Grimoire
Cthulhu
Dracula
Abraham Lincoln
Ken
Grimoire

Posts Tagged ‘Ken and Robin Consume Media’

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Hatfields vs McCoys, Taylor Tomlinson vs Expectations, and Annette Bening vs Box Jellyfish

March 12th, 2024 | 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

Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance (Nonfiction, Lisa Alther, 2012) With a novelist’s eye for structure, Alther unravels the post-Civil War string of reprisal killings between two sprawling families on the Kentucky-West Virginia border that left sixty dead and bequeathed a curiously corny, heavily sanitized legend to later pop culture. Impressively chronicles a story in which every significant incident occurs in a minimum of two contradictory versions, then circles back for context and analysis.—RDL

Gary Gulman: Born on Third Base (Stand-up, HBO Max, James Webb, 2023) Gulman continues to evolve his particular blend of the shaggy-dog joke and the autobiographical monologue (or as he calls it, “mommy look at me”) with ever-increasing precision, tightness, and skilled delivery. Any stand-up who does both a Pop-Tart joke and a Seinfeld takedown had better bring their A game, and Gulman does just that.—KH

Sopyonje (Film, South Korea, Im-kwon Taek, 1993) Misanthropic itinerant singer of the dying pansori tradition (Kim Myung-gon) goes to appalling lengths to mold his adopted daughter (Jung-hae Oh) into his artistic successor. Gorgeously mounted drama of suffering for art.—RDL

The Murder Man (Film, US, Tim Whelan, 1935) Binge-drinking crime reporter (Spencer Tracy) scoops the competition on the slaying of a crooked investment broker. Fast-talking crime drama takes its hero in an atypical direction.—RDL

Taylor Tomlinson: Have it All (Stand-up, Netflix, Kristian Mercado, 2023) It’s tough to brag and be funny, but Tomlinson’s wild swagger carries her through a set centering on how far she’s come since her last specials. Once more, her mastery of vocal code switching and physical acting take already great material and make it excellent.—KH

Good

Knife + Heart (Film, France, Yann Gonzales, 2018) Heartbroken gay porn auteur (Kate Moran) becomes an unlikely investigator when police show little interest in the masked killer stalking her actors. Like many latter-day giallo homages, this references the subgenre’s style and motifs but sets aside the horror-thrilling pacing, in this case for a surreal indie drama of 70s queer life that owes more to Cocteau than to Argento or Bava.—RDL

Nyad (Film, US, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin, 2023) At age 62, long distance swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) appoints best pal Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster) as her coach in a bid to complete the Cuba-Florida marathon that beat her when she was 28. Acting-driven sports film convincingly portrays marathon swimming as the grotesque self-mortification of a trauma-forged achiever, bringing more than a little ambivalence to its inspirational triumph beats. —RDL

Schmigadoon Season 2 (Television, Apple+, Cinco Paul, 2023)  Disenchanted with life in the real world, Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) attempt to revisit the magic of Schmigadoon, only to find themselves in the nihilistic Schmicago, where the tropes of 60s and 70s musicals hold sway. Though the Broadway song parodies are even sharper this time around, the second season struggles to keep the protagonists at the heart of the narrative, which makes more of a difference than you might think.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: May December, French UFOs, Yokai, and Modern Yoga’s Eliptony Layer

March 5th, 2024 | 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

100 Monsters (Film, Japan, Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1968) Murderous landlord scoffs at the need to perform a protective rite after a night of spooky storytelling, inviting the righteous vengeance of yokai spirits. A straight-laced start to the Yokai Monsters trilogy mostly focused on human wrongdoing. The kid in you may complain that it takes too long for the creatures to show up.—RDL

May December (Film, US, Todd Haynes, 2023) TV actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives in Savannah to research her upcoming role as Gracie (Julianne Moore), who at 36 seduced a 13-year-old and remains married to him (Charles Melton) 20 years later. If Haynes’ influences were Ridley Scott and John McTiernan instead of Douglas Sirk and Joe Losey, he could have called this movie Alien vs Predator, and watching Portman as a soulless chameleon work on (and against) Moore’s damaged sociopath is voyeuristic delight. Haynes shoots the film alternatingly flat and fuzzy, like a somewhat jazzed-up true-crime drama, while playing with a wildly melodramatic score almost from the first beat.—KH

UFOs Season 1 (Television, France, Clémence Dargent & Martin Douaire, 2021) After his rocket project goes explosively awry, an uptight engineer for France’s aerospace agency is ordered to take over and shut down the woebegone department that logs UFO sightings. Students of eliptony will knowingly nod at this investigative dramedy’s familiarity with deep saucer-hunting lore.—RDL

