead Man (Film, US, Rian Johnson, 2025) Accused of murdering the fulminating Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin), boxer turned priest Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) helps Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) crack an impossible case. While a vastly better mystery (complete with John Dickson Carr shout-out) than the second installment, it suffers from that film’s problem of one-dimensional characters, in this case, to the mystery’s detriment. O’Connor does his best to put depth on his, but he’s almost the only one given the chance. Like every film in the series, it looks great, though, which is not nothing.—KH

Okay

Officer on Duty (Film, India, Jithu Ashraf, 2025) Fresh from suspension, an uncompromising cop (Kunchacko Boban) tracks a petty jewelry theft to a gang of hipster vengeance killers. Intense entry in a cycle of South Asian action flicks that encourage audiences to applaud straight-up murder.—RDL

Showtime 7 (Film, Japan, Kazutaka Watanabe, 2025) Disgraced TV anchor (Hiroshi Abe) uses a bomber’s call to his radio show to make a play for his old job. Real time thriller falters when it reaches for a serious point its genre characterizations can’t carry.—RDL.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: New Tim Powers, The Dirty Dozen with Samurai, and the Quest for Kim

December 9th, 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

11 Rebels (Film, Japan, Kazuya Shiraishi, 2024) Condemned prisoners accept an offer of reprieve to defend a fort long enough for a double-dealing clan to play both sides of the Boshin War. Ensemble cast samurai war film combines classical storytelling with contemporary gore effects.—RDL

Juliet, Naked (Film, US, Jesse Peretz, 2018) Quietly discontented museum curator (Rose Byrne) stumbles into an online epistolary relationship with the obscure retired indie rocker (Ethan Hawke) her lunkhead professor partner (Chris O’Dowd) obsessively idolizes. Hawke reminds us what a brilliant naturalistic actor he is in this winning Nick Hornby adaptation.—RDL

The Mills of the Gods (Fiction, Tim Powers, 2025) In 1925 Paris, American expat artist Harry Nolan gets embroiled with Vivi Chastain, the victim of a Moloch-worshipping body-jumping cult. The narrative ramps up almost too abruptly, and unusually for Powers from only one perspective, with his famous supporting cast (Hemingway, Stein, Picasso) less finely drawn. But the occult doings remain scary and cool, even if this installment reads more as alongside history than within it.—KH

Mountain Onion (Film, Kazakhstan, Eldar Shibanov, 2022) With his mom about to leave his dad for dragging them to the countryside on a disastrous back-to-nature impulse, an intense preteen (Esil Amantay) enlists his unflappable younger sister (Amina Gaziyeva) on a quest to save their marriage by acquiring a box of knock-off Viagra. Refreshes the portrait of rural life genre with bright colors, a comic outlook, and a winning narrative throughline.—RDL

Quest For Kim: In Search of Kipling’s Great Game (Nonfiction, Peter Hopkirk, 1996) Great Game historian Hopkirk follows the path of Kim and proposes specific models for the main characters in Kipling’s Pinnacle spy novel. Reading Kim put Hopkirk on the trail of the Great Game in the first place, and the combination of love and knowledge in this book makes it an irresistible and rapid read.—KH

Good

Ready or Not (Film, US, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2019) Orphan Grace (Samara Weaving) has finally found a family when she marries Alex le Domas (Mark O’Brien), estranged scion of a wealthy games publishing dynasty. As the words “wealthy games publishers” should warn us, they’re in league with Satan, and the resulting bloody game of Hide and Seek provides all the thrills and most of the interest in the film. Watched as a live-action cartoon, it’s fun while it lasts; Weaving isn’t given enough to hang a character on, so that’s all it really can be.—KH

Okay

Nobody 2 (Film, US, Timo Tjahjanto, 2025) Government assassin/wage slave Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) takes his family (Connie Nielsen, et al.) on vacation to his only good childhood memory, a Wisconsin water park, which turns out to be a front for a murderous smuggling ring led by Lendina (Sharon Stone). The first film worked when it did by contrasting its state-of-the-art violence with a relatively mundane life background embodied by Odenkirk’s schlub character. This one deliberately plunges into a cartoon world almost from the jump, stepping on its few good setups, and even Tjahjanto’s gore-loving camera can’t force much more than the occasional chuckle.—KH

