Posts Tagged ‘Ken and Robin Consume Media’
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Blue Moon, The Secret Agent, Chain Reactions
February 3rd, 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
Blue Moon (Film, US, Richard Linklater, 2025) Needy lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) struggles to keep his insecurities in check at the Sardi’s after-party celebrating the Broadway opening of Oklahoma!, for which his erstwhile partner Richard Rogers (Andrew Scott) replaced him with a new, less brilliant, more reliable collaborator. Contemporary acting’s greatest talker masterfully and movingly holds court as Linklater uses close-ups and movement to alchemize an apparently stagey script into crackling cinema.—RDL
Chain Reactions (Film, US, Alexandre O. Philippe, 2025) Five horror authorities—comedian Patton Oswalt, critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, writer Stephen King and filmmakers Takashi Miike and Karyn Kusama—discuss the personal and cultural impact of Tobe Hooper’s convention-shattering Texas Chain Saw Massacre. In a fruitful formal move, Philippe, rather than intersperse the commentary of many talking heads, shapes each interview into its own separate spoken essay.—RDL
Good News (Film, South Korea, Byun Sung-hyun, 2025) When excitable young Red Army Faction hijackers try to divert an outbound Tokyo flight to Pyongyang, an oddball KCIA fixer (Sul Kyung-gu) enlists a straight arrow army air traffic controller (Hong Kyung) in a scheme to land them in the south. Satirical docudrama takes jabs at official opportunism while also bubbling away as a process thriller.—RDL
Left-Handed Girl (Film, Taiwan/US, Shih-Ching Tsou, 2025) A beleaguered noodle stall owner (Janel Tsai) with two daughters, one a headstrong young adult (Shih-Yuan Ma), the other an adorable moppet who has been convinced one of her hands serves the devil (Nina Ye), struggles to get by in Taipei. Brightly digital slice-of-life drama ineluctably builds into a classic explosion of family secrets. Tsou makes her feature debut after acting for many years as producing partner of Sean Baker, who serves here as co-writer and editor.—RDL
The Secret Agent (Film, Brazil/France/Germany/Netherlands, Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025) A man (Wagner Moura) hiding out in Recife, Brazil, during the military dictatorship tries to keep attention off him long enough to get out of the country with his son. Deliberately told in several narrative modes, including weird urban legend, 70s crime flick, and bald (almost soap-operatic) declamation, this movie depends on Moura’s chameleon, low-key acting for the viewer’s trust. Throughout, Mendonça Filho plays with film and time, layering information slowly, but always communicating the most through his shots. I suspect this will repay multiple viewings.—KH
Till Death Do Us Part (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1944) Richard Markham discovers his fiancee is a serial killer, or is she? And if she’s innocent, who killed the man who fingered her, with her own supposed m.o.? (Which is of course a seeming suicide in a locked room.) Carr pulls at least four complete narrative U-turns in this short novel, with Gideon Fell simply outraced rather than out-thought by the killer. A vertiginous tour de force of misdirection, its sheer artificiality of structure almost foreshadows the admittedly contrived solution to the murder.—KH
Good
Short Night of Glass Dolls (Film, Italy/Yugoslavia, Aldo Lado, 1971) American reporter Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) is found dead in Prague—but he’s actually alive inside his corpse, and trying desperately to remember how he got killed! With a setup like that and Barbara Bach as the mandatory vanished girlfriend, this plays less like a typical giallo and more like a conspiracy thriller, although the stop-and-start pacing mitigates the thrill quotient. I hear the new 4K version cleans up the muddy dialogue dubbing, which would be a distinct improvement.—KH
Swoon (Film, US, Tom Kalin, 1992) Sexually obsessed with uncaring sociopath Richard Loeb (Daniel Schlachet), weak-willed ornithology student Nathan Leopold (Craig Chester) joins him in the thrill murder of a local boy. The first Leopold & Loeb film to foreground the killers’ sexuality (although Compulsion hints at it as strongly as 1959 would allow) suffers from an inevitable lapse in focus after the two are sentenced and separated. Kalin makes a virtue of his scanty budget, weaving artificialities and staginess into his stark black-and-white shots and theatrical performances.—KH
Okay
The Running Man (Film, US, Edgar Wright, 2025) In an authoritarian near future, a screwed-over prole (Glen Powell) agrees to become the target in a deadly reality show run by a slick exec (Josh Brolin.) Satirical action remake is fun when it feels like an Edgar Wright movie, which isn’t often enough. Casting Powell as angry and intense leaves no room for the breezy charm essential to his star power.—RDL