Good

An Accidental Studio (Film, UK, Bill Jones & Kim Leggatt & Ben Timlett, 2019) Documentary traces the trajectory of independent studio Handmade Films, started by George Harrison to rescue Monty Python’s Life of Brian and later responsible for The Long Good Friday, Withnail and I, and Nuns on the Run. Tells the cyclically repeating story of a business started by artists to avoid creative meddling from the suits, only to fall prey to it, here in the form of Harrison’s money man Denis O’Brien.—RDL

Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat (Nonfiction, Derek Beres, Matthew Remski and Julian Walker, 2023) Apostate veterans of the wellness movement examine the predispositions, including a full smorgasbord of full-bore eliptonic and occult beliefs, that left the yoga scene ripe for colonization by anti-vaxxers and QAnon. Based on the eponymous podcast and written in an unabashedly polemical mode.—RDL

Past Lives (Film, US, Celine Song, 2023) Married playwright (Greta Lee) reunites with the middle school crush (Teo Yoo) she left behind when her parents emigrated from Korea. Muted drama of nice people being sensible could use a sharp note or two to bring contrast to all the wistful beauty.—RDL

Three Miles Down (Fiction, Harry Turtledove, 2022) In 1974, a young oceanologist/budding sf writer gets recruited to the secret project behind the secret Project AZORIAN—an alien spacecraft on the Pacific ocean floor actually sank the Soviet sub K-129, and the CIA is bringing it up. Contrary to the subtitle, this isn’t a “novel of first contact” but a novel of the precursor to first contact. Turtledove keeps it short and single-viewpoint, but doesn’t actually follow through on the great idea at the core.—KH

Okay

The Marvels (Film, US, Nia Dacosta, 2023) Bound by an entanglement that causes them to body switch, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) battle a Kree leader (Zawe Ashton) whose scheme to revive her homeworld endangers the fabric of the universe. The first acts of sequels are harder to set up than originals. It’s therefore unsurprising that, for all of the likeability of its actors and characters and tentacle cats, a sequel to not one but three different previous works wobbles in establishing a clear, basic question to carry us through the narrative.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: True Detective, BlackBerry, and Psychedelic-Era Crowley Cultists

February 27th, 2024 | 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

BlackBerry (Film, Canada, Matt Johnson, 2023) Hardass corporate executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) muscles into gormless techie Mike Lazaridis’ (Jay Baruchel) company, saving its new product, the Blackberry smartphone. Darkly funny Canadian ode to capitalism transcends the produpic mostly on the strength of Howerton’s performance as a somewhat sympathetic (and entirely necessary) sociopath, but a tight script that knows what to leave out gets a dose of the credit as well.—KH

Impetigore (Film, Indonesia, Joko Anwar, 2019) Thinking that the parents she never knew might have left her a house, a broke clothing stall owner (Tara Basro) and her skeptical friend (Marissa Anita) travel to a remote village, whose residents have a murderous solution to a terrible curse. Shadow puppets and gamelans localize the classic contours of folk horror.—RDL

It’s a Summer Film! (Film, Japan, Sôshi Masumoto, 2020) Unenthused by the sappy romance her high school film club has chosen to make, determined auteur Barefoot (Marika Itô) assembles a scrappy team to make a samurai film, little suspecting that her handsome lead (Daichi Kaneko) is a cineaste from the future who fears his participation will alter the timestream. Delightful comic paean to friendship and moviemaking.—RDL

Office Royale (Film, Japan, Kazuaki Seki, 2021) Demure office worker (Mei Nagano) becomes besties with a hard-punching colleague (Alice Hirose) on the rise in the underground world of inter-departmental combat. Spoof of teen gang manga scores laughs from the gulf between the outrageousness of Japan’s pop culture and the introversion of its daily life. Also known under the much worse title Hell’s Garden.—RDL

Satan Wants Me (Fiction, Robert Irwin, 1999) In psychedelic-era London, a callow sociology student pledges allegiance to a lodge of fussy, arch-conservative Thelemite sorcerers. Sly literary fiction cover version of The Devil Rides Out blurs the line between unreliable and unaware narrator.—RDL

True Detective: Night Country (Television, US, HBO, Issa Lopez) Abrasive Alaska police chief (Jodie Foster) reluctantly reteams with haunted state trooper (Kali Reis) to investigate the horrific deaths of a research station’s team of scientists and their ties to the unsolved slaying of an Iñupiat eco-activist. Police procedural with subjective supernatural elements (and a Hildred Castaigne namecheck) makes claustrophobic use of its icy Arctic environment.—RDL

