Posts Tagged ‘Ken and Robin Consume Media’
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Del Toro’s Frankenstein, Silver Nitrate, and Ken Finds a New Mystery Writer to Binge
November 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
Death in Captivity (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1952) One of the most original premises for a “locked room” mystery ever: in an Italian POW camp in 1943, a possible informer turns up dead in an escape tunnel that takes four men to open. Gilbert (who actually spent time as a POW in Italy) interweaves a fair-play murder mystery with a classic prison-camp story complete with heroic escape plans, all of it complicated by the fact that the Italian authorities have their own schemes to which the detective is not privy, and their own POW to frame for the crime.—KH
John Candy: I Like Me (Film, US, Colin Hanks, 2025) Documentary profile of the revered comedy star shows why he was beloved on and off screen, while gently exploring the paradox of his quiet self-destruction.—RDL
Silver Nitrate (Fiction, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 2023) When forgotten cult horror director Abel Urueta involves almost-has-been actor Tristán and struggling sound editor Montserrat in a sorcerous ritual he filmed 30 years before at the behest of a Nazi occultist, things get better for all of them. Until, as one might suspect, they get much much worse. Moreno-Garcia has total mastery of her Mexico City ‘90s milieu, and invests her characters with complete believability, which puts this “lost magical film” novel well ahead of most of its rivals.—KH
Smallbone Deceased (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1950) An annoying trustee turns up dead in a deed box, throwing the august London firm of solicitors into a tizzy, since their senior partner (also deceased) is the prime suspect. Inspector Hazelrigg (and a new hire who can’t have done it) investigate this beautifully constructed classic mystery. Like Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise, the office byplay and incisive characterization carry a whole extra novel with them, allowing Gilbert to enliven the story with dry wit aplenty.—KH
The Taste of Things (Film, France, Anh Hung Tran, 2023) Revered Belle Époque food writer Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel) fears for the health of his longtime cook (Juliet Binoche), who despite his adoration refuses to marry him. With a mastery of light and sound design, establishes itself as one of the greatest food films of all time, which opens up into a sublime, bittersweet contemplation of love, pleasure, and the inevitability of grief.—RDL
Good
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (Film, Spain/Italy, Jorge Grau, 1974) A petulant counterculture antiques dealer (Ray Lovelock) and stressed young woman (Cristina Galbó) are forced to remain in a sleepy English town when its reactionary police sergeant (Arthur Kennedy) accuses them of killings committed by the walking dead. Culturally dislocated horror depicts chauvinist dismissiveness as the contributing factor to gut-munching mayhem. Aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue.—RDL
Longlegs (Film, US, Osgood Perkins, 2024) Withdrawn psychic FBI agent (Maika Monroe), guided by veteran superior (Blair Underwood) hunts the weirdo serial killer Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), who appears to cause family annihilation incidents by power of suggestion. Like other recent tributes to horror classics, underwhelms when it comes time to upshift from pervasive dread to climactic resolution.—RDL
Okay
Frankenstein (Film, US, Guillermo del Toro, 2025) Petulant mama’s boy Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac, overacting badly) is hired by weapons magnate Heinrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz, overacting well) to build a living Creature (Jacob Elordi) out of corpses … but who’s the REAL monster, eh? Who? Who? Perhaps the real monster is the filmmaker who gives us 20 minutes of Frankenstein’s daddy issues and no Bride. Del Toro’s patent visual sumptuousness (padded out by some terrible CGI) brings the color his script and characters should have had: Mary Shelley deserves better than this two-dimensional travesty stitched together from her novel and Tumblr.—KH
Troll (Film, Norway, Roar Uthaug, 2022) Determined paleontologist (Ine Marie Wilmann) estranged from her eccentric folklorist father (Gard B. Eidsvold) becomes unlikely point person when a 40-foot troll released by a tunnel blast stomps toward Oslo. Every story point is hit squarely on the nose in this transposition of the kaiju genre to Nordic mythology.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Bugonia, Freaky Tales, and Junji Ito’s Cat Diary
November 4th, 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
Elegant Beast (Film, Japan, Yuzo Kawashima, 1962) A family of con artists living in a cramped apartment looks for an angle when the ambitious but dim son (Manamitsu Kawabata) is outmatched by his unflappable ex (Ayako Wakao) in an embezzling scheme. In a visual scheme mirroring the maneuverings of the characters, this satirical drama of post-war moral rot shoots its confined space from every angle. Also known under a much worse English title, The Graceful Brute.—RDL
Freaky Tales (Film, US, Anna Biden & Ryan Fleck, 2024) Four interweaving stories featuring anti-Nazi punks, up and coming rappers, a weary leg-breaker (Pedro Pascal), a corrupt cop (Ben Mendelsohn), and a katana-wielding basketball hero (Jay Ellis) celebrate the spunky underdog culture of 80s Oakland. Genre-hopping hometown valentine nods to the less frequently stolen pages of the Tarantino playbook.—RDL
Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu (Comics, Junji Ito, 2015) Horror mangaka Junji Ito depicts the incursion of new cats into his life: “cursed face” Yon and new kitten Mu, both courtesy of his fiancée “A-ko.” The slim manga serves as self-parody both of Ito’s own style and of the emotional over-commitment of even “normal” cat owners, all under absolutely quotidian tales of escape, vet visits, and weird feline emotional availability. A small delight with a hidden bite, much like its subjects.—KH
