{"id":1738,"date":"2019-02-05T15:01:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T15:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2019-02-05T15:08:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T15:08:50","slug":"ken-and-robin-consume-media-lee-jenkins-mulaney-and-joaquin-phoenix-with-a-ball-peen-hammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/ken-and-robin-consume-media-lee-jenkins-mulaney-and-joaquin-phoenix-with-a-ball-peen-hammer\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken and Robin Consume Media: Lee, Jenkins, Mulaney, and Joaquin Phoenix with a Ball-Peen Hammer"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/i><\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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\u2019ll talk about in greater depth on a little podcast segment we like to call Tell Me More.<\/i><\/p>\n

Recommended<\/h2>\n

BlacKkKlansman <\/a>(Film, US, Spike Lee, 2018) While still a rookie, the first black police officer in Colorado Springs (John David Washington)\u00a0 picks up the phone to initiate an investigation into a local KKK chapter, enlisting a colleague (Adam Driver) to adopt his persona for face-to-face encounters. Lee harnesses the pleasures and forward-moving structure of the undercover cop film to the essay style he previously explored in the underrated Bamboozled.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

If Beale Street Could Talk (Film, US, Barry Jenkins, 2018) Young woman in 70s Harlem (Kiki Layne) discovers she is pregnant as she tries to get her man (Stephan James) exonerated on a false rape charge. Measured, reverent adaptation of a James Baldwin novel focuses on the suffocating pressure of lives lived under omnipresent oppression.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City (Stand-up, John Mulaney, 2018) The man who made self-effacing Midwestern-ness funny again, John Mulaney kills in a series of beautifully constructed, dizzyingly cantilevered metaphors and sketches from a horse in a hospital to the uselessness of college (\u201ca hundred \u2026 and twenty \u2026 thousand \u2026 dollars\u201d) to the immortal \u201cStreet Smarts\u201d stranger-danger lectures of the Chicago PD\u2019s own J.J. Bittenbinder. Architecturally laughing at crime, that\u2019s the Chicago way. –KH<\/p>\n

You Were Never Really Here (Film, US\/UK, Lynne Ramsay, 2018) Suicidal skullcracker (Joaquin Phoenix) faces deadly blowback when he accepts an assignment to rescue a politician\u2019s underage daughter from a brothel. Arthouse take on the urban avenger genre featuring an intense performance from Phoenix and subjective visuals from an unreliable point of view.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Good<\/h2>\n

Glass (Film, US, M. Night Shyamalan, 2019) Mastermind Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) orchestrates the showdown between David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and the Horde (James McAvoy). Unifying the casts and storylines of his two most recent successes, Unbreakable and Split, Shyamalan turns his gift for gorgeous lensing and piebald scripting to lo-fi superheroics. We were never going to get a Marvel super-fight on a Blumhouse budget, but so much of the buildup works that — as usual for MNS — it would have been nice if someone had thought all the way through the ending. –KH<\/p>\n

Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (Film, India, Radha Krishna Jagarlamudi and Kangana Ranaut, 2019) Hagiographic biopic of Rani Laxmibai (a fierce Kangana Ranaut) and her heroic fight against the hated British delivers as patriotism and spectacle, although the whole CGI budget got blown on a tiger leaving very little for artillery barrages. But with little complexity in characterization, script, or direction, it stops there. –KH<\/p>\n

Okay<\/h2>\n

City of the Dead<\/a> (Film, UK, John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960) Prompted by her professor (Christopher Lee), an inquisitive history major (Venetia Stevenson) investigates witch lore in an isolated Massachusetts town. This offbeat British production set in gothic America offers dynamic direction but blows its protagonist switch by subbing in a way less engaging second lead. AKA Horror Hotel. \u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Ocean\u2019s 8 (Film, US, Gary Ross, 2018) Paroled convict Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock) assembles a team of charming criminal specialists to execute a jewel heist at the Met Gala. The casting is the best part of this flat franchise extension, showing how much of the Clooney\/Pitt trilogy\u2019s buoyancy depended on Steven Soderbergh\u2019s ineffable stylistic verve.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019ll talk about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audiofree","tag-ken-and-robin-consume-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}