Good

The Holdovers (Film, US, Alexander Payne, 2023) Surly prep-school teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) must babysit surly teen Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) over the 1970-71 holidays while bereaved cafeteria head Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) wisely observes. Trite, warmed-over 70s uplift story with virtually no surprises, genuine conflict, or real interest (all of which literally leave on a helicopter at the second-act turn) must perforce become an acting study, and indeed everyone involved acquits themselves well enough to carry this stale Christmas cookie over the line from Okay.—KH

Inside (Film, US/Belgium/Germany/Greece, Vasilis Katsoupis, 2023) After a failed alarm hack traps him inside an art-collecting oligarch’s soulless penthouse apartment, burglar Nemo (Willem Dafoe) must survive and try to escape. What could have been a brilliant combination castaway-heist film finishes doing that about halfway through its overlong run, but fortunately watching Willem Dafoe run the gamut of prisoner emotion remains fascinating.—KH

Okay

Skinamarink (Film, Canada, Kyle Edward Ball, 2023) Two kids wake up to find their dad missing, along with all the doors and windows of their house. This aggressively experimental horror film began as a 28-minute short, and works vastly better at that length. At 100 minutes long, the uncanny and eerie wear off as the movie continues with no shifting of stakes and (with no shots of the kids’ faces) little character to follow. Instead, Ball’s powerful evocation of a real childhood nightmare just dribbles out (at least if you watch it at home with no theater audience to recharge you), which is a crying shame.—KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, Saltburn

February 20th, 2024 | 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

Anatomy of a Fall (Film, France, Justine Triet, 2023) Novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) goes on trial for murder after her failed-novelist husband falls to his death from the attic (or balcony) of their isolated fixer-upper chalet while her sight-impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) is out walking his dog. Lapidary script by Triet and Arthur Harari layers revelations and character beats with watchmaker precision, while Hüller and Machado-Graner give those revelations and beats matter and meaning, all within the framework of a classic murder-trial film.—KH

Eight Hours of Terror (Film, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1957) Anxious to make a train connection, a group of people from disparate walks of life put aside fears of fugitive bank robbers in the area to board a rickety bus for an emergency trip along treacherous mountain roads. Ensemble suspense drama celebrates altruistic underdogs and sticks it to the selfish creeps.—RDL

Let Joy Reign Supreme (Film, France, Bertrand Tavernier, 1975) When a rustic Breton noble (Jean-Pierre Marielle) launches a conspiracy against the melancholy, libertinish Regent Philippe II d’Orleans (Philippe Noiret), his scheming minister (Jean Rochefort) spots an opportunity for advancement. Satirical period drama presents a jaundiced portrait of 18th aristocratic decadence.—RDL

Miss Shampoo (Film, Taiwan, Giddens Ko, 2023) After she hides him from assassins, a hunky gang boss (Daniel Hong) falls for an adorable hair stylist with a propensity for extreme cuts (Vivian Sung.) If you’ve been wondering where the anarchic tone- and genre-shifting spirit of 80s and 90s Hong Kong cinema went, it has moved to Taiwan, as this outré gangster rom com attests.—RDL

Silent Night (Film, US, John Woo, 2023) After a gang shooting spree leaves his son killed and his vocal cords shot out, Brian Godlock (Joel Kinnaman) resolves to kill those responsible one year later, on Christmas Eve. Woo’s eye for action and perfect camera control pitilessly depict Godlock deliberately stripping out his humanity to become a feral killing machine: this is not 80s “killer cool” Woo but a darker, more desperate version. Without dialogue, Woo creates a pure expression of cinema as light, motion, music, and violence.—KH

A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War (Nonfiction, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, 2023) Iraqi journalist ruefully recounts his country’s catastrophic spirals into deadly and destabilizing conflict, from the Iran-Iraq war he witnessed as a child through the US invasion, civil war, the battle with ISIS and beyond. Fleshes out the complexities of events typically given shorthand treatment in the Western press, with a recurring theme being men with guns who are sure they’ve learned from the mistakes of the past and are not going to repeat them this time.—RDL

The Zone of Interest (Film, UK/Poland, Jonathan Glazer, 2023) Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) leads a contented family life in the well-appointed house on the other side of its walls. Aided by masterfully destabilizing sound design, this plotless cinematic study of the banality of evil drops the viewer into an all but unrelieved moral vacuum.—RDL