Queen of the Deuce (Film, Canada, Valerie Kontakos, 2022) Biographical documentary tells the jaw-dropping story of Chelly Wilson, an indomitable figure who fled Salonika’s Jewish enclave one step ahead of the holocaust, arrived in America with five bucks in her pocket, and parlayed a hot dog counter into a lucrative pornography business in wild 70s New York as theater owner and film financier, becoming a doting if eccentric grandmother along the way.—RDL
Good
Black Magic (Film, US, Gregory Ratoff, 1948) Faith healer Cagliostro (Orson Welles) uses his hypnotic powers for revenge against the count who had his parents hanged, embroiling himself in a scheme to embarrass Marie Antoinette (Nancy Guild) with a faked jewel purchase. Wildly ahistorical even by 40s Hollywood standards and stitched together with narration to cover connective scenes missed in principal photography, this gothic swashbuckler is worth a look for Welles’ magnetic journey from anti-hero to monster.—RDL
Death of a Borgia and The Duke and the Veil (Fiction, Caroline Stevermer, 1981) As “C.J. Stevermer,” fantasy author Caroline Stevermer started her career writing detective novels featuring the English alchemist Nicholas Coffin, living in Rome under the Borgias. (The occasional visit to a reclusive Nicolas Flamel aside, the novels have no fantastic component.) Rome and Cesare Borgia are competently sketched, the mysteries play basically fair; this is good journeyman work by someone who switched genres to find her true metier.—KH
The Green, Green Grass of Home (Film, Taiwan, Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 1982) As an idealistic new grade school teacher (Kenny Bee) settles into his new small town post, his three least ruly students get into a series of scrapes. Episodic slice of life drama with an overbearing, sentimental score at odds with its gentle, observational tone, made before the director adopted his characteristic slow cinema style.—RDL
Okay
Bugonia (Film, US, Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025) Conspiratorial fanatic (Jesse Plemons) kidnaps lingo-spouting pharma CEO (Emma Stone), believing she’s an alien infiltrator poisoning the planet. Nihilist provocation shows that just because you can make a more emotionally real version of the 2003 Korean grand guignol black comedy Save the Green Planet doesn’t mean you should.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Gothic Giallo, Satanic Piano, and a Hallucinatory Steppe Quest
October 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.
Recommended
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Film, US, Joe Talbot, 2019) Aided by his aspiring playwright best friend (Jonathan Majors), melancholy nurse Jimmie Fails (Jimmie Fails) sets up a squat in the gorgeous Fillmore District house where his family once lived. Big music cues, poetic shot composition, and an initially Beckett-like dialogue rhythm build a haunting style for a story of loving a city that doesn’t love you back.—RDL
Qas (Film, Kazakhstan, Aisultan Seitov, 2022) Afraid to leave him unprotected during the 1931 famine, a gravedigger takes his eight year old brother on a mission across the trackless steppes to seek aid in the district capital. Strikingly composed hallucinatory survival quest.—RDL
Good
The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (Film, Italy, Giuseppe Bennati, 1974) Relatives, lovers, and hangers-on of the rich aristocrat Patrick Davenant (Chris Avram) arrive at his family’s ancestral mansion, now a long-disused theater, and trigger its murderous curse. Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians provided the basic outline of several Italian “someone is killing these rich jerks” movies; Bennati’s version aims for gothic horror that begins as undertone beneath the giallo murder mystery and ends up as the key note. Less gory than most gialli (modulo one murderous crucifixion), this one prefigures the American slasher with ample nudity, weirdly masked killer, and idiotic victim behavior. Carlo Savina’s score is a real standout, adding lush theatricality to the sordid goings-on.—KH
The Mephisto Waltz (Film, US, Paul Wendkos, 1971) Music critic Myles Clarkson (Alan Alda) allows himself to be cultivated by dying piano maestro (and secret Satanist) Duncan Ely (Curt Jürgens) despite the misgivings of his wife Paula (Jacqueline Bisset). This Rosemary’s Baby knockoff has great potential, sadly mostly squandered by Alda and producer Quinn Martin, who over-indulges his TV-movie sensibilities. The hip Satanic cult swaps Duncan’s soul into Myles’ body, but Alda is smarmy with either soul in him. Bisset completely out-acts Alda, and Paula outclasses Myles so much as to deform the story. There are some great scenes of Satanic party goings-on, and Jerry Goldsmith turns in a score (of increasingly atonal Liszt riffs) far better than this movie deserves, enough in fact to give it a solid Good rating.—KH
Tigers are Not Afraid (Film, Mexico, Issa Lopez, 2017) A girl whose mother has been disappeared by the local cartel joins forces with kid orphans of the drug war — and a source of dark supernatural vengeance. Strong performances from a preteen cast drive an uncompromising social realist ghost story.—RDL
Okay
Psycho Beach Party (Film, US, Robert Lee King, 2000) Perky teen Chiclet (Lauren Ambrose) pursues her surfing dreams despite sexist beach bums, a serial killer rampage, and her latent multiple personalities. Easy-target spoof turns the gay subtext of the beach party movies into text. Adapted from his stage play by Charles Busch, who appears as hardnosed cop Monica Stark.—RDL
Not Recommended
Customs Frontline (Film, Hong Kong, Herman Yau, 2024) In tandem with his bipolar mentor (Jacky Cheung), a duty-bound customs officer (Nicholas Tse) takes on the heavily equipped forces of a ruthless arms dealer. Gigantic action sequences held together by morose, catharsis-deficient melodrama and an earnest anti-war message about a conflict between made-up countries.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Snowy Witches, an Evil Cat, and a History of Crime Fiction
October 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.