Not Recommended

A Perfect Couple (Film, US, Robert Altman, 1979) A doormat at home but pushy on dates, an eccentric schlub (Paul Dooley) pursues a wan pop singer (Marta Heflin.) With its bizarre gap between the response to the characters it expects from the audience and how it portrays them, and interminable stretches of screen time devoted to an unbearable, untethered-in-time, Broadway-infused MOR band, this might be the weirdest movie Altman ever made. And he made Popeye.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Fantastic 4, The Ax, and a Cozy House Explosion

December 2nd, 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

The Ax (Fiction, Donald E. Westlake, 1997) Laid off from a middle management job at a paper company, Burke Devore decides to end his two-year stretch (with no end in sight) of unemployment by killing a middle manager at a paper company, along with the six people with better resumes for that job than his. One of Westlake’s most successful straight psychological thrillers touches Raskolnikovian depths with an uncanny first-person voice, along with Westlake’s untouchable skill at plotting.—KH

Christmas Pudding (Fiction, Nancy Mitford, 1932) To gain access to the journals of a Victorian poet he intends to write about, an indolent writer conspires with a raffish young friend, his subject’s grandson, to pose as his tutor over the holidays . Hilarious, knowing dissection of gentry folkways.—RDL

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Film, Japan, Nagisa Oshima, 1969) Standoffish book shoplifter (Tadanori Yokoo) and angry store clerk (Rie Yokoyama) circle one another in an ambivalent quasi-relationship. Brechtian essay film made in collaboration with an experimental theater company wrestles with sexuality as a force that surfaces from the id to attack the certainties of male intellectuals.—RDL

The Fantastic 4: First Steps (Film, US, Matt Shakman, 2025) Ex-astronaut couple (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby), her brother (Joseph Quinn) and their best friend (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) use their superpowers to save her unborn child, and the world, from the planet-eating giant alien Galactus (Ralph Ineson.) An (almost) self-contained story and sure sense for the right tonal notes give third-time’s-the-charm status to the MCU version of the foundational comic books.—RDL

Ikarie XB 1 (Film, Czechoslovakia, Jindrich Polák, 1963) The crew of an interstellar exploration ship endures the deadly rigors of space travel. Humanistic depiction of a community under pressure tells a story without antagonists.—RDL

Sky High (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1955) When Major MacMorris is blown up with his house, Mrs. Artside has lost a tenor for her church choir but gains a mystery to unravel. Gilbert has fun with the “cozy village” mystery in this one, distributing the investigations between Mrs. Artside, her ex-commando son Tim, and eventually Inspector Hazlerigg. Not especially difficult as a whodunit, a bit of a howdunit, but mostly a chance to follow Gilbert through his felicity with small dramas.—KH

Good

The Tender Bar (Film, US, George Clooney, 2021) Abandoned by his deadbeat disk jockey dad (Max Martini), a thoughtful (Daniel Ranieri) kid grows into a Yale student with literary aspirations (Tye Sheridan) under the substitute tutelage of his autodidact bartender uncle (Ben Affleck.) Affectionate character portraits take center stage in an adaptation of a memoir without a strong narrative line.—RDL

Vera Cruz (Film, US, Robert Aldrich, 1954) Ex-Confederate colonel Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) teams up with outlaw gunman Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) and they sell their services to Emperor Maximilian, who commissions them to escort the Countess Marie (Denise Darcel) to Vera Cruz through the Juarista rebel forces. Intermittently gorgeous shots by Ernest Laszlo and plenty of gunplay and betrayal punctuate a proto-spaghetti Western in which not even Gary Cooper is immune to greed and situational ethics. The timing and rhythm of the film seem off (too many rewrites and too many cuts), and Burt Lancaster’s endless mugging gets a tad old as even Lanc later admitted: ​​"There I was, acting my ass off. I looked like an idiot, and Coop was absolutely marvelous."—KH

Okay

Topaz (Film, US, Alfred Hitchcock, 1969) In the days preceding the Cuban missile crisis, a French intelligence officer (Frederick Stafford) sidesteps his own bosses to freelance an operation for his US counterpart (John Forsythe.) Although it’s interesting to see Hitch tackle a more topical and realistic spy story than usual, and to see him working with French stars Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret, the multi-protagonist Leon Uris source novel leaves him mostly serving its complicated plot.—RDL