NoWo's Reviews
Dusk. Dawn. Not Twilight.
They know how to shoot (supposing Tarantino meddled behind the camera too). Maybe an overdose of ocher tones at some point, but hey, it works.
Clooney is good in a rather undemanding role.
Tarantino writes his character into sucking tequila off Hayek's foot. That's a lot of money to indulge in his private proclivities. He does make for a very convincing psychopath. Sure hope he's acting.
To be honest, Hayek's scene is hot as sin. Well, until it's not. Being a true feminist, she hides from the male gaze behind her massive mammaries and luscious figure. And her superior acting skills. I mean, she's rather good, but she launched her career with Desperado and this. And Dogma. And Four Rooms. She's the dancing bikini TV girl. Notice a theme. Makes her later discourse Johansson-level of hypocritical.
Lewis is not at her best here. No real reproach, just, she's done better.
The rest of the cast is a bit stiff for my taste; I mean, it's not a serious movie, nobody's getting out alive.
The first half of the movie - the gangster part - is highly atmospheric. Reminiscent of Reservoir Dogs. The second half is just mindless fun. About as far from Twilight as possible while still having vampires. And a disco ball.
Weird vampires, death mariachis, crotch cannon, it has it all.
Neither Rodriguez' nor Tarantino's best, but stupidly enjoyable. Except not for kids. Or older people. Probably not most women either.
Created: 07-09-2025
Murphy's whole career behind a camera...
Written, directed, produced and fronted by Murphy. Also starring his brother and Pryor, his long-time inspiration, girlfriend Guy and friend Hall.
It doesn't get much more personnal than that.
Well, that's not all he wrote, but that's all he directed. Kept on producing, though, cause he's astute and likes making money.
And it didn't deter him from trying to grow out of the outrageous funny man image.
Which he was not completely ready to. There's still much of Axel F in his character.
If memory serves, Pryor had been diagnosed with a life-threatening condition. So, not at his best. But still very good. Foxx, Aiello, Lerner and most of the supporting cast are old grognards by the time of this movie. Pro-level performances all around.
Photography is decent for the time, so, nothing impressive, despite competent lighting and nice colour palettes. The camera work is adequate, but hardly impressive. Not every actor is Eastwood. Or Beaty, in this context.
Not only is it not woke - Murphy's always shown a 80s view on race - but it's not even PC: there are even fights involving women. Which end up as realistically expected.
This movie hesitates between film noir and Murphy comedy, and never finds a balance. Beaty's Dick Tracy the following year puts it to shame, with its assumed comic book looks all the way.
The Godfather it is not; still, it somewhat works, and makes for a pleasant watch.
I suppose it was under-rated at the time, considering Murphy was on top of the world, high expectations included.
Created: 07-07-2025
Robert Jordan Plays Revenge Porn From Dusk Till Dawn at the Cotton Club
The bluesman, not the author.
I've heard tons of good about this movie, but from the wrong people and in a very homogeneous message. So, sus.
First, the good, cause there are more uglies than at a pussy hat march.
Jordan does a fine job playing both blue oni / red oni, angel / demon, or whatever colour-coded dichotomy comes to mind. The difference between characters is subtle, let's leave it at that.
Steinfeld does what she does best: she stands there, and is convinced of her own talent. Caton might have a career. Remmick tries hard but does not quite shine. The supporting cast is solid.
The music is an obvious strong point of the movie. No comment, it's well done and well used. Would like to hear that level of effort more often.
Photography is excellent. Reminiscent of Tarantino. In a good way. It sometimes gets ambitious, to its detriment, I think. The changes in aspect ratio are somewhat interesting.
I've briefly read from 'journalists' that the movie was heavily researched. It literally opens by heavily mispronouncing _griots_ (French colonies, so "gree-yo"), and mis-characterizing the filidh, but hey, all white people look the same anyway.
The bad: it's steeped in racial stereotypes. And not the best ones. It briefly represents black Christianity, and promptly contrasts with and glorifies the proto-gangsta rap that served the black community so well until this day. /sarcasm.
On that point, be warned that many black characters talk in heavy vernacular, quite possibly ebonics. So, a creole of West Country English. Not sure if historically accurate. Note that African-American Vernacular English, as a concept, makes about as much sense as Latine-Celtic Vernacular Bantu.
Anyway, I find it hard to understand. So much so, I turned English subtitles on at some point.
Injuns, well, they hunt a vampire without any visible specialized gear, corner it into a small, isolated house, and promptly twerp off when opposed a few harsh words, letting a containable issue flare into a full catastrophe. While being so polite they might as well be Canucks.
Whites, well, here comes the ugly: they're all crackers.
The ugly: the movie is openly racist. Whites are evil. They hold the black man down. They're all MAGA (one can dream). In a bout of common Hollywood revisionism, the movie acts like the KKK / White League / Red Shirts and Jim Crow laws were a majority, and not offshoots of the Democrats. The "it wasn't _real_ communism" crowd.