Recommended
Evil Cat (Film, Hong Kong, Dennis Yu, 1987) When his nemesis, a body-possessing feline spirit, emerges for its its semi-centennial rampage, a dying wizard (Chia-Liang Liu) hastens to train a young chauffeur (Mark Ho-nam Cheng) as his successor. Pell-mell ghost action comedy dishes up all the genre-hopping, tone-shifting and extreme lighting of its period, while toning down the broad schtick by a notch or two.—RDL
A Quiet Place: Day One (Film, US, Michael Sarnoski, 2025) A despondent cancer patient (Lupita Nyong’o) attempts to survive an invasion of NYC by sound-seeking alien monsters while saddled with an anxious law student (Joseph Quinn.) A rich cinematic text layered with references and resonances, this horror disaster movie stands as the best prequel ever made, taking only what it needs from the franchise it extends.—RDL
The Snow Woman (Film, Japan, Tokuzô Tanaka, 1968) An apprentice woodcarver (Akira Ishihama) does not suspect that his loving wife (Shiho Fujimura) is the killer frost spirit who, struck by his handsomeness, once broke the rules to spare his life. Simple, sublime practical effects underline the beauty and horror of this Lafacadio Hearn adaptation.—RDL
The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (Nonfiction, Martin Edwards, 2017) Edwards charts the development of the mystery genre from 1901 to 1950 in 100 (actually 102) book essays. Each entry provides a spoiler-free plot hook, a note on the work’s influence in the genre (the criterion for inclusion is a book’s importance more than its pure merit), and a brief summary of the author’s career, making it a trifle crowded and necessarily incomplete on all those fronts. Fortunately each chapter (they begin historical and turn thematic) provides more context and more titles; only Edwards’ parochial neglect of American authors (5 out of 102, 6 counting John Dickson Carr) mars this handsome and useful work.—KH
The White Reindeer (Film, Finland, Erik Blomberg, 1952) Anxious for her new husband (Kalervo Nissilä) to quickly return from the snowy uplands, a young woman (Mirjami Kuosmanen) performs an ill-considered sacrifice, becoming a murderous witch able to assume the form of a white reindeer. Horror folk tale told with an ethnographic simplicity.—RDL
Good
Litan (Film, France, Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1982) During a village festival revolving around the wearing of creepy masks, a frightened woman (Marie-José Nat) tries to avert her nightmare premonition of her surveyor boyfriend’s (Jean-Pierre Mocky) death. Despite its epic body count, this dreamlike excursion into reality horror is more about surrealism than scares. Easily repurposed into a Yellow King scenario.—RDL
Okay
Hammer: Heroes, Legends and Monsters (Film, UK, Benjamin Field, 2024) Interview subjects provide comprehensive info on Hammer Films’ creative phases and personnel, but are undercut by distracting visual devices and cutaways. Worse for a film history documentary, the clips are carelessly chosen or used as gags.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Play Dirty, Short Spy Stories, Livestreaming Horror, and Meta-Reacher
October 14th, 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
Black Angel (Film, US, Roy William Neill, 1946) To clear her wayward husband of a death row murder rap, a loyal wife (June Vincent) teams with the victim’s alcoholic songwriter ex (Dan Duryea) to get close to their prime suspect (Peter Lorre.) Cornell Woolrich adaptation ticks along as slightly off-kilter for its first two acts, then spins into full nightmare noir.—RDL
The Calder & Behrens Stories (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1962-1981) Calder and Behrens, both middle-aged British WWII veterans, do “distasteful” jobs for a special counterintelligence committee using a combination of fussy brio and unfussy brutality. Perhaps the hardest genre in short fiction to pull off is the espionage short, and Gilbert succeeds virtually every time at bat. Only when read in rapid succession do the stories seem even slightly formulaic, but good luck reading one short and not immediately inhaling both volumes.—KH
Freeway (Film, US, Matthew Bright, 1996) When cops haul off her crackhead mom (Amanda Plummer) and stepdad, an irrepressibly survival-minded at-risk youth (Reese Witherspoon) hitchhikes to Grandma’s house and is picked up by the sinister Dr. Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland.) Fairy tale retold as blackly comic juvenile delinquent flick derives its charge from the contradictions between the director’s gleeful midnight movie impulses and the absolute commitment of its deeply stacked cast.—RDL
GonJiam: Haunted Asylum (Film, South Korea, Jung Bum-shik, 2018) Click-hungry college age ghost hunters livestream their illegal exploration of a derelict mental hospital. Familiar premise skillfully executed, for example by cleverly establishing how the characters can be shooting their found footage from every possible angle.—RDL
Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery (Film, Canada, Ally Pankiw, 2025) Documentary traces the origins, explosive growth, and loving vibes of Sarah McLachlan’s late 90s feminist touring festival. Focuses primarily on the show’s emotional impact on artists and audiences, while laudably finding time to depict it as a business enterprise.—RDL
