{"id":3755,"date":"2025-04-29T13:12:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T13:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/?p=3755"},"modified":"2025-04-29T13:21:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T13:21:20","slug":"ken-and-robin-consume-media-sinners-havoc-wolfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/ken-and-robin-consume-media-sinners-havoc-wolfs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken and Robin Consume Media: Sinners, Havoc, Wolfs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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

Broken Rage (Film, Japan, Takeshi Kitano, 2025) Shambling hit man (Beat Takeshi) comes under police pressure to lure his clients into a drug bust. Kitano\u2019s ongoing ethical struggle with the popularity of his violent yakuza films gives rise to a dual structure, where the same story is told twice, first seriously and then absurdly.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Dodes\u2019ka-den<\/a> (Film, Japan, Akira Kurosawa, 1970) Poverty grinds down the residents of a Tokyo shantytown. Kurosawa\u2019s fundamental humanism and wild color design leaven the bleakness of the source material.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Havoc (Film, UK, Gareth Evans, 2025) In a city of corruption, a remorseful cop (Tom Hardy) races to scoop up the son of the politician who owns him (Forest Whitaker) before vengeful triads get to him. Thundering, kinetic action set pieces and Hardy\u2019s left-field acting choices ring variations on classic cop noir themes.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Layer Cake<\/a> (Film, UK, Matthew Vaughn, 2004) Cocaine trafficking middleman (Daniel Craig) seeking to get out instead gets two annoying-to-impossible assignments from mercurial mob boss Jimmy Price (Kenneth Cranham), and things spiral thusly. Somewhat more straight-faced and straightforward than Guy Ritchie\u2019s earlier London crime films, Vaughn relies instead on propulsive energy and the real stakes of the plot. Colm Meaney\u2019s turn as Jimmy\u2019s second-in-command is only the top of the superb supporting roles on display, along with the tannest Michael Gambon has ever been.\u2014KH<\/p>\n

Sinners (Film, US, Ryan Coogler, 2025) The Smokestack Twins (Michael B. Jordan) return to their Mississippi Delta hometown from WWI and Capone\u2019s Chicago to open a juke joint with secret weapon pure bluesman Sammie (Miles Caton). But you know what happens when you reject Chicago: God punishes you with Irish vampires. Coogler and composer\/music coordinator Ludwig G\u00f6ransson synthesize music, action, and story in a way that even most musicals struggle to achieve, while also providing a rich slice of Delta life and a superb vampire movie. If anything, it feels almost over-full of goodness; I await the inevitable three-hour-plus director\u2019s cut with anticipation.\u2014KH<\/p>\n

Sinners (Film, US, Ryan Coogler, 2025)Twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Mississippi after a stint in Chicago\u2019s 30s gangland to open a juke joint, little suspecting that their opening night star attraction (Miles Caton) has drawn the attention of music-appropriating vampires. Delta blues culture nerdtroped with patient assurance and passionate energy.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Good<\/h2>\n

Diamond Island<\/a> (Film, Cambodia\/France, Davy Chou, 2016) WIthdrawn young man from a rural village gets a construction job in the big city and reunites with his secretive brother, who has joined a circle of rich kids. Chou pushes against the limitations of contemporary neorealism in a lushly photographed slice of life drama.\u2014RDL<\/p>\n

Okay<\/h2>\n

Pontianak 100kg (Film, Malaysia, Shuhaimi Lua, 2023) A food-obsessed girl (Aya Amiruddin) returns to her native village as a plus-sized pontianak, who devours the locals\u2019 food while the mayor (Kazar Saisi) frets. Ostensible comedy defangs the female-revenge horror of the cannibal-vampire ghost into a series of fat jokes and Scooby-ish fleeing. As a core sample of Malay horror-comedy, I hope it\u2019s a flawed one.\u2014KH<\/p>\n

Wolfs (Film, US, Jon Watts, 2024) Both called to the same hotel room to clean up the same dead not-prostitute (Austin Abrams), two fixers (George Clooney, Brad Pitt) trade dick-measuring bits and bits of information. A tonal mess that compulsively vitiates its own meager stakes for mild approval, it eerily embodies the \u201cmade for streaming\u201d slop movie despite the considerable charm Clooney and Pitt exhibit throughout.\u2014KH<\/p>\n

Wolfs (Film, US, Jon Watts, 2024) All is not what it seems when two fixers (George Clooney, Brad Pitt) are forced to work together to whisk away a hotel room corpse (Austin Abrams.) Genial reminder of how good the movies that inspired it are.\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":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-3755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiofree","tag-ken-and-robin-consume-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3755","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=3755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenandrobintalkaboutstuff.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}