Good

The Meg (Film, US/China, Jon Turteltaub, 2018) Traumatized deep sea rescuer (Jason Statham) reluctantly returns for a mission to recover his ex-wife from an exploratory sub downed by an old nemesis no one else believes in—a 25 meter long Miocene-era shark. Starts surprisingly smart but doesn’t end up that way, falling prey to the inherent problem of animal-related disaster movies, finding enough different things for the creature to do.—RDL

Saltburn (Film, UK/US, Emerald Fennell, 2023) Scholarship boy Oliver (Barry Keoghan, risibly old for the part) falls for aristo Felix (Jacob Elordi, effortlessly fantastic) at Oxford and gets invited to the family estate for the summer. This Brideshead Revisited-Talented Mr. Ripley mashup never coheres, mostly because Oliver fluctuates between Iago and a kicked puppy throughout. However, I will watch a hundred films featuring Rosamund Pike as a ditzy lady of the manor. Further kudos to cinematographer Linus Sandgren, who shoots Saltburn manor with sunlit love.—KH

Okay

The Creator (Film, US, Gareth Edwards, 2023) In a future where America is at war with androids, a former double agent (John David Washington) agrees to seek their human inventor, hoping also to find his wife, presumed dead but apparently alive and working with the enemy. For all of its impressive visual worldbuilding and indelible cinematic imagery, this blend of Blade Runner and the Global War on Terror falters on viewpoint and sympathy. The audience can tell from the outset that the mission is a con job, and for much of the running time can’t tell where our hopes or fears should lie..—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Slow Horses, American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers

February 13th, 2024 | 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

Air (Film, US, Ben Affleck, 2023) Basketball guru Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) pursues Michael Jordan for third-ranked shoe company Nike. What could have been a leaden produpic soars thanks to Affleck’s willingness to invest in a multi-beat story (providing many of the comic beats by playing self-involved Nike CEO Phil Knight) and to wisely give Viola Davis her head in crafting the film’s moral center, Deloris Jordan. The result is more miracle play than produpic, with Vaccaro as John the Baptist and 80s needle drops as psalms.—KH

American Fiction (Film, US, Cord Jefferson, 2023) Literary novelist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) creates a fake “street” identity to sell a pandering novel as his mother’s (Leslie Uggams) Alzheimer’s puts stress on his family. Repeatedly blunted satire nestles uneasily in a gently sad family drama, but Wright pulls the film through on the strength of a brilliant, low-simmering performance. Cristina Dunlap’s effective cinematography deserves a nod as well.—KH

Anatomy of a Fall (Film, France, Justine Triet, 2023) Tightly wound writer (Sandra Hüller) faces a murder trial that strains her relationship with her sensitive, vision-impaired young son (Milo Machado Graner) when her resentful husband takes a fatal plunge from the top floor of their chalet-style home. Realist courtroom drama takes full advantage of the freewheeling structure of French criminal proceedings to flesh out its study of a marriage on the brink.—RDL

Fair Play (Film, US, Chloe Domont, 2023) Hedge fund analysts and surreptitious lovers Emily and Luke (Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich) hit the emotional rocks when one of them is promoted. Crackling character beats show their dog-eat-dog financial careers stripping the humanity from both; great acting from the duo prevents the melodrama from overweighting the careful verisimilitude of Domont’s Wall Street mise en scene.—KH

The Holdovers (Film, US, Alexander Payne, 2023) Bilious prep school history teacher (Paul Giamatti) bonds with a grieving cafeteria supervisor (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and a smart, rebellious student (Dominic Sessa) when ordered to supervise the few students staying over for Christmas break. Empathy rises from misanthropy in a dramedy revolving around a trio of winning performances and a love of the American New Wave.—RDL

Slow Horses Season 3 (Television, UK, Apple+, Will Smith, 2023) A former embassy guard’s quest for justice draws River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and the other Slough House exiles into a high body count MI5 internal struggle. This season pulls the lever on the thriller switch, bringing greased-rail pacing to the serialized TV format.—RDL

The Vietri Project (Fiction, Nicola DeRobertis-Theye, 2021) As she reaches the age when she might inherit her Italian mother’s schizophrenia, a Californian former bookseller’s travels take her to Rome and a search for a mysterious bibliophile. Echoes of Eco set the stage for a quest to reconcile the protagonist’s dual, dueling national identities.—RDL

Good

Everything Goes Wrong (Film, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1960) Young malcontent (Tamio Kawaji) melts down over his mother’s relationship with a thoughtful but married business executive. High-strung drama positions itself as a juvenile delinquent picture in order to question the genre’s anti-youth hysteria.—RDL

Fanfare of Love (Film, France, Richard Pottier, 1935) A pair of unemployed musicians pose as women to get hired by an all-female nightclub orchestra. A fun situation farce mostly notable as the ultimate source, by way of its 1951 German remake, for Some Like It Hot.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Cinema Purgatorio, Blackbeard, and the Archies