Seeing is Believing (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1941) Under hypnosis, and watched by four witnesses, Victoria Fane kills her husband with a dagger that minutes ago was harmless rubber. For once, Henry Merrivale isn’t the worst thing about a ‘Carter Dickson’ novel, although he’s plenty insufferable here. In addition to a fairly unbelievable howdunit, Carr also profoundly cheats in the opening section, ruining the whodunit as well. It’s a shame because the murder setup itself is vastly clever and original, but it’s wasted.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Sentimental Value, More Locked Room Mysteries, and the Submarine Movie that Obsessed Howard Hughes
January 27th, 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
Coherence (Film, US, James Ward Byrkit, 2013) Dinner party attendees suffer reality entanglement after a passing comet knocks out power in an LA neighborhood. Indie-budget SF makes the most of its deliciously twisty premise.—RDL
The Inheritance (Film, Japan, Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) Restrained secretary (Keiko Kishi) waits for opportunity when her dying boss (Sô Yamamura) bids her and other underlings to find the three illegitimate children he might want to include in his will. Chilly, acidic drama of greed and skulduggery.—RDL
The Reader is Warned (Fiction John Dickson Carr, 1939) When thought-reader Herman Pennik predicts the killing of his host Sam Constable, Sir Henry Merrivale is typically too late to prevent the murder. A truly brilliant tour-de-force of misdirection, only slightly marred by Merrivale’s dramatics and a farcical “international crisis” side plot, although both of those also count as misdirection, so touché, JDC. [CW: Weirdly unnecessary racism right at the end.]—KH
Sentimental Value (Film, Norway, Joachim Trier, 2026) Anxiety-prone actress (Renate Reinsve) refuses her long absent auteur father (Stellan Skarsgård) when he drops back into her life to offer her a leading role he has written for her. Observant, trenchantly acted family drama leaves room for viewers to find their own understanding of its characters.—RDL
The Ten Teacups (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1937) Vance Keating is shot twice in an attic room with a policeman outside the only door and ten teacups on the table with him, echoing an earlier unsolved crime. Sir Henry Merrivale reasons it out bumptiously, but the addition of Sergeant Pollard (the man outside the door) as well as Merrivale’s regular foil Chief Inspector Masters makes much more entertaining detection. Carr’s abilities with atmosphere and puzzlecraft take point here, as does (sadly) his occasional disinterest in realistic characters.—KH
Under Capricorn (Film, US, Alfred Hitchcock, 1949) Seeking a new start in Sydney, a charming Dublin failson (Michael Dublin) falls in with a gruff ex-con made good (Joseph Cotten) and tries to revive his depressed, alcoholic wife (Ingrid Bergman), who he remembers from his childhood. Class-conscious period melodrama features a tangled, ambiguous love triangle and only a brief sequence of Hitchockian suspense. Despite the characters’ supposed Irish upbringing, the actors mercifully stick with their English, American and Swedish accents. —RDL
Good
Building Material (Nonfiction, Stephen Bruno, 2024) Young man tames the wild streak he earned growing up in a demon-believing Dominican-Puerto Rican household by becoming a Park Avenue doorman. At its most interesting when focused on its insider view of a rarefied world of class interaction, where the workers most value tenants who are kind to them and know what is expected of the rich.—RDL
Ice Station Zebra (Film, US, John Sturges, 1968) U.S. sub commander James Ferraday (Rock Hudson) and British agent “Jones” (Patrick McGoohan) clash on a supposed mission to rescue a British Arctic research station. McGoohan is great in this, as is a lengthy sub-in-danger sequence, but Sturges can’t keep the tension up in this two-and-a-half-hour wannabe spy movie that ignores or avoids its own plot. It’s really more a filmic meditation on how cool submarines are, and the Oscar-nominated Daniel Fapp cinematography and swelling Michel Legrand score bring it up to Good periscope depth.—KH
Okay
See How They Run (Film, UK/US, Tom George, 2022) In 1953 London, Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell and about a third of a British accent) and Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) investigate the murder of film director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody) in the theater where Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap has just hit 100 performances. If you think naming the detective Stoppard is hilarious, then you will love this movie. If you want jokes to be funny and mysteries to be interesting, well, Saoirse Ronan is in there swinging for the fences.—KH
Not Recommended
