Posts Tagged ‘Ken and Robin Consume Media’
Ken and Robin Consume Media: No Other Choice, Hamnet, Jay Kelly
January 13th, 2026 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
The Pinnacle
No Other Choice (Film, South Korea, Park Chan-wook, 2025) Desperate to keep his home and family intact, laid-off paper mill manager Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) plans to kill a more successful paper mill manager, along with the superior candidates for the ensuing job vacancy. Son Ye-jin takes on the harder role as Man-su’s increasingly unhappy wife, and her grounded delivery keeps the movie from spinning out of control in Park’s increasingly daring and dissonant shots and Kim Sang-bum and Kim Ho-bin’s drum-snap edits. Gorgeous, innovative, clever, and mordant, a worthy Westlake adaptation for those who claim it can’t be done.—KH
Recommended
Death in Five Boxes (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1938) Four people at a table have been poisoned, and one of them has been fatally stabbed, and bizarre clues litter the crime scene: a worthy challenge for Sir Henry Merrivale. I have reluctantly turned back to the Merrivale mysteries as I run out of Carr, and find to my delight that the pre-1941 ones are almost all Recommendable. The mysteries run a little tighter and the atmosphere less Gothic than the classic Fell cases, and the early Merrivale is only intermittently a buffoon.—KH
Jay Kelly (Film, US, Noah Baumbach, 2025) In a bid to crash his daughter’s European trip, a self-absorbed movie star (George Clooney) abruptly accepts a film festival tribute invite, triggering reminiscence for him and a string of crises for his overly devoted manager (Adam Sandler.) Co-written by Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, the screenplay’s perfectly sculpted dialogue and scene construction provide the platform for brilliant performances from Clooney, Sandler, Laura Dern, and, in a barn-burner one-and-done, Billy Crudup.—RDL
No Other Choice (Film, South Korea, Park Chan-wook, 2025) Desperate for a new job in the paper industry, a fired plant manager (Lee Byung-hun) hatches a plan to murder rival job applicants. Hyper-competitive South Korea makes a consummate setting for a barbed, masterfully composed adaptation of Donald Westlake’s The Ax. —RDL
The Phantom Atlas (Nonfiction, Edward Brooke-Hitching, 2016) Cartographic survey of nonexistent places that made it onto maps despite their origins in myth, misapprehension, or deception. Enjoyable, visually rich roundup of past and future Cartography Huts.—RDL
The Silence of the Sea (Film, France, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1949) Required to billet a Francophile German officer (Howard Vernon) during the occupation, an old man (Jean-Marie Robain) and his adult niece (Nicole Stéphane) greet his attempts to ingratiate himself with absolute silence. Drama of resistance, based on a novel illicitly published during the war, gains power from bare bones simplicity.—RDL
Time to Die (Film, Mexico, Arturo Ripstein, 1966) After 18 years in prison a beaten-down man (Jorge Martínez de Hoyos) returns to his home village, where the sons of the man he slew have sworn to kill him. Western written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes portrays its inevitable showdown not as an act of clarifying order but as Greek tragedy.—RDL
Good
Torso (Film, Italy, Sergio Martino, 1973) Jane (Suzy Kendall) and Dani (Tina Aumont) and their friends flee the serial killer stalking the University of Perugia but has the killer followed them to the remote villa? (Yes.) Crucial slasher-film precursor comes alive in the fourth-act cat-and-mouse stalking of Jane; if the rest of this giallo had shown the same mastery of space and suspense, it would be an all-timer.—KH
The Unicorn Murders (Fiction, John Dickson Carr, 1935) Former MI6 agent Kenwood Blake gives the right countersign to the wrong fellow agent in Paris and winds up dragged into an isolated chateau murder and into Sir Henry Merrivale’s attempt to show up the French police and catch France’s greatest thief. Carr’s espionage action is clunky even for 1935, although the eventual impossible murder nearly makes up for it. Merrivale is less annoying than either French antagonist, but only just.—KH
Not Recommended
Hamnet (Film, US/UK, Chloé Zhao, 2025) Forging a union later tested by grief, a witchy young woman (Jessie Buckley) marries a frustrated writer (Paul Mescal.) Almost nothing is known of Shakespeare’s family life, leaving room for the thudding cliches and back-projected concerns of this lyrically visualized, powerfully acted, preposterous poppycock.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Marty Supreme, Roofman, and the Patrick Petrella Stories