February 6th, 2024 | 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

Ambulance (Film, US, Michael Bay, 2022) Volatile bank robber (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his reluctantly inveigled Marine vet adopted brother (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) flee a job gone wrong in a hijacked ambulance with a hard nosed paramedic (Eiza González) and wounded cop on board. In a hyper-accelerated thriller that overtly namechecks his pre-Transformers career highlights, Bay shows that a film featuring a 70-minute vehicle chase is the exactly correct assignment for him.—RDL

The Archies (Film, India, Zoya Akhtar, 2023) In the Anglo-Indian town of Riverdale, fickle but beloved 60s teen Archie Andrews toys with the affections of best friends Bettie and Veronica, as the latter’s father schemes to replace their beloved park with a grand hotel. Sustains a sweet nostalgic tone over a 260 minute running time, with choreography and dancing notably better than the Bollywood norm.—RDL

Blackbeard: America’s Most Notorious Pirate (Nonfiction, Angus Konstam, 2006) The closest thing to an academic biography we’re likely to get of a man who left only a legend and a bunch of police reports behind him. Pirate historian Konstam pads out the thin historical record with chapters of Caribbean context; it could perhaps use tighter organization and one more editorial pass but it’s still the best there is on the topic.—KH

Call Me Chihiro (Film, Japan, Rikiya Imaizumi, 2023) An outwardly gregarious, inwardly alienated former massage parlor worker turned bento shop cashier draws a group of lonely people into her orbit. Sympathetic, subtly limned character study of a paradoxical personality.—RDL

Cinema Purgatorio: This Is Sinerama (Comics, Avatar, Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, 2021) Eighteen short (8-page) comics (mostly) recapitulating Hollywood tragedies, from the life of Willis O’Brien or Howard Hughes to the death of Thelma Todd or the Black Dahlia, usually in a style reminiscent of a film. Interspersed media-philosophical comics (and the framing sequence of a damned woman as our audience viewpoint) are clever enough but the real attraction is, e.g., Moore and O’Neill riffing on creative theft in the backstory of Felix the Cat, in the form of an animated cartoon, or telling the story of the Warner Brothers as if they were the Marx Brothers.—KH

The Money (Film, South Korea, So-Dong Kim, 1958) A farmer desperate to raise funds for his daughter’s wedding allows himself to be bullied into reckless gambling by the village loanshark. Rural melodrama uses dramatic irony of knowing better than the protagonist where this is all going to excruciatingly draw out the inevitable hammer blow.—RDL

Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead (Graphic Novel, Bill Griffith, 2019) Loving biographical portrait of the lifelong sideshow performer, best known for his appearance in Freaks, who inspired Griffith’s comics character Zippy.—RDL

Good

Bad Seed (Film, France, Billy Wilder, 1934) Cut off by his wealthy father, a brash spendthrift (Pierre Mingand) throws in with a car theft ring. While fleeing Germany for the US, Wilder stopped in Paris long enough to direct this breezy crime drama, revealing the insouciant cynicism that would come to full flower in his Hollywood classics. Freshly available on Blu Ray in a restored print.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Maestro, Women Write Horror, and Tomes About Grimoires

January 30th, 2024 | 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 Grimoire Encyclopaedia, Vols. 1 and 2 (Nonfiction, David Rankine, 2023) After a concise history of the pre-grimoire tradition, Rankine provides textual histories and discusses the contents of 99 grimoires, from the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri to a modern (1960) forgery and a sorcerous tome assembled in 2021. (The majority of the works covered do, however, fall into the grimoire mainstream 1250-1850.) This would be enough to make it the best single reference work on grimoires, but Rankine goes further and indexes every spirit (demon, angel, etc), stone or crystal, incense or oil, spell ingredient, plant, metal, or tool mentioned in those 99 grimoires. A staggering work of scholarship, fully accessible to gamers and wannabe warlocks alike.—KH

Recommended

Al Capone’s Beer Wars (Nonfiction, John J. Binder, 2017) Shelves of books retail the legends of Capone and the Chicago mobs, but Binder (as befits a University of Chicago professor) goes back to the documentary record of the 729 “gang-style killings” in Cook County from 1919-1933. On this bed of fact, he lays out essentially a military history of the Beer Wars between Capone’s Outfit and the other 11 bootlegging gangs in the city. It’s not the only book you need on the Chicago gangs, but it’s an essential touchstone, an actual history in a field full of (at best) movie tie-ins.—KH