Reacher Said Nothing (Nonfiction, Andy Martin, 2015) Martin, a Cambridge lecturer in French literature, watches thriller author Lee Child from the first keystroke to the last as he writes Reacher novel number 20, Make Me. An extremely interesting look at one writer’s process made even more interesting by Martin’s simmering undertone of flailing to justify his own project to himself. Reacher would never.—KH
Good
KPop Demon Hunters (Film, US, Maggie Kang & Chris Appelhans, 2025) Demon-hunting kpop trio Huntr/x (Arden Cho, et al.), accelerate their project of locking demons away from human souls, leading the demon lord Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun) to retaliate with his own boy band Saja Boys (Ahn Hyo-seop, et al.). Delightful animation and catchy songs do the necessary in this somewhat rote urban fantasy story that could use a skoosh more violence and horror to cut the anodyne flavor.—KH
The Last of Us Season 2 (Television, US, Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann, 2025) A shocking event sends Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and her new ride-or-die (Isabela Merced) to Seattle on a mission of vengeance. With a high level of execution, this downbeat post-apocalyptic western took me to a place I did not particularly want to go, leaving me with the feeling that the filmmakers chose to punish the audience for a characters’ sins .—RDL
Play Dirty (Film, US, Shane Black, 2025) Master thief Parker (Mark Wahlberg) assembles a crew including regular sidekick Grofeld (LaKeith Stanfield) when an accomplice who betrayed his last crew (Rosa Salazar) points him to a treasure taken from a shipwreck. Terrible Parker movie; kinda fun Shane Black movie.—RDL
Okay
Play Dirty (Film, US, Shane Black, 2025) Heist planner Parker (Mark Wahlberg) survives betrayal by freedom fighter Zen (Rosa Salazar) and recruits his old crew including Grofield (Lakeith Stanfield) and Ed Mackey (Keegan-Michael Key) to get his own back. Ridiculously awful CGI in an early scene sets the low bar for this clunker, which in addition to miscasting Parker decides to make him Dortmunder to boot. Flashes of cleverness persist, annoyingly.—KH
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City (Film, Japan, Takashi Miike, 2010) The schoolteacher (Shô Aikawa) who once saved the world from alien parasites as a striped costumed hero resurfaces as an amnesiac in the grim police state future of 2025. Sequel dives right into freaky tongue-in-cheek imagery without a pause to shape the narrative.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Wednesday, Edgar Allan Poe, and a Murky Found Footage Reveal
October 7th, 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
18×2 Beyond Youthful Days (Film, Taiwan/Japan, Michihito Fujii, 2024) Ousted from the company he founded, a Taiwanese video game designer takes a trip to Japan, meandering his way to the home town of the girl he loved half his life ago. If you’re going to spin an essential plot point around Shunji Iwai’s 1995 Pinnacle Love Letter, you’d best deliver a beautiful, evanescent drama, a challenge Fujii more than meets in this exploration of travel and memory.—RDL
Devo (Film, US, Chris Smith, 2025) Arts documentary profiles DEVO, the band who took a Dada sensibility hardened in the Kent State massacre and the industrial dolor of Akron OH and briefly managed to inject it into the pop culture mainstream through such delivery systems as Warner Brothers Records, SNL, MTV, and The Merv Griffin Show. Freedom from choice, it’s what we want.—RDL
La Dolce Vita (Film, Italy, Federico Fellini, 1960) Tabloid journalist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) spends a week in his native environment, the celebrity party scene of Rome, and finds himself dissatisfied. Lush and beautiful, this episodic film allows Mastroianni’s layered acting to convey his character’s emotional journey; a stellar supporting cast fills out this slice of the sweet life as Fellini’s story adds the amaro. Vital if not quite transcendent, this must-watch remained on my list of unseen shame for far too long.—KH
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oval Portrait (Film, Canada, Adrian Langley, 2025) Antique dealer Whitlock (Michael Swatton) interests old-soul artist Ava (Pragya Shail) almost as much as his oval portrait interests area thief Julian (Paul Thomas). Adaptation of the Poe short-short expands in the direction of crime and melodrama, with a nicely satisfying ghost story underneath both. The score by Andrew Morgan Smith perfectly evokes the mood of this Hammer-Hallmark blend that plays out like the 1960s B-pictures it’s modeled on.—KH
Poison in Jest (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1932) Visiting old friends in Pennsylvania, detective sidekick Jeff Marle discovers a house full of deadly pranks, secrets, and (soon) a serial poisoner. Carr lays on the atmosphere thick in this breathing-space novel written the year before he launched his Gideon Fell series. Not as polished as his later masterpieces, but featuring surprisingly strong characterization for Carr.—KH