January 6th, 2026 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
Compulsion (Film, US, Richard Fleischer, 1959) The fates of 1924 Chicago Nietzschean thrill-killers Steiner and Straus (Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman) depend on crusading attorney Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles). Surprisingly good roman a clef of the Leopold and Loeb murders ends with an 18-minute speech against the death penalty based on the one given by Clarence Darrow at the historical sentencing. Your appreciation of Fleischer’s achievement depends on what you think of Welles’ monologue (the longest in film history to that point).—KH
Eephus (Film, US, Carson Lund, 2024) Two local recreational teams square off for one last game on a baseball diamond’s last day before demolition. Realistically observed yet also Beckett-like paean to the beautiful existential futility of competitive sports.—RDL
Every Patrick Petrella Story (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1959-2003) Gilbert’s longest-running serial character (two novels and 54 shorter stories), Petrella is a half-Spanish, poetry-reading London police detective. Not quite maverick cop, not quite cerebral detective, not quite procedural protagonist, Petrella gives his adventures a specific and hard-to-isolate flavor that not even Gilbert’s other police stories can match. Start where Gilbert started, with the puzzle-inside-a-procedural Blood and Judgement, and then sample the shorter Petrella in Petrella at Q.—KH
Marty Supreme (Film, US, Josh Safdie, 2025) Hustling New York punk Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) climbs and slips on his way to global table-tennis fame, and over his girl Rachael (Odessa A’Zion) and anyone else in his way. Nonstop energy (weirdly punctuated with ‘80s classics for a film set in 1952) and grift-a-minute action keep you riveted to a character you quite probably (and rightly) despise. Chalamet deserves all the acting plaudits he gets for this, though non-professional actors Abel Ferrara (as a Jewish gangster) and Kevin O’Leary (as a cuckolded industrialist) more than hold their own.—KH
Opera (Film, Italy, Dario Argento, 1987) A mysterious masked killer stalks understudy-turned-superstar Betty (Cristina Marsillach) during an avant-garde staging of Verdi’s Macbeth, complete with ravens. A psychologically wrenching riff on The Phantom of the Opera, it features effortlessly (and endlessly) bravura shots and camera moves. (Ronnie Taylor is the kind of brilliant cinematographer Argento deserves but seldom got.) Often (and perhaps rightly) called Argento’s last masterpiece, it’s also perhaps the last great giallo.—KH
Roofman (Film, US, Derek Cianfrance, 2025) Goodhearted prison escapee (Channing Tatum) dates a devout Toys R Us employee (Kirsten Dunst) after uses his penchant for breaking into businesses through their ceilings to hide out in the store. Socially observant true crime indie comedy permeated with the melancholy of stolen happiness.—RDL
Good
The Paradine Case (Film, US, Alfred Hitchcock, 1947) An aggressive barrister (Gregory Peck) risks his career and marriage when he succumbs to an obsession with an uncooperative murder defendant (Alida Valli.) Straining against producer David Selznick’s florid prestige picture aesthetic, Hitchcock infuses this courtroom drama with a troubling psychosexual undercurrent. The emotional logic would track better if Valli had turned out to be, as Selznick hoped, a screen presence to rival Garbo.—RDL
Wake Up Dead Man (Film, US, Rian Johnson, 2025) Sleuth Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) works to clear the obvious suspect in the murder of a grandiose Monsignor (Josh Brolin), an earnest priest with rage issues (Josh O’Connor.) Juxtaposes the artificial mystery of the locked room murder story with the metaphysical mystery of faith, hobbled by the usual structural problems of the cinematic whodunnit.—RDL
Okay
The Flanders Panel (Fiction, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, 1990) A restorer’s discovery of a Renaissance murder mystery in a Flemish painting depicting a chess match becomes an element in a current slaying. Erudite mystery thriller of art and gamesmanship with an emotionally implausible final revelation.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Wake Up Dead Man, Predator: Badlands, The Whole Kill Bill, and a Giallo Tarot