Godard Mon Amour (Film, France, Michel Hazanavicius, 2017) Amid the political upheavals of late 60s Paris, lauded New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) leans into his worst character traits and strains his new marriage to actress Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin) by reconceiving himself as a Maoist revolutionary. As if narrative cinema itself is taking revenge on Godard for all the mean things he said about it, this satirical drama, based on his ex-spouse’s memoir, thoroughly skewers its protagonist, depicting his turn to radicalism as a profound act of professional and personal self-sabotage. Also known as Redoubtable; the US title strikes a further note of travesty, playing on not a Godard film but one by Resnais.—RDL

Klop: Britain’s Most Ingenious Secret Agent (Nonfiction, Peter Day, 2014)  Biography of Jona Ustinov, the Jerusalem born, Russo-Ethiopian who won multiple Iron Crosses fighting for Germany in WWI before becoming a ubiquitous operative, interrogator and analyst for MI5 and MI6 in WWII and the Cold War. Clear narrative is often lost as an overstuffed cast of characters take part in a series of murky incidents—which is to say that Day accurately evokes the world of espionage. Among Ustinov’s detractors was his son Peter, who saw the pain suffered by his mother, the painter and stage designer Nadia Benois, by his insistence on introducing her to his many girlfriends.—RDL

Maestro (Film, US, Bradley Cooper, 2023) Wunderkind conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) meets and weds Broadway actor Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) leading to a lifelong love complicated by his disinclination to conduct his affairs with men discreetly. Cooper skillfully handles an impressionistic script that evades biopic syndrome by making the marriage the throughline.—RDL

The Man with a Shotgun (Film, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1961) Capable hunter () vies for the position of sheriff in a lawless mountain logging town. Betrayals and counter-betrayals keep on coming in a Technicolor, Nikkatsuscope contemporary western.—RDL

Good

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction (Nonfiction, Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson, 2019) Brief sketches of 40+ female horror writers, plus five contemporary subgenre roundups, provide a decent primer of horror literature from the Gothic to now. Individual author treatments are wildly hit-or-miss, but the book as a whole benefits from its synoptic view and from superb book design by Andie Reid. Official nitpicks: No mention of Silvia Moreno-Garcia? Patricia Highsmith relegated to the “Related Work” section of Daphne du Maurier’s essay, and Mary Wilkins Freeman tossed off in a line? Tchah!—KH

Rich and Strange (Film, UK, Alfred Hitchcock, 1931) When they get an unexpected chance to go on a luxury cruise, a sullen office clerk (Harry Kendall) and his optimistic, underappreciated wife (Joan Barry) are drawn to new romantic partners. Mix of wry social comedy and domestic drama shows the Hitchcock energy outside of the suspense genre.—RDL

Ken and Robin Consume Media: Reacher, May December, and Later Silver John

January 23rd, 2024 | 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 Box (Film, Mexico, Lorenzo Vigas, 2021) Stoic seventh-grader falls in with a textile factory recruiter he believes to be his supposedly murdered father, learning the brutal side of the business. Economical, beautifully shot social realist crime drama.—RDL

Jolly (YouTube channel, Josh Carrott & Ollie Kendal, 2017-present) A spinoff from the more focused (and also Recommended if you want to see a lot of Korean BBQ) Korean Englishman YT channel, Jolly features hosts Josh and Ollie usually (but not always) trying food from snacks or army rations to Michelin meals. The proven good-looking-straight-man, goofy-looking-funny-one combo works again, YouTube content at its most charming and addictive.—KH

The Man Who Spoke Snakish (Fiction, Andrus Kivirähk, 2007) In a fantastical medieval Estonia, a holdout from a beleaguered hunting culture, one of the last people who wields magical powers granted by the language of adders, recounts the tragic events of a life lived in the shadow of encroaching Christianity. Whimsy and brutality inventively intertwine in a tale of cultural transformation and the toll it exacts.—RDL

May December (Film, US, Todd Haynes, 2023) Canny actor (Natalie Portman) pays an extended research visit to a woman (Julianne Moore) she has been cast to play in a movie about the statutory rape trial triggered by her relationship with her now-adult, then seventh grade husband (Charles Melton.) An undertow of subtext seethes beneath the brittle surface of this powerfully acted domestic drama.—RDL

PG: Psycho Goreman (Film, Canada, Steve Kostanski, 2021) With her confederate slash whipping boy brother (Owen Myre) at her side, an unhinged grade schooler (Nita-Josee Hanna) gains control over a mighty evil alien overlord from the planet Gigax. Scrappy, blood-drenched indie tokusatsu flick spoofs E.T. and pays homage to the straight-to-VHS oeuvre of Charles Band.—RDL