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Film, US, Jeff Rowe & Kyler Spears, 2023) Adolescent humanoid martial arts chelonians (Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon) who yearn for acceptance in the world of humans battle a monstrous fly (Ice Cube) who plans to destroy it. Kinetic animation and an innovative visual style bring fresh energy to the franchise. I especially loved that the action scene featuring Splinter, voiced by Jackie Chan, follows the rules of a classic Jackie fight.—RDL
Tribe (Film, US, Dan J. Asma, 2025) Retired professor Devon Adams (Asma) heads into the Cujamaca Mountains outside San Diego in search of an explanation for his cult-raised best friend’s suicide. Asma cuts big-budget trailers as his day job, which makes this one of the more effective found-footage films even as the editing is so good that it can break suspension of disbelief. The big reveal is appropriately murky, conspiratorial, and apocalyptic, and Asma picks powerful visuals that overlap with the story suggestively without drowning it.—KH
When the Tenth Month Comes (Film, Vietnam, Đặng Nhật Minh, 1984) Undone with grief on learning that her husband has been killed in action in a border clash with Khmer Rouge Cambodia, a rice farmer enlists a schoolteacher to help conceal his death from family and neighbors. Heartfelt drama with touches of mystical realism examines the dynamics of trauma suppression.—RDL
Wednesday Season 2 (Television, US, Netflix, Alfred Gough & Miles Millar, 2025) Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) trains her knack for investigation on undoing her psychic vision of werewolf roommate Enid’s impending death. Avoids the sophomore slump by devoting more screen time to the perfectly cast other classic Addams characters and with a tightly plotted arc rarely seen in serialized streaming.—RDL
Good
Beyond the Drumlins (Film, US, Dan Bowhers, 2025) Archaeology professor Rust (Michael Kowalski) leads four others into the woods to find an archaeological site for next semester’s dig. Wisely downplaying interpersonal drama, the film depends on the scares to work, which is great until you discover that it’s all the same scare over and over. Some of the segments very effectively spook, and the mysterious structure in the woods is an all-time irruption that absolutely sells it, but as a whole the film never reaches takeoff.—KH
The Bowstring Murders (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1933) When the eccentric and awful Lord Rayle is found strangled with a bowstring in his own armor museum, alcoholic criminologist John Gaunt is called in to solve the case. A borderline locked-room mystery solved with Carr’s traditional brio, but the setting is too over-the-top to be believable, and Carr doesn’t put in the work to keep the cast real enough for us to really care who the killer is.—KH
The Harbor Men (Film, US, Casey Malone, 2025) During the outbreak of a hallucinogenic virus at the docks, vaccine denier Steven Dorre (Aidan White) retrieves a mystical musical instrument from a murder scene. For a while, Malone’s inventiveness and creepy visual sensibilities carry you along, but whatever payoff you thought was coming peters out in mysticism instead of horror.—KH
Okay
Maggie Moore(s) (Film, US, John Slattery, 2023) Widowed small town police chief (Jon Hamm) investigating the murders of two women with the same name tentatively romances the next door neighbor (Tina Fey) of the dumbass perpetrator (Micah Stock.) Nick Mohammed stands out in this blend of rom com and Coenesque neo-noir with his atypical delivery in a stock character role, the deputy who acts as Hamm’s confidant / sidekick.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: One Battle After Another, Classic Noir, Chinese Neo-Noir
September 30th, 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
One Battle After Another (Film, US, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Wake-and-bake fugitive ex-bomber (Leonardo di Caprio) and his teen daughter (Chase Infiniti) flee the heavily resourced pursuit of a weirdo anti-terrorism officer (Sean Penn) who once had a perverse relationship with her revolutionary mother (Teyana Taylor.) Anderson trains his cinematic control on the conspiratorial pursuit thriller, satirically tuned to the contemporary moment, with Jonny Greenwood’s restless percussive score its percussive, insistent timekeeper.—RDL
Recommended
Alias Nick Beal (Film, US, John Farrow, 1949) Crusading district attorney Joseph Foster (Thomas Mitchell) offers to sell his soul to get the goods on a racket boss; fixer Nick Beal (Ray Milland) appears to help him rise to the governor’s mansion. Milland is superbly smooth as the Devil in this rare occult noir, shot with foggy menace by Lionel Lindon. Standout sequence: Nick Beal rehearsing fallen woman Audrey Totter in her script of seduction, two consecutive readings of the dialogue showing supernatural menace and emotional depth.—KH [Note: For this Noir City KARCM I am reviewing some films I saw three weeks ago that I’ve already seen, but that I haven’t covered in these hallowed pixels before. After all, the whole point is to point you beloved readers to good movies.]