December 16th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
The Pinnacle
Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair (Film, US, Quentin Tarantino, 2006/2025) Gunned down during her wedding rehearsal, former assassin Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) survives to take revenge on her would-be killers (Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah), especially her former mentor Bill (David Carradine). Watched as a complete whole, this most visually arresting of Tarantino’s films also builds surprising weight and momentum from a “nothing but the good bits” tribute to martial arts cinema. Thurman’s acting likewise accumulates power at length; only the jackdaw soundtrack suffers a bit at four-and-a-half-plus hours. [Main changes: Deletes the cliffhanger and recap sequences that ended and started the two films, lengthens the “Origin of O-ren Ishii” anime, restores color and adds violence to the House of Blue Leaves segment, adds a post-credits animated “Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge”]—KH
Recommended
The Body of a Girl (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1972) Newly promoted to Chief Inspector and stationed in the remote suburb of Stoneferry, Bill Mercer investigates a dead body found in a drift island in the Thames. Combines police procedural with a touch of “man vs. town” thriller to superb effect; the Gilbert dry humor here runs a little blacker than his usual. Mercer also stars in a very tight three-novelette series in The Man Who Hated Banks and Other Stories, also Recommended.—KH
Predator: Badlands (Film, US, Dan Trachtenberg, 2025) After his father orders him killed for supposed weakness, a dogged predator (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) heads to a planet populated by deadly animals to seek the ultimate trophy, reluctantly teaming with a damaged, unusually chipper Weyland-Yutani android (Elle Fanning.) Rousingly constructed adventure thriller makes clever use of the established crossover between Predator and Alien and showcases Fanning in a gift of a dual role as it hits one great beat after another.—RDL
Tarocchi Gialli (Tarot, Nick Ribera, 2024) An 83-card tarot (adding five more Major Arcana) cast as posters for giallo movies, mostly using strong design and photomontage well. Although the Minor Arcana all have their own images they don’t always depict their suit (Eyes, Candles, Knives, Skulls) which slightly annoys my inner A.E. Waite.—KH
Thief (Film, US, Michael Mann, 1981) Hardboiled safecracker (James Caan) softens his lone wolf credo to court a wary waitress (Tuesday Weld) and work for a persuasive Chicago gangster (Robert Prosky.) From dazzling rainswept cityscapes to its existential fatalism, Mann’s first theatrical feature finds his auteurist hallmarks already fully in place.—RDL
Good
The Cock-Eyed World (Film, US, Raoul Walsh, 1929) Pugnacious marine master sergeant (Victor McLaglen) competes with chancer comrade (Edmund Lowe) for the affections of party girls in New York and Latin America. With unusual dynamism for an early talkie, Walsh portrays war as labor and soldiers as irrepressible working stiffs.—RDL
Wake Up Dead Man (Film, US, Rian Johnson, 2025) Accused of murdering the fulminating Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin), boxer turned priest Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) helps Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) crack an impossible case. While a vastly better mystery (complete with John Dickson Carr shout-out) than the second installment, it suffers from that film’s problem of one-dimensional characters, in this case, to the mystery’s detriment. O’Connor does his best to put depth on his, but he’s almost the only one given the chance. Like every film in the series, it looks great, though, which is not nothing.—KH
Okay
Officer on Duty (Film, India, Jithu Ashraf, 2025) Fresh from suspension, an uncompromising cop (Kunchacko Boban) tracks a petty jewelry theft to a gang of hipster vengeance killers. Intense entry in a cycle of South Asian action flicks that encourage audiences to applaud straight-up murder.—RDL
Showtime 7 (Film, Japan, Kazutaka Watanabe, 2025) Disgraced TV anchor (Hiroshi Abe) uses a bomber’s call to his radio show to make a play for his old job. Real time thriller falters when it reaches for a serious point its genre characterizations can’t carry.—RDL.
Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff: New Tim Powers, The Dirty Dozen with Samurai, and the Quest for Kim
December 9th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
11 Rebels (Film, Japan, Kazuya Shiraishi, 2024) Condemned prisoners accept an offer of reprieve to defend a fort long enough for a double-dealing clan to play both sides of the Boshin War. Ensemble cast samurai war film combines classical storytelling with contemporary gore effects.—RDL
Juliet, Naked (Film, US, Jesse Peretz, 2018) Quietly discontented museum curator (Rose Byrne) stumbles into an online epistolary relationship with the obscure retired indie rocker (Ethan Hawke) her lunkhead professor partner (Chris O’Dowd) obsessively idolizes. Hawke reminds us what a brilliant naturalistic actor he is in this winning Nick Hornby adaptation.—RDL
The Mills of the Gods (Fiction, Tim Powers, 2025) In 1925 Paris, American expat artist Harry Nolan gets embroiled with Vivi Chastain, the victim of a Moloch-worshipping body-jumping cult. The narrative ramps up almost too abruptly, and unusually for Powers from only one perspective, with his famous supporting cast (Hemingway, Stein, Picasso) less finely drawn. But the occult doings remain scary and cool, even if this installment reads more as alongside history than within it.—KH
Mountain Onion (Film, Kazakhstan, Eldar Shibanov, 2022) With his mom about to leave his dad for dragging them to the countryside on a disastrous back-to-nature impulse, an intense preteen (Esil Amantay) enlists his unflappable younger sister (Amina Gaziyeva) on a quest to save their marriage by acquiring a box of knock-off Viagra. Refreshes the portrait of rural life genre with bright colors, a comic outlook, and a winning narrative throughline.—RDL
Quest For Kim: In Search of Kipling’s Great Game (Nonfiction, Peter Hopkirk, 1996) Great Game historian Hopkirk follows the path of Kim and proposes specific models for the main characters in Kipling’s Pinnacle spy novel. Reading Kim put Hopkirk on the trail of the Great Game in the first place, and the combination of love and knowledge in this book makes it an irresistible and rapid read.—KH
Good
Ready or Not (Film, US, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, 2019) Orphan Grace (Samara Weaving) has finally found a family when she marries Alex le Domas (Mark O’Brien), estranged scion of a wealthy games publishing dynasty. As the words “wealthy games publishers” should warn us, they’re in league with Satan, and the resulting bloody game of Hide and Seek provides all the thrills and most of the interest in the film. Watched as a live-action cartoon, it’s fun while it lasts; Weaving isn’t given enough to hang a character on, so that’s all it really can be.—KH
Okay
Nobody 2 (Film, US, Timo Tjahjanto, 2025) Government assassin/wage slave Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) takes his family (Connie Nielsen, et al.) on vacation to his only good childhood memory, a Wisconsin water park, which turns out to be a front for a murderous smuggling ring led by Lendina (Sharon Stone). The first film worked when it did by contrasting its state-of-the-art violence with a relatively mundane life background embodied by Odenkirk’s schlub character. This one deliberately plunges into a cartoon world almost from the jump, stepping on its few good setups, and even Tjahjanto’s gore-loving camera can’t force much more than the occasional chuckle.—KH
Not Recommended
A Perfect Couple (Film, US, Robert Altman, 1979) A doormat at home but pushy on dates, an eccentric schlub (Paul Dooley) pursues a wan pop singer (Marta Heflin.) With its bizarre gap between the response to the characters it expects from the audience and how it portrays them, and interminable stretches of screen time devoted to an unbearable, untethered-in-time, Broadway-infused MOR band, this might be the weirdest movie Altman ever made. And he made Popeye.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Fantastic 4, The Ax, and a Cozy House Explosion
December 2nd, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