Tár (Film, US, Todd Field, 2022) Superstar conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) heads for the high point of her career, conducting Mahler’s Fifth with her Berlin Philharmonic, even as her tragic flaw (serial sexual predation) widens and is exposed. A classic tragedy, wonderfully acted (Noémie Merlant as Lydia’s resentful assistant is magnificently restrained) and composed, punctuated by sudden character reveals that rotate the story.—KH

This Happy Breed (Film, UK, David Lean, 1944) An optimistic WWI vet turned travel agent (Robert Newton) shepherds his loving but sometimes sharp-elbowed family through the ups and downs, personal and political, of the interwar period. Adaptation of a 1939 Noel Coward play focuses on character while also using four years of hindsight to bring an air of pointed irony to its morale boosting proceedings.—RDL

The Voice of the Mountain (Fiction, Manly Wade Wellman, 1984) Silver John decides to climb Cry Mountain to find the source of its cry, and discovers a black magician in this place of power. The resolution doesn’t quite match the wonder of the setup, and Wellman’s prose is not quite as well-joined as in his original 1951-1963 Pinnacle Silver John tales of Appalachian magic, but all that says is it’s merely an excellent occult adventure story..—KH

Good

Gangubai Kathiawadi (Film, India, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, 2022) Brothel-keeper Gangubai (Alia Bhatt) recalls her own rise to political power in the Mumbai red-light district of Kamathipura. Bhatt is always an actress worth watching, but she can’t elevate this relatively rote biopic very far out of its strangely sanitized channel.—KH

The Hanging Stones (Fiction, Manly Wade Wellman, 1982) Silver John investigates a businessman’s plan to build a reproduction of Stonehenge as a tourist attraction. Some superb supernatural ideas appear in this somewhat shapeless novel, and it’s always nice to see (one of Wellman’s other series occult-battlers) Judge Pursuivant as a guest star, but it needed another editing pass to bring it even up to the standard of later Silver John novels.—KH

No Man of Her Own (Film, US, Wesley Ruggles, 1932) Suave card sharp (Clark Gable) conceals his true profession when he goes on the lam to a small town and falls for a bored librarian (Carole Lombard.) Slight pre-Code romcom burns with the palpable heat between the leads, who don’t get together in real life for another four years.—RDL

Reacher Season 2 (Television, US, Amazon Prime, Nick Santora, 2023-4) Someone is killing off enormous former MP Jack Reacher’s (Alan Ritchson) less-enormous former MP team, and he starts looking into it. The fight choreography has really dropped off between seasons (with one exception in the last episode), and the lack of focus (between flashbacks and forgettable team members) badly weakens the brutal drive that Season 1 brought. It’s still Jack Reacher harming bad guys, but that climb to Justified-level purity I hoped for from last season has not even begun.—KH

Ken and Robin Consume Media: The Devil in Folklore and Folklore in Horror

January 16th, 2024 | 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

Cloven Country: the Devil and the English Landscape (Nonfiction, Jeremy Harte, 2022) Starting in the 16th century English folktales explaining unusual landscape features underwent a switch, substituting a comic, thwartable Devil for the giants and fairies that previously starred in them. In a scholarly but wry and accessible voice, Harte comprehensively rounds these up, abjuring the temptation to theorize a grand cause for the shift and then bend the evidence to fit.—RDL

Ladies in Retirement (Film, US, Charles Vidor, 1941) Staid companion/housekeeper (Ida Lupino) to a fussy former actress (Isobel Elsom) resorts to desperate measures to keep her chaotic, mentally ill sisters (Elsa Lanchester, Edith Barrett) housed with her. Expressionistic Victorian-set gothic based on an English murder play.—RDL

No Hard Feelings (Film, US, Gene Stupnitsky. 2023) In danger of being priced out of her own home town and needing a vehicle to make her summer nut as an Uber driver, a beleaguered townie (Jennifer Lawrence) accepts an offer from worried rich parents (Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti) to relieve their introverted son (Andrew Barth Feldman.) Reaffirms the heartfelt raunchy comedy as the last vestige of realistic characterization in mainstream movies, with a healthy dollop of class awareness and something of a Mike Nichols vibe.—RDL

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (Film, US, Kier-La Janisse, 2021) The resurgent horror sub-genre gets a comprehensive, international and pancultural survey from critics and filmmakers. Long but meant to be consumed in chapter-length chunks, this will have you scrambling to JustWatch to see which obscure 70s British TV dramas are available for streaming in your region.—RDL