Cry Danger (Film, US, Robert Parrish, 1951) When a sudden eyewitness (Richard Erdman) springs him from a prison sentence for a robbery rap, Rocky Mulloy (Dick Powell) goes in search of the money to clear his still-imprisoned partner. Rhonda Fleming plays the woman on the outside and William Conrad the oily fixer in this perfectly curdled bit of postwar noir in which the only light remains the easy comradeship of its war veteran characters.—KH
The Fallen Bridge (Film, China, Yu Li, 2022) When her engineer father’s remains are discovered in a crumbled support column of a collapsed bridge he was working on at the time of his disappearance, a stunned college student (Sichun Ma) teams with a wary fugitive (Karry Wang) to investigate. Gritty crime drama indicts official corruption in its way to a thriller conclusion.—RDL
One Battle After Another (Film, US, Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025) Burnout bomber Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and psycho colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn) seek the favors of revolutionary Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), and then custody of her daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). Anderson’s groove meshes perfectly with early-Pynchon interlocking conspiracies against the backdrop of the Eternal Seventies we seem to be stuck in, and his handling of bombings, chases, and chaos is as sure-handed as his depiction of gormless fuckups. Jonny Greenwood turns in another terrific score, as well.—KH
Phantom Lady (Film, US, Robert Siodmak, 1944) Besotted secretary Carol (Ella Raines) searches for the unknown woman who can alibi her boss Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) for the murder of his wife. Terrific adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich novel kicks into high gear when Scott’s missing best friend Marlow (Franchot Tone) shows up to help. Don’t miss Elisha Cook Jr’s orgasmic drum solo, either. Woody Bredell’s cinematography and Bernard Brown’s sound design transform a crime thriller into raw noir.—KH
The Prowler (Film, US, Joseph Losey, 1951) Called to the sumptuous home of Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes) by a prowler scare, resentful cop Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) insinuates himself into her life and bed, while her jealous husband (voiced by sub rosa screenwriter Dalton Trumbo) keeps his all-night DJ shift. This can’t last in a proper noir, and doesn’t, leading to a somewhat overblown climax in a desert ghost town. But the first two acts are all weaselly and riveting Van Heflin.—KH
Separate Tables (Film, US, Delbert Mann, 1958) In a sleepy seaside inn populated by long term residents leading lives of parallel isolation, a tormented man (Burt Lancaster) receives an unwelcome visit from the scheming ex (Rita Hayworth) who broke him, and a bluff military man (David Niven) attempts to conceal a scandal. Perfectly judged adaptation of the Terence Rattigan stage play, a capsule from a time before anyone used therapeutic language to describe their problems.—RDL
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Film, US, Lewis Milestone, 1946) Gambler Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) returns to Iverstown after 17 years to find his childhood sweetheart, heiress Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck) married to the nebbish Walter O’Neil (Kirk Douglas in his first role), now district attorney. Will he be able to escape with ex-con Antonia (Lizabeth Scott) or will he fall for Martha once more? Rich noir melodrama makes a grand feast for Stanwyck, and thus a grand experience for the viewer.—KH
Good
Chongqing Hot Pot (China, Qing Yang, 2016) Desperate to make their failed underground restaurant salable, a trio of childhood friends performs an illegal excavation that accidentally breaks through into a bank vault. Heist movie about comradeship and surprise colliding forces openly signals its love for the works of Johnnie To.—RDL
Dead Reckoning (Film, US, John Cromwell, 1947) Paratrooper Rip Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) heads to Gulf City on the track of his war hero friend Johnny Drake, but he finds a burned corpse, a tangled prewar mystery, and Drake’s former lover Coral (Lizabeth Scott). Convoluted noir works too hard for cool and leans too hard on a somewhat phoned-in Bogart. Scott’s Bacall impression, and Morris Carnovsky’s turn as villainous club owner Martinelli, both deserved a better script.—KH
Murder, My Sweet (Film, US, Edward Dmytryk, 1944) On the trail of a missing nightclub singer, Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) gets entangled with Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor) and her step-daughter Ann (Anne Shirley) and an also-missing jade necklace. Powell’s Marlowe is weirdly jaunty throughout this Chandlerian labyrinth (based on Farewell, My Lovely), despite getting knocked out at least three times, poisoned, and blinded by gunshot. The film is kind of a mess, frankly, but never boring.—KH
Okay
The Reckless Moment (Film, US, Max Ophüls, 1949) Left to manage the house by herself in her husband’s absence, Lucia Harper (Joan Bennett) tries to shield her daughter Bea (Geraldine Brooks) from a murder charge, as blackmailer Donnelly (James Mason) gets closer. While full of bravura Ophüls tracking shots and domestic stress, it can’t overcome the fundamental passivity of the main character.—KH
The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1932) On the lam after her no-good ex shoots a cop, a single mom taxi dancer (Ann Dvorak) attracts the eye of a glib, corner-cutting reporter (Lee Tracy), who does not suspect she’s the story he’s trying to track down. Curtiz keeps the pot boiling, and the pre-Code lingerie shots coming, but because the lead role is taken by Tracy, a second banana at best, instead of a charismatic, smoldering movie star, the script makes no emotional sense.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Star Trek, Thunderbolts*, The Ballad of Wallis Island
September 23rd, 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
Ladies’ Paradise (Film, France, Julien Duvivier, 1930) Pure-hearted girl (Dita Parlo) reluctantly takes a job in the bustling department store putting her uncle’s fabric shop out of business, catching the eye of its ambitious owner (Pierre de Guingand.). Densely visual, with a quick cutting style that will be obliterated by the coming of sound film and not return for half a century, this modernist melodrama appears to take aim at progress but is actually after an older adversary. Based on an Emile Zola novel.—RDL
Marilyn’s Eyes (Film, Italy, Simone Godano, 2021) Sentenced to remedial behavioral therapy at an outpatient clinic, a chef with anger issues (Stefano Accorsi) and a would-be actress / pathological liar (Miriam Leone) contrive to turn its lunchroom into a high-end restaurant. Psychological rom com features plenty of complications and the magnetic performances essential to the genre.—RDL