"Chicago is Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations," they say. Sure. Chicago was also at the beginning of a, to this day, uninterrupted string of Democrat mayors. Hasn't changed since then. Go figure.
I digress, Ryan Kyle Coogler. Gaelic given names, German family name. "Cultural appropriation" much?
Then again, Michael B. Jordan. The B is Swahili, but the rest is Hebrew.
Anyway, white people as vampires. That have to be invited in. And a hive mind. Funny, that.
Especially considering the head sucker is Irish, a people that got an even shorter end of the stick than the Chinese or blacks.
I don't know what the director's political angle was, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to interpret vampirism as socialism. Hive mind, need to be voted in, then drain you and make more of themselves while destroying everything.
As an aside, I'm all for liberty in speech and freedom of association. Which incidentally also entails the freedom to not associate.
Hollywood seems hell-bent of late on establishing the concept of justifiable hatred, often racial. Given the employment and crime statistics of this particular demographic in the last, say, half century, I'm really not certain black people want to entrench that precedent.
Same goes for the strong undertone of separatism.
Again, Kügler does as he wishes, but his kind usually is the first to cry when the same wind blows the other way.
All in all, I'm not impressed with the research, historical or cultural, the imagery lacks subtlety, the social commentary is foreign to the actual world.
The movie is good, but atrociously racist. The kind born of ignorance and ideology that always leads to atrocities.
Rodriguez did it better. Heck, Murphy did it better.
Created: 07-07-2025
Never reaches the summit
An excellent direct-to-DVD movie (there, I show my age).
As a theatre movie: seriously? Why? Why shoot your whole movie with no depth of field? Why film with a potato?
Also, why does Neeson keep acting in these action flicks? Bloke's past 70 now, and rich as can be. I'll admit he still holds up well for his age, though.
Fan is devastatingly charming, and goes 110% into her role. Morrell is more fun than a barrel of Aussie monkeys.
The storyline is full of holes and less than griping (watched this as a 3-parter, doing something else); exterior shots are nice but could have used professional photography. They're unexpectedly grounded in realism, though; almost part documentary. Or amateur travelogue.
I've watched worse in the 80s. It's still a rather bad movie. But it has a quirky charm.
Created: 07-06-2025
on par with episode I
So, as Star Wars episodes I-II, it brings shame to the original trilogy, while appearing not so bad compared with subsequent efforts (Rings of Power comes to mind, but thankfully briefly).
Full disclosure, I have not watched the 6 latest SW.
Inexplicable ethnic diversity grows worse, extraneous girl-bosses too.
The elf CGI are atrocious, worse than the oliphant-surfing scene in RotK (I think).
Gandalf looks cool, though. Smaug's alright, although the economics implications of his gold stash are, well, it's fantasy.
Let me not forget Frye: as much as I like the chap, his attempt to portray the evil right-wing capitalistic despot of Laketown is incredibly heavy-handed, and evokes only infamous right-wing dictators such as Stalin, Mao or Pot.
Seriously, Laketown's problem is not free market, it's obviously its socialist utopia, its historic charismatic leader having been overthrown by a garden-variety populist communist.
Visually impressive but regrettably forgettable, my youngest liked it, we bailed out before the end.
Created: 07-06-2025
Not everything is better reheated
The Hobbit is a children's book, short and self-contained (originally).
It does not contain enough material for a 9-hours trilogy.
This movie massively reuses assets from the LotR movies, not only to reduce costs, but also to score sympathy by association.
By necessity, it adds huge amounts of original material. Original, but lackluster.
What it fails to capture is the epic dimension of the previous movie. One of my gripes at the time was treating the dwarf as a comedic sidekick (because, dwarf tossing).
13 times the dwarves (eat your heart out, Snow White), 13 times the tonal dissonance. It's jarring.
As many movies in the decade since, this one oscillates between heroism and deconstructive, meta-"humour".
The joks are predictable and fall flat, taking with them any aspiration to grandeur.
Because heroism is masculine, and we don't like masculinity, do we.
1 point for wokeness, mostly because irresistible urge to introduce 'original' one-dimensional girl-boss characters, and inexplicable ethnic diversity.
Worse shite has been written around Tolkien (Rings of Power, anyone?), but this is tedious, and made somewhat palatable only because of its forebears.
Created: 07-06-2025
Tired, try-hard and boring
With the French bloke out, it's all females and their gay best friends.
The Noriko - sorry, Quynh - subplot fares barely better. Leaves some room for secondary character to breathe, which they don't really do. Except Booker. Schoenaerts is clutch.
Lots of sudden cuts in the first part, lots of exotic locales.
This movie felt to me as though it was trying real hard to whip itself into a good mood.
Trying - and failing - to establish a lore. The result is muddled, conflicts with the previous movie, and builds nothing.
