![](\"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Con-DotField.jpg\")
<\/i><\/p>\n <\/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 The Box<\/a> (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.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n Jolly<\/a> (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<\/a> 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.\u2014KH<\/p>\n The Man Who Spoke Snakish<\/a> (Fiction, Andrus Kivir\u00e4hk, 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.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n 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.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n PG: Psycho Goreman<\/a> (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.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n T\u00e1r<\/a> (Film, US, Todd Field, 2022) Superstar conductor Lydia T\u00e1r (Cate Blanchett) heads for the high point of her career, conducting Mahler\u2019s Fifth with her Berlin Philharmonic, even as her tragic flaw (serial sexual predation) widens and is exposed. A classic tragedy, wonderfully acted (No\u00e9mie Merlant as Lydia\u2019s resentful assistant is magnificently restrained) and composed, punctuated by sudden character reveals that rotate the story.\u2014KH<\/p>\n This Happy Breed <\/a>(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.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n The Voice of the Mountain<\/a> (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\u2019t quite match the wonder of the setup, and Wellman\u2019s prose is not quite as well-joined as in his original 1951-1963 Pinnacle Silver John tales<\/a> of Appalachian magic, but all that says is it\u2019s merely an excellent occult adventure story..\u2014KH<\/p>\n 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\u2019t elevate this relatively rote biopic very far out of its strangely sanitized channel.\u2014KH<\/p>\nRecommended<\/h2>\n
Good<\/h2>\n