The Martyred (Film, South Korea, Yu Hyun-mok, 1965) As the South maintains a precarious hold on Pyongyang during the war, an army officer investigates a Northern massacre of Christian pastors to confirm that it suits his superior’s propaganda objectives. Solemn debate drama examines the ethics of fighting despair with deception.—RDL
Good
The Ballad of Wallis Island (Film, UK, James Griffiths, 2025) Exasperated singer-songwriter (Tom Basden) discovers that his lucrative gig on a remote island is for an audience of one, an awkward superfan (Tim Key), who has also invited his ex (Carey Mulligan) to put their band back together. Adapted from a short, this has too little story for a feature, and strives to ingratiate, albeit with appealing characters and performances.—RDL
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 (Television, US, Paramount+, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, 2025) The Enterprise crew battles the Gorn and encounters an ancient evil. Everyone’s favorite starship continues its drift from TOS to TNG as its model, which is a problem for a couple of reasons: 1) the structure is built for a longer per season episode order and 2) the freaking holodeck.—RDL
Not Recommended
Thunderbolts* (Film, US, Jake Schreier, 2025) When her high-handed boss (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) hires other expendable operatives to dispose of her, despondent assassin Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) teams up with them, and Bucky (Sebastian Stan), to keep an amnesiac metahuman (Lewis Pullman) out of her hands. Second and third tier characters battling the personification of clinical depression in the hollowed-out ruins of Avengers HQ supply an inadvertently apt summation of the state of the mega-franchise.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Ken Reports from Noir City Chicago
September 17th, 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
Caught Stealing (Film, US, Darren Aronofsky, 2025) Alcoholic washout bartender Hank (Austin Butler) gets dragged into seedy, dangerous crime doings by cat-sitting for his seedy British neighbor (Matt Smith). Plenty of people object to Smith’s blundering, obvious performance but it’s clearly of a piece with Aronofsky’s heightened “animated cartoon but with consequences” sensibility along with the other cartoonish but very dangerous gangsters. Adding real danger to a Guy Ritchie-style crime flick perfectly suits Aronofsky, and gives this film more bite and staying power than its Nineties charm alone would have.—KH
Detour (Film, US, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945) Lovesick pianist Al (Tom Neal) hitches a ride with a bad hat (Edmund MacDonald) but gets in even worse trouble when he gives a ride to hellcat Vera (Ann Savage). Poverty Row classic takes its sweet time getting started but once the gears of Fate start grinding Al they just never stop. Ulmer was a master at doing a lot with a little, and he never did more with less than this film.—KH
The Hot Spot (Film, US, Dennis Hopper, 1990) Drifter Harry Madox (Don Johnson) gets caught in small-town Texas between his boss’ predatory wife Dolly (Virginia Madsen) and Gloria (Jennifer Connelly), a good girl with a dark secret. Relentless noir originally scripted in 1962 for Robert Mitchum became Dennis Hopper’s vehicle for over-the-top emotional direction: if sunshine Gothic were a thing this would be that thing. The Jack Nitzsche score, featuring Miles Davis, Taj Mahal, John Lee Hooker, and others, really sells this beautifully rancid film.—KH [Note: For this Noir City KARCM I am reviewing some films I saw last week that I’ve already seen, but that I haven’t covered in these hallowed pixels before. After all, the whole point is to point you beloved readers to good movies.]
The Killing (Film, US, Stanley Kubrick, 1956) Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) leads a crew of five in a perfectly choreographed racetrack holdup. Believe it or not, something goes wrong. Kubrick’s first American feature layers scene onto scene, often repeating the action from a different viewpoint to assemble an almost Cubist view of the caper. Much of the film’s strength, however, comes not from Kubrick but from scriptwriter (and hard-boiled novelist) Jim Thompson; the toxic interplay between husband and wife Elisha Cook Jr and Marie Windsor provide the emotional heat (and faulty decision-making) at the heart of this noir.—KH
Out of the Past (Film, US, Jacques Tourneur, 1947) Gone to ground in a small town, former detective Jeff Markham (Robert Mitchum) gets dragged back into the search for corrupt millionaire Whit’s (Kirk Douglas) missing girl Kathie (Jane Greer). None of the three main actors were over 30, and their energy drives what could have been a convoluted switchback of a story, as Tourneur masterfully layers in suspense beat after suspense beat to ratchet up the tension. An uncredited Frank Fenton provides duelistic dialogue while cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca lights up clouds of pointed cigarette smoke in this ne plus ultra of 1940s noir.—KH
Good
My True Story (Film, US, Mickey Rooney, 1951) Paroled thief Ann Martin (Helen Walker) gets enmeshed in another long con masterminded by her old boss Trent (Wilton Graff), to steal precious oil of myrrh from a perfumier’s widow. Walker’s constant code-switching from hood to flirt to respectable lady is the best thing in the movie, Graff’s oily “budget George Sanders” performance is the second-best. Once you get over the notion of a myrrh heist, the movie plays out predictably though seldom without interest.—KH
Tension (Film, US, John Berry, 1949) Cuckolded, bespectacled pharmacist Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart) takes on a second, glasses-free identity so he can kill the lover of his wife Claire (Audrey Totter) but gets caught in a squeeze play. Totter and Basehart between them keep this one popping almost up to Recommended, although it’s almost too straightforward a plot to live up to the high concept. Cyd Charisse isn’t quite wasted as the girl next door, but when Richard Basehart (even without glasses) is the interesting half of a couple things need some kind of adjustment.—KH
The Woman in the Window (Film, US, Fritz Lang, 1944) Psychology professor Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) meets the even-more-beguiling subject (Joan Bennett) of a beguiling painting while his wife is out of town, and that’s when the nightmare begins. With a superb cat-and-mouse tension ratchet driving it along with real guilt and terror, plus Dan Duryea in an early (but still slimy) role, this could have been one of the greatest noirs ever. But the ending just ruins it all, sadly.—KH
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Caught Stealing, The Studio, More Anthony Boucher Mysteries
September 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.