Good

The Black Report  (Fillm, Japan, Yasuzô Masumura, 1963) Cops and prosecutors confront bribes and perjury in the case of a murdered, philandering CEO. Cynical courtroom drama beats Dick Wolf to the Law & Order structure by 30 years.—RDL

Okay

Sakra (Film, China/HK, Donnie Yen) Stalwart leader of a Song Dynasty bandit gang (Donnie Yen) battles his own allies when he is framed for the murders of his parents and a subordinate. Setup for a franchise fails to untangle a convoluted plot it has presumably inherited from its wuxia source novel.—RDL

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: Poor Things, Ferrari, Silent Night

January 9th, 2024 | 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

Poor Things (Film, UK, Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023) Over the misgivings of the weird scientist (Willem Dafoe) who reanimated her, a sheltered woman (Emma Stone) whose brain has yet to catch up with her body elects to see the world with a vain cad (Mark Ruffalo) as her guide. Frankenstein motifs come out to play in a satirical art nouveau steampunk fable of innocence and experience wrapped around Stone’s astounding performance.—RDL

Recommended

Blood & Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (Nonfiction, Ronald Hutton, 2009) After demonstrating with his customary gentle, systematic authority that next to nothing can be conclusively proven about druids, Hutton lays out the various British projections, suppositions and outright fabrications about them that started with a revival of interest in the subject that began in the early modern period. An indispensable politico-aesthetic history of Britain as seen through the lens of a constantly reimagined, bloodthirsty and/or benevolent caste of priests and/or magicians and/or scientists.—RDL

Ferrari (Film, US, Michael Mann, 2023) In 1957, Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) may lose his company to deeper-pocketed competitors, and wreck his marriage to Laura (Penélope Cruz) over his infidelity with Lina (Shailene Woodley). Mann unreels the story of what happens when two crises collide in one man, in an unusually internal film for him—even the racing scenes deliberately seem stepped down. Driver and Cruz (of course) play metal and fire off each other wonderfully.—KH

Incredible But True (Film, France, Quentin Dupieux, 2022) Bourgeois couple (Alain Chabat, Léa Drucker) who have a duct in their house that allows one to travel ahead twelve hours in time while also de-ageing by three days are nonplussed to learn that their friend, his boss, has had an electronic penis installed. Droll cautionary tale pays homage to Buñuel.—RDL

Silent Night (Film, US, John Woo, 2023) Rendered mute by the gangsters whose shootout claimed his young son’s life, an ordinary family man transforms himself into a traumatized instrument of vengeance. Contrary to the action romp promised by its marketing, this dialogue-free pure cinema subversion of the Death Wish formula is Woo’s darkest film since Bullet in the Head.—RDL

Trapeze (Film, US, Carol Reed, 1956) Injured trapeze artist (Burt Lancaster) returns to the rigging to train a promising protege (Tony Curtis), but a fame-starved performer (Gina Lollobrigida) comes between them. Briskly staged Technicolor circus melodrama with noirish undertones. DramaSystem players might take note of how economically it resolves its many dramatic petitions, stacking them on top of each other in quick succession.—RDL

The Unknown Man of Shandigor (Film, Switzerland, Jean-Louis Roy, 1967) Teams of spies violently vie for possession of a nuke-neutralizing device designed by a misanthropic scientist (Daniel Emilfork.) Bold compositions resonate with semiotic fatalism in this deconstructed spy spoof. Serge Gainsbourg appears as a chic French spymaster and sings his composition “Bye Bye Mister Spy.”—RDL

Good

Merry Little Batman (Film, US, Mike Roth, 2023) When Bruce Wayne (Luke Wilson) gets called out of Gotham, his son Damian (Yonas Kibreab) is left home alone—and prey to the Joker’s (David Hornsby) plan! What could have been a simple “Home Alone in Wayne Manor” cartoon leaves that setup behind by Act Three for an ambitious if not fully successful “meaning of Christmas” story. Art designer Guillaume Fesquet’s combo of Tim Burton and Ronald Searle works wonders at keeping cliche material fresh.—KH

Okay

Candy Cane Lane (Film, US, Reginald Hudlin, 2023) Noel-loving neighborhood dad Chris Carver (Eddie Murphy) unwisely makes a deal with a rogue elf (Jillian Bell) to win a Christmas-decorating contest, and madcap hijinks ensue. A baseline acceptable, even wacky, “Christmas is family” movie downright angered me when a Murphy ad lib in the end-credits blooper reel was orders of magnitude funnier and more real than anything I had just watched.—KH

Film Cannister
Cartoon Rocket
d8
Flying Clock
Robin
Film Cannister