In that way, it really does emulate the Highlander movies (although there can be only one).
I suspect Rucka's also trying to draw from Vampire the Masquerade lore, in an attempt to bolster his flagging creativity. Metuselah and stuff.
Thurman has grown old. Unkindly so. Especially compared to Theron, who's only 5 years her junior. And she's less than a decade older than Ngo. She still has that effortless elegance, and that genial charm, but not that unexpected beauty. Still a top notch actress, though.
Theron works hard to carry the movie. She's an excellent actress, but still sluggish in fight scenes. Atomic Blonde worked because the choreography was tactical, not physical. And she was younger.
Layne is still young. Meaning she's either badly coordinated, or just lazy with her training.
As a note, the "walking through the ghosts of the past" scene is just brilliant. A minute of grace in an unispired movie.
The rest is trudging through the motion. Anybody with two brain cells knows what is going to happen. But it comes slowly.
Also, this opus is less aggressively anti-male and anti-white than the previous. Studios must be starting to realize which side of the toast is buttered. Maybe they shouldn't grow too lucid, lest they realize most of them are the walking dead.
All-in-all, not bad, just tepid and directionless. Oh wait, this means bad.
Not sure the third movie this is desperately trying to build up to will be made.
Created: 07-05-2025
Here we are, born to be yaaasss queens of the universe
The Old Guard is, in its own way, an attempt to spin off the Highlander mythos. It does add some interesting character building to the immortal theme. Although one should probably go to the comic for that. Most were 'simplified' (dropped) for the movie. Like most of the old guard being technologically retarded.
Rucka, the original comic book's writer, is a proud Portlander. Guy has always been something of a lefty, but I still liked some of his stuff. Mostly Queen & Country, not into super-heroes.
He did seem to come down with full-blown TDS in the last decade, and turn complete male feminist to boot. Lovable chap.
So yeah, somewhat woke, although it used to be he wasn't too overt in his writing.
The cast is ethnically diverse, as per the comic, although the opposite would be weird in context. Some race-swapping, though: incidental good guys are suddenly non-white. Dr. Menguele is suddenly female, though, go figure.
Still, what are the odds of an openly gay couple among 4 characters? Also, Rucka's not big on details: homosexuality did exist, but definitely not in its modern form, especially around the Caroline Renaissance.
The Scythians had (probably) female soldiers, but mostly in the form of mounted short bows (possible origin for the Amazons legend), not axe-wielding maniacs. Plus the axe is some sort of weird ass labrys, and not a sagaris. Why a woman of the steppes would carry a Minoan symbol of divinity is beyond me. On par with a Scottish goat-herder swinging a katana. Well, she does have a Greek name and a Norman face, so there.
Rucka's an avid practitioner of historical revisionism anyway.
Unburdened by what has been, indeed.
The movie adaptation does add wokeness. Andromache, very much hetero in the comic - basically a sex fiend - now sports a butch cut and a sapphic sub-plot. Complete with that old feminist dog whistle (bitch whistle?), of witch trials. Which killed many more men than women, but hey, victims, amirite? Also, the women in STEM one.
Theron is, by what few accounts I've seen, a revolting human being, but she does put in the work.
The rest of the cast is on par with her: no glaring shortcomings. Ejiofor is the stand-out, expectedly.
Quite a few good, albeit semi-original ideas, competently set to film, but strong female possibly homosexual boss babes, black female saviour, weak, homosexual and corrupt males, usual anti-historical talking points. It's Hollywood, baby.
Created: 07-05-2025
Could have been excellent
Hoult and Cage are brilliant - for once, Cage is not the only main character. Hoult is shaping up to be consistently good.
The movie itself is tongue-in-cheek, colourful and irreverencious.
Sadly, it's marred by girlboss syndrome - which could make sense in context - but males are uniformly bubbling incompetents. It's played for comedy, but, white blokes exclusively.
Awkeye final - Aqua fina - the female lead - seems close to developing an acting ability. Also, comedic timing. Same character, same act as in Shang-Chi.
It's wonderful that her career began before she was ready. I mean, for her, not for us. Must be her physique. Or not. I hear she's a rapper too. Hopefully, it's all I hear.
I really liked the photography. It is, as previously stated, colourful. And expressive. Far from the usual Hollywood orange and teal.
Good movie, sadly trying to trend toward the 'modern audience', which I am not part of.
Could have been excellent with a less sexist/racist script, and a better actress.
Created: 07-03-2025
Lost its spirit
Cage is fat and tired, Elba is off his pace (French? Seriously?), rest of the cast is mediocre, character parameters have radically changed, the camera work is jittery and chaotic, the colours are weird in a bad way, and everything feels cheap.
The excavator scene even feels cheap with money. Nouveau riche.
The movie trudges through the motions. Even Lambert fails to behead anybody. Head fails to guide anyone.
I was doing something else during the second half.
Created: 07-03-2025