The Pinnacle
The Studio Season 1 (Television, US, Apple+, Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen, 2025) Newly fledged film studio head (Rogen) suffers a series of escalating humiliations triggered by his insecurities and need to be liked by the directors and stars who depend on him for a greenlight and then want him out of their way. Cringe comedy turbocharged into uproarious farce by a killer supporting cast (Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, Catherine O’Hara, Chase Sui Wonders), unusually committed cameos by industry stalwarts playing themselves, and stunningly choreographed extended single takes.—RDL
Recommended
Blanche Fury (Film, UK, Marc Allégret, 1948) Seeking a stable position in life, a disregarded woman (Valerie Hobson) signs on as governess at her rich cousin’s estate, where she is drawn to the brooding foreman (Stewart Granger) who claims to be its rightful heir. Noirish Victorian gothic shot in febrile Technicolor.—RDL
The Booksellers (Film, US, D. W. Young, 2019) Documentary snapshot of the rapid shifts in the New York antiquarian book trade from its dusty past as a haven for curmudgeonly reluctant salesmen to an Internet-driven field where ephemera has become the new hotness. Fran Liebowitz, who knows how to talking head, spices up the proceedings with bon mots and anecdotes.—RDL
The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (Fiction, Anthony Boucher, 1940) A disappearing writer’s corpse and a series of pranks on Holmesian devotees throws the filming of The Speckled Band into disarray and Lt. Jackson of the LAPD must figure out the mystery. Boucher sidelines Fergus O’Breen here to focus on the cast of “Irregulars,” Holmes fans who exist to distract reader and cops from the real crime and let Boucher (and the reader) have fun with Sherlockian allusions.—KH
Caught Stealing (Film, US, Darren Aronofsky, 2025) Stalled NYC bartender (Austin Butler) is drawn into a struggle between violent gangsters after acceding to his punk neighbor’s cat-sitting request. Butler sews up his ownership of the young Brad Pitt slot in a confident throwback to 70s crime flicks.—RDL
Dusty & Stones (Film, US, Jesse Rudoy, 2022) Traditional country duo travels from their in Swaziland home to an international music competition in Texas. Border-crossing fly on the wall documentary is both stirring and suspenseful, as the viewer wonders which side of America the open-hearted protagonists are headed towards.—RDL
The Moon’s a Balloon (Nonfiction, David Niven, 1971) The Oscar-winning avatar of urbane sophistication wittily recounts the triumphs and disasters of a life marked by a streak of self-sabotaging rebellion. As a kid in the 70s I assumed this book was corny because my grandparents owned it but boy howdy I would have learned a ton if I’d cracked it open then.—RDL
They Were Five (Film, France, Julien Duvivier, 1936) A quintet of skint Parisians pool a lottery windfall to turn a derelict house into a riverside cafe. Proletarian solidarity faces off against existential fatalism in an affecting drama of friendship and betrayal.—RDL
Good
The Case of the Seven Sneezes (Fiction, Anthony Boucher, 1942) Fergus O’Breen finds himself invited to a silver wedding anniversary party on an island, held 25 years after another murder among the same party. Boucher plays fair (but not entirely plausibly) with the case and dispenses with characterization in an imperfect attempt at atmosphere. [CW: Cat murder, 1940s psychology]—KH
The Case of the Solid Key (Fiction, Anthony Boucher, 1941) Fergus O’Breen and an Okie playwright join forces to figure out who killed the crooked impresario of a little LA theater, in a locked shed. The theater aspect triumphs over the mystery (which is why it’s Good), but the plot and dialogue seem somewhat stale for Boucher. I didn’t much care for the solution to the locked room, either.—KH
Green Night (Film, China, Shuai Han, 2023) On the fringes of Seoul, a Chinese immigrant customs officer (Bingbing Fan) stuck with an abusive husband winds up on the lam with an impertinent green-haired drug mule (Lee Joo-young.) Occasionally ill-judged naturalistic crime drama questions the premise of the unlikely allies trope.—RDL