The Ax (Fiction, Donald E. Westlake, 1997) Laid off from a middle management job at a paper company, Burke Devore decides to end his two-year stretch (with no end in sight) of unemployment by killing a middle manager at a paper company, along with the six people with better resumes for that job than his. One of Westlake’s most successful straight psychological thrillers touches Raskolnikovian depths with an uncanny first-person voice, along with Westlake’s untouchable skill at plotting.—KH
Christmas Pudding (Fiction, Nancy Mitford, 1932) To gain access to the journals of a Victorian poet he intends to write about, an indolent writer conspires with a raffish young friend, his subject’s grandson, to pose as his tutor over the holidays . Hilarious, knowing dissection of gentry folkways.—RDL
Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Film, Japan, Nagisa Oshima, 1969) Standoffish book shoplifter (Tadanori Yokoo) and angry store clerk (Rie Yokoyama) circle one another in an ambivalent quasi-relationship. Brechtian essay film made in collaboration with an experimental theater company wrestles with sexuality as a force that surfaces from the id to attack the certainties of male intellectuals.—RDL
The Fantastic 4: First Steps (Film, US, Matt Shakman, 2025) Ex-astronaut couple (Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby), her brother (Joseph Quinn) and their best friend (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) use their superpowers to save her unborn child, and the world, from the planet-eating giant alien Galactus (Ralph Ineson.) An (almost) self-contained story and sure sense for the right tonal notes give third-time’s-the-charm status to the MCU version of the foundational comic books.—RDL
Ikarie XB 1 (Film, Czechoslovakia, Jindrich Polák, 1963) The crew of an interstellar exploration ship endures the deadly rigors of space travel. Humanistic depiction of a community under pressure tells a story without antagonists.—RDL
Sky High (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1955) When Major MacMorris is blown up with his house, Mrs. Artside has lost a tenor for her church choir but gains a mystery to unravel. Gilbert has fun with the “cozy village” mystery in this one, distributing the investigations between Mrs. Artside, her ex-commando son Tim, and eventually Inspector Hazlerigg. Not especially difficult as a whodunit, a bit of a howdunit, but mostly a chance to follow Gilbert through his felicity with small dramas.—KH
Good
The Tender Bar (Film, US, George Clooney, 2021) Abandoned by his deadbeat disk jockey dad (Max Martini), a thoughtful (Daniel Ranieri) kid grows into a Yale student with literary aspirations (Tye Sheridan) under the substitute tutelage of his autodidact bartender uncle (Ben Affleck.) Affectionate character portraits take center stage in an adaptation of a memoir without a strong narrative line.—RDL
Vera Cruz (Film, US, Robert Aldrich, 1954) Ex-Confederate colonel Ben Trane (Gary Cooper) teams up with outlaw gunman Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) and they sell their services to Emperor Maximilian, who commissions them to escort the Countess Marie (Denise Darcel) to Vera Cruz through the Juarista rebel forces. Intermittently gorgeous shots by Ernest Laszlo and plenty of gunplay and betrayal punctuate a proto-spaghetti Western in which not even Gary Cooper is immune to greed and situational ethics. The timing and rhythm of the film seem off (too many rewrites and too many cuts), and Burt Lancaster’s endless mugging gets a tad old as even Lanc later admitted: "There I was, acting my ass off. I looked like an idiot, and Coop was absolutely marvelous."—KH
Okay
Topaz (Film, US, Alfred Hitchcock, 1969) In the days preceding the Cuban missile crisis, a French intelligence officer (Frederick Stafford) sidesteps his own bosses to freelance an operation for his US counterpart (John Forsythe.) Although it’s interesting to see Hitch tackle a more topical and realistic spy story than usual, and to see him working with French stars Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret, the multi-protagonist Leon Uris source novel leaves him mostly serving its complicated plot.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Nouvelle Vague, an Obscure New Wave Gem, and The Brain Stealers