Ballad of a Small Player (Film, UK/Germany, Edward Berger, 2025) Spiraling gambler (Colin Farrell) wheedles for one last chance in Macau, pursued by oddball private investigator (Tilda Swinton.) Ditches the most interesting element of the Lawrence Osborne source novel, its precise observation of a marginal social milieu, making the rest glossier, bigger, and dumber.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Night Patrol, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
January 20th, 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
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Film, UK/US, Nia DaCosta, 2022) Young Spike (Alfie Williams) finds himself “adopted” into Sir Lord Jimmy’s (Jack O’Connell) underage bandit gang while Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) tries to calm rage-alpha Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). Wisely not trying to match Danny Boyle’s visionary exuberance, DaCosta ably blends a horror story with a philosophical escape. The clattering, urgent score by Hildur Guðnadóttir keeps the danger in our heads throughout.—KH
Cover-Up (Film, US, Laura Poitras & Mark Obenhaus, 2025) Documentary profiles archetypal investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the My Lai massacre story and filled in key details on Watergate and Abu Ghraib. The filmmakers get past the defenses of their reluctant subject to reveal the emotional person behind the bylines, and to grapple with the reliability issues of a reportorial method heavily dependent on confidential sources.—RDL
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Film, US, Mary Bronstein, 2025) An emergency relocation to a crummy motel further unravels a harried therapist (Rose Byrne) at the breaking point burdened with all of the care for a demanding kid with an eating disorder. White-knuckle portrait of a crackup features Conan O’Brien in an unexpected dramatic role as the protagonist’s withholding therapist.—RDL
Mission Impossible: the Final Reckoning (Film, US, Christopher McQuarrie, 2025) Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and team take on one last mission, completing their battle against an AI planning to nuke Earth. A final hour of superbly wrought, quadrupled action-suspense pays off an hour of setup.—RDL
Night Patrol (Film, US, Ryan Prows, 2026) When his partner Hawkins (Justin Long) gets tapped for the elite gang-hunting Night Patrol, LAPD cop and former Crip Xavier Carr (Jermaine Fowler) has to decide where his loyalties lay. At times in the first act I had the giddy thought that I was seeing a Pinnacle vampire film, but it doesn’t pay off those expectations, instead becoming merely great. Freddie Gibbs’ occult-minded Blood gang leader Bornelius should have his own movie.—KH
Punishment (Fiction, Linden MacIntyre, 2014) Forcibly retired corrections officer, returned to his insular Nova Scotia community, tries to steer clear of its scapegoating of an ex-con for a teen’s overdose death. Character-driven literary crime novel with authoritative eye for rural dynamics.—RDL
The Red Widow Murders (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1935) When Lord Mantling hosts a gathering to test the curse of the Widow’s Room in his house, a young student dies of intravenously administered poison in the cursed chamber without a mark on him, the only exit under constant watch throughout. A “locked corpse” mystery inside a locked-room mystery, with a Carr historical flashback to boot, this underrated triumph even withstands Sir Henry Merrivale’s mulishness.—KH
Storm Warning (Film, US, Stuart Heisler, 1951) A traveling clothes model (Ginger Rogers) visiting her sister (Doris Day) in a small southern town sees the Klan murder a reporter, but resists a dogged prosecutor (Ronald Reagan) who wants her to testify, because one of the killers is her new brother-in-law. Aimed at a white audience prior to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, this hardboiled political thriller focuses on the KKK as a tinpot racket that exploits its own people.—RDL
Good
Nine—And Death Makes Ten (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1940) When an adventuress is killed on a liner crossing the Atlantic through U-Boat hunting grounds, the murderer’s fingerprints match nobody’s on board. The haunted atmosphere of the nearly-empty ship in wartime winter is the real seller here, the mystery less compelling. Sir Henry Merrivale uncharacteristically remains (mostly) sensible throughout.—KH
Okay
Honey Don’t! (Film, US, Ethan Coen, 2025) Acerbic PI (Margaret Qualley) investigates the death of a would-be client, crossing paths with a drug dealing evangelist (Chris Evans) and hopping into bed with a sullen cop (Aubrey Plaza.) Separately entertaining scenes fail to cohere in this tongue-in-cheek, lesbian gaze film noir riff.—RDL
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
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nouvelle Vague, an Obscure New Wave Gem, and The Brain Stealers
November 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.