November 25th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
The Brain Stealers (Film, Hong Kong, Umetsugu Inoue, 1968) A scientist’s daughter (Lily Ho) uses judo to protect him from a megalomaniacal supervillain intent on using his plant growth tech to create an army of giants. Fast moving entry in the Shaw Brothers cycle of kooky Bond tributes packs in enough outlandish plot elements for three normal movies. Mind switching! Snake charming! The acid pit! A giant attack owl!—RDL
Happy as Lazzaro (Film, Italy, Alice Rohrwacher, 2019) Beatifically naive young farm worker (Adriano Tardiolo) befriends the feckless son of the Marquise (Nicoletta Braschi) who has tricked his family and neighbors into believing they owe her their labor as sharecroppers. Evanescent portrait of rural life takes a turn into allegorical magic realism.—RDL
Love at Sea (Film, France, Guy Gilles, 1964) A trusting young Parisian office worker (Geneviève Thénier) corresponds with her brooding sailor boyfriend (Daniel Moosmann), who is stationed in gloomy Brest. Beguiling New Wave mood piece, stunningly photographed in both color and black & white, once a meditation on nostalgia for the present, now a time capsule of France at its epitome of cool.—RDL
Madame White Snake (Film, South Korea, Shin Sang-ok, 1960) An eager snake spirit in human form (Choi Eun-hee) wreaks unintended havoc when she falls for a human merchant (Jo Hyeong-geun.) This version of the oft-adapted legend casts it as a melodrama, with the divine laws separating the mortal and immortal realms standing in for the oppressive social conventions bringing suffering to the heroine. As discussed in Episode 642, the director and leading lady were later abducted by North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il.—RDL
Nouvelle Vague (Film, France/US, Richard Linklater, 2025) In 1959, frustrated critic Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) gets his chance to direct his debut film, Breathless. Linklater shoots and cuts this love letter to Godard’s work in completely un-Godardian fashion (although in black-and-white and in French and in a 4:3 aspect ratio), which explains much of why I found myself engrossed in the story and sympathizing with the characters. Much of the rest is Zoey Deutch’s star turn as a frustrated Jean Seberg, who cannot believe she’s stuck doing this movie for this jerk.—KH
Paint, Gold, and Blood (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1989) The impecunious schoolboy Peter Dolamore stumbles over an art theft, and with his chum Stewart Ives eventually investigates. I am a sucker for all three of the strands of this novel: “boys’ adventure” school story, Hitchcockian “wrong man” thriller, and art theft, and by now I’m less surprised (though no less impressed) when Gilbert eventually but seamlessly weaves three seemingly random separate types of novel into one. As is common with Gilbert, the last quarter of the book clicks up into superb suspense.—KH
The Shanghai Free Taxi (Nonfiction, Frank Langfitt, 2019) Journalist portrays everyday life in Xi’s China by following the lives of people he meets by offering free car rides in Shanghai. Sympathetic first person social storytelling with an eye for illuminating detail.—RDL
Good
Moon (Film, Austria, Kurdwin Ayub, 2024) Washed-up MMA fighter (Florentina Holzinger) finds her new gig training the teen daughters of a wealthy family in Jordan increasingly troubling . Hard-edged observational drama from the point of view of a character unable to fully penetrate its core dilemma.—RDL
Ken and Robin Consume Media: Blue Moon, Only Murders in the Building, Bring Her Back
November 18th, 2025 | Robin
Ken and Robin Consume Media is brought to you by the discriminating and good-looking backers of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff Patreon. Each week we provide capsule reviews of the books, movies, TV seasons and more we cram into our hyper-analytical sensoriums. Join the Patreon to help pick the items we’ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.