Recommended
The Brain Stealers (Film, Hong Kong, Umetsugu Inoue, 1968) A scientist’s daughter (Lily Ho) uses judo to protect him from a megalomaniacal supervillain intent on using his plant growth tech to create an army of giants. Fast moving entry in the Shaw Brothers cycle of kooky Bond tributes packs in enough outlandish plot elements for three normal movies. Mind switching! Snake charming! The acid pit! A giant attack owl!—RDL
Happy as Lazzaro (Film, Italy, Alice Rohrwacher, 2019) Beatifically naive young farm worker (Adriano Tardiolo) befriends the feckless son of the Marquise (Nicoletta Braschi) who has tricked his family and neighbors into believing they owe her their labor as sharecroppers. Evanescent portrait of rural life takes a turn into allegorical magic realism.—RDL
Love at Sea (Film, France, Guy Gilles, 1964) A trusting young Parisian office worker (Geneviève Thénier) corresponds with her brooding sailor boyfriend (Daniel Moosmann), who is stationed in gloomy Brest. Beguiling New Wave mood piece, stunningly photographed in both color and black & white, once a meditation on nostalgia for the present, now a time capsule of France at its epitome of cool.—RDL
Madame White Snake (Film, South Korea, Shin Sang-ok, 1960) An eager snake spirit in human form (Choi Eun-hee) wreaks unintended havoc when she falls for a human merchant (Jo Hyeong-geun.) This version of the oft-adapted legend casts it as a melodrama, with the divine laws separating the mortal and immortal realms standing in for the oppressive social conventions bringing suffering to the heroine. As discussed in Episode 642, the director and leading lady were later abducted by North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il.—RDL
Nouvelle Vague (Film, France/US, Richard Linklater, 2025) In 1959, frustrated critic Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) gets his chance to direct his debut film, Breathless. Linklater shoots and cuts this love letter to Godard’s work in completely un-Godardian fashion (although in black-and-white and in French and in a 4:3 aspect ratio), which explains much of why I found myself engrossed in the story and sympathizing with the characters. Much of the rest is Zoey Deutch’s star turn as a frustrated Jean Seberg, who cannot believe she’s stuck doing this movie for this jerk.—KH
Paint, Gold, and Blood (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1989) The impecunious schoolboy Peter Dolamore stumbles over an art theft, and with his chum Stewart Ives eventually investigates. I am a sucker for all three of the strands of this novel: “boys’ adventure” school story, Hitchcockian “wrong man” thriller, and art theft, and by now I’m less surprised (though no less impressed) when Gilbert eventually but seamlessly weaves three seemingly random separate types of novel into one. As is common with Gilbert, the last quarter of the book clicks up into superb suspense.—KH
The Shanghai Free Taxi (Nonfiction, Frank Langfitt, 2019) Journalist portrays everyday life in Xi’s China by following the lives of people he meets by offering free car rides in Shanghai. Sympathetic first person social storytelling with an eye for illuminating detail.—RDL
Good
Moon (Film, Austria, Kurdwin Ayub, 2024) Washed-up MMA fighter (Florentina Holzinger) finds her new gig training the teen daughters of a wealthy family in Jordan increasingly troubling . Hard-edged observational drama from the point of view of a character unable to fully penetrate its core dilemma.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Blue Moon, Only Murders in the Building, Bring Her Back
November 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.