Recommended
Alucarda (Film, Mexico, Juan López Moctezuma, 1977) Intense student Alucarda (Tina Romero) encourages new arrival Justine (Susana Kamini) to take part in a Satanic ritual, spiraling their convent school into an inferno of bloodshed. Which you’d think is a mixed metaphor but no. Sepia-toned psychosexual horror freakout reminds us that there’s no Catholicism more fervent than the transgressive kind.—RDL
Blue Moon (Film, US, Richard Linklater, 2025) On the opening night of Oklahoma!, lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) gives vent to jealousy and genius before and during a Sardi’s party for his former partner, composer Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), where he hopes to win the love of Yale student Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley). A tour-de-force both interior and mannered by Hawke, for the only director who can bring that kind of performance out of him; Qualley and Scott match him in their paired rejection scenes. Occasional hey-its-that-guy intrusions (“Weegee, take a picture!”) and the weird “height wizardry” involved in depicting 5’10” Hawke as the 4’11” Hart briefly distract, but not fatally.—KH
Bring Her Back (Film, Australia, Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou, 2025) Orphaned teens, protective but volatile Andy (Billy Barratt) and his blind, independence-seeking stepsister (Sora Wong) move in with a seemingly empathetic foster parent (Sally Hawkins) who harbors a hidden necromantic agenda. Hawkins’ intense performance multiplies the horror of being trapped with a cruel and manipulative caretaker.—RDL
The Carter of La Providence (Fiction, Georges Simenon, 1931) Maigret investigates the strangulation of an English yachtsman’s wife in an area frequented by barge workers of the Marne. More of a policier than a puzzle-style whodunnit, focused on characters from a couple of contrasting sub-cultures.—RDL
The Killing of Katie Steelstock (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1980) Local girl become TV pop icon turns up murdered by the canal in her sleepy hometown, bringing “star of the Murder Squad” DCI Knott to the scene. Gilbert cleverly tells a Golden Age style “village mystery” through the lens and language of the police procedural, carefully seeding near-invisible clues to the surprising reveal.—KH
The Night of the Twelfth (Fiction, Michael Gilbert, 1976) When the third murdered boy turns up, DCS Jock Anderson heads up a task force to methodically quarter the country around the Trenchard School for the killer. Gilbert here combines the “school story” complete with enigmatic new “cool” schoolmaster, terrorism thriller (one of the students is the son of the Israeli ambassador), and police procedural to once more produce a sort of holographic Golden Age detection, all in a superbly controlled style running from near psychological horror to character-driven humor.—KH
Good
The Big Sky (Film, US, Howard Hawks, 1952) Enterprising frontiersman (Kirk Douglas) and his hotheaded traveling companion (Dewey Martin) join a cartel-busting riverborne fur trading mission through uncharted territory. Rhythm is everything with Hawks, here sabotaged by a visible studio hack job in the edit suite, but even so this unusually-set Western quest has its moments.—RDL
Only Murders in the Building Season 5 (Television, US, Hulu, Steve Martin & John Hoffman, 2025) Podcasting trio (Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez) run into opposition from a billionaire squad (Christoph Waltz, Renee Zellweger, Logan Lerman) while investigating the murder of their building’s doorman Lester (Teddy Coluca). To my surprise, the derailing of the podcast pretense of the show also derails the narrative, as the mystery twists unsatisfyingly in the wind for the last six episodes with nothing very interesting to replace it.—KH
Of Historical Note
Mission to Moscow (Film, US, Michael Curtiz, 1943) As WWII looms, sensible American diplomat Joseph Davies (Walter Huston) fact-finds in Moscow and Europe. In a move it would later regret, Warner Brothers agreed to produce this film, aimed at drumming up support for its new Soviet ally, at the behest of the US state department. In the history of propaganda, this stands as a gobsmacking exercise in overreach, going so far as to praise the ‘37 Moscow trials as a needed blow against a Nazi conspiracy directed by Leon Trotsky. On a cinematic level, it highlights Curtiz’s ability to energize even the dullest script imaginable with motion, compelling framing and twinkling character moments.—RDL
Okay
The Wrath of Becky (Film, US, Matt Angel & Suzanne Coote, 2023) When white supremacist losers murder her landlady and steal her dog, off-the-grid teen Becky (Lulu Wilson) returns to form as a vengeance machine. Retains the kicky spirit of the original but skimps on the basic building blocks of action-suspense sequences.—RDL
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