Recommended
Alucarda (Film, Mexico, Juan López Moctezuma, 1977) Intense student Alucarda (Tina Romero) encourages new arrival Justine (Susana Kamini) to take part in a Satanic ritual, spiraling their convent school into an inferno of bloodshed. Which you’d think is a mixed metaphor but no. Sepia-toned psychosexual horror freakout reminds us that there’s no Catholicism more fervent than the transgressive kind.—RDL
Blue Moon (Film, US, Richard Linklater, 2025) On the opening night of Oklahoma!, lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) gives vent to jealousy and genius before and during a Sardi’s party for his former partner, composer Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), where he hopes to win the love of Yale student Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley). A tour-de-force both interior and mannered by Hawke, for the only director who can bring that kind of performance out of him; Qualley and Scott match him in their paired rejection scenes. Occasional hey-its-that-guy intrusions (“Weegee, take a picture!”) and the weird “height wizardry” involved in depicting 5’10” Hawke as the 4’11” Hart briefly distract, but not fatally.—KH
Bring Her Back (Film, Australia, Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou, 2025) Orphaned teens, protective but volatile Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind, independence-seeking stepsister (Sora Wong) move in with a seemingly empathetic foster parent (Sally Hawkins) who harbors a hidden necromantic agenda. Hawkins’ intense performance multiplies the horror of being trapped with a cruel and manipulative caretaker.—RDL
The Carter of La Providence (Fiction, Georges Simenon, 1931) Maigret investigates the strangulation of an English yachtsman’s wife in an area frequented by barge workers of the Marne. More of a policier than a puzzle-style whodunnit, focused on characters from a couple of contrasting sub-cultures.—RDL
The Killing of Katie Steelstock (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1980) Local girl become TV pop icon turns up murdered by the canal in her sleepy hometown, bringing “star of the Murder Squad” DCI Knott to the scene. Gilbert cleverly tells a Golden Age style “village mystery” through the lens and language of the police procedural, carefully seeding near-invisible clues to the surprising reveal.—KH
The Night of the Twelfth (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1976) When the third murdered boy turns up, DCS Jock Anderson heads up a task force to methodically quarter the country around the Trenchard School for the killer. Gilbert here combines the “school story” complete with enigmatic new “cool” schoolmaster, terrorism thriller (one of the students is the son of the Israeli ambassador), and police procedural to once more produce a sort of holographic Golden Age detection, all in a superbly controlled style running from near psychological horror to character-driven humor.—KH
Good
The Big Sky (Film, US, Howard Hawks, 1952) Enterprising frontiersman (Kirk Douglas) and his hotheaded traveling companion (Dewey Martin) join a cartel-busting riverborne fur trading mission through uncharted territory. Rhythm is everything with Hawks, here sabotaged by a visible studio hack job in the edit suite, but even so this unusually-set Western quest has its moments.—RDL
Only Murders in the Building Season 5 (Television, US, Hulu, Steve Martin & John Hoffman, 2025) Podcasting trio (Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez) run into opposition from a billionaire squad (Christoph Waltz, Renee Zellweger, Logan Lerman) while investigating the murder of their building’s doorman Lester (Teddy Coluca). To my surprise, the derailing of the podcast pretense of the show also derails the narrative, as the mystery twists unsatisfyingly in the wind for the last six episodes with nothing very interesting to replace it.—KH
Of Historical Note
Mission to Moscow (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1943) As WWII looms, sensible American diplomat Joseph Davies (Walter Huston) fact-finds in Moscow and Europe. In a move it would later regret, Warner Brothers agreed to produce this film, aimed at drumming up support for its new Soviet ally, at the behest of the US state department. In the history of propaganda, this stands as a gobsmacking exercise in overreach, going so far as to praise the ‘37 Moscow trials as a needed blow against a Nazi conspiracy directed by Leon Trotsky. On a cinematic level, it highlights Curtiz’s ability to energize even the dullest script imaginable with motion, compelling framing and twinkling character moments.—RDL
Okay
The Wrath of Becky (Film, US, Matt Angel & Suzanne Coote, 2023) When white supremacist losers murder her landlady and steal her dog, off-the-grid teen Becky (Lulu Wilson) returns to form as a vengeance machine. Retains the kicky spirit of the original but skimps on the basic building blocks of action-suspense sequences.—RDL
