NoWo's Reviews
Funny Asterix remix, with retro-woke add-ons
This short series is pretty obviously a labour of love, or at least passion, from Chabat, and (most probably) friends.
It mixes elements from different Asterix stories, although I'm not versed enough in the lore to identify which, for a fast-paced, pretty comical result.
It's visually creative, adds some more modern elements (Fastanfurius the legionnaire ...), and a pretty good watch overall.
It's also very French, you probably need to dock 2 stars if you can't watch it in the original, so, there's that.
Sadly, it has the greatest blight of early 21st century wokism, namely morally and intellectually perfect female characters.
Well, supposedly, they just come off as bland, predictable, and frankly nagging, but hey, nobody ever accused your average leftist of self-awareness.
Thankfully, the pacing is brisk and well-controlled, meaning those extraneous characters have very little screen time. Silver lining.
At least Asterix and Obelix are indeed the main characters in their own show.
Also, and I have no idea whether these were imposed on the script writers, quick plugs of climate change, covid1984 being accidentally transmitted by eating bats, and such.
Ah, le sigh. Being funny requires more wit than intelligence.
Created: 06-12-2025
Slop
I gave in to my youngest wanting to see that.
This movie lacks a script, a director, and maybe someone to red-light the project before this mess was made.
Giving it a 1 for a few jokes slipped under the radar.
Momoa does his best to save his character, but polishing a turd only gets one so far.
Black is, well, par for the course in this dog and one-trick pony show. Crude over-acting, stupid singing and awkward homosexual overtones. Pinnacle of humour.
Not rating wokeness too high, as there's no overt political agenda. Except the white girl-boss. And the black loud female. And ineffective, stupid males. White, obviously. Even Black.
All-in-all on par with the Hoskins Mario movie. Or Dacascos' Double Dragon. Or the later Mortal Kombat installments.
It's so bad, it should have been directed by Uwe Boll.
Created: 05-28-2025
Average, but who's the target audience?
I watched this one not knowing the Japanese original, beyond that it existed, and assuming it would relate to the Japanese gambling genre, so, unabashedly over the top and hyper-intellectualized.
This American adaptation is not.
The depth is on par with a puppy’s piss puddle. The plot is a rather bland fare, and the twists are easily anticipated.
It does have a few things going for it, though.
First, it’s a short watch, at ten 30-minutes episodes. And attention is not completely required (although I may have missed some subtle plot points).
Second, the pacing is correct, and there is enough creative cinematography for the show to not be boring. Some visual cues are probably lifted from the original.
Third, the actors. They’re young, apparently unknown, trying their collective best, and they get off pretty well, considering the very peculiar script.
Solanke does honourably with a weak character, O’Driscoll and Alexandrova are quite adequate, despite maybe too much posing (but it goes with the genre).
Martineau is, to my mind, the hot chick version of Chow Yun-Fat. I don’t mean just being Asian; she does have the same sort of face, and tend to mimic his facial expressions.
The result is both very pleasant, and somewhat distressing. I’m never watching Hard Boiled again.
She does have the enthusiastic psychopath down pat, and will probably improve her femme fatale with a few more years on her. The rest of her acting is rather lacklustre, but this could honestly be due to a weak script.
On the bad side: Americanized. And not the good-ol-days America.
So, first, blackened. Or blackified. Black-faced? The Japanese have opinions about the darker-skinned denizens of the world, and very few of them in their art.
To be fair, Solanke’s character is not your typical ghetto/gangsta caricature, so there’s that.
On the other hand, Edwards’ Mary is a typical girl boss. Not Japanese ice-queen boss bitch, as the other females. American girl boss. And Edwards herself is a clear DIE casting choice, and blends very badly with the rest of the rather gorgeous female cast. No shade on the actress, she looks like the director forced her to pack weight for the role.
Also, weak males. Left and right. All around. And also stupid. But somewhat handsome. Seriously. Is something in the water turning the frogs gay?
Third, gender fluidity, strawman mockery of “traditional masculinity”, and pervasive sapphism, which could very well be in the original. None of these are pushed very hard, tough. Almost as if boxes needed checking, but reluctantly. Weird.
So, a triumph of form over substance, not a bad watch, but not memorable either.
Created: 05-21-2025
Everybody's got something to hide, except for him and his monkey
Like Billy Elliot, but straight. Mostly. With a monkey. Chimps are technically apes, but monkeys are more cheeky. And more fun by the barrel.
The lads speak like proper blokes. Like Harry Potter, but fun. Might be exotic for the Yanks. I think the Yankettes like that. That's a lot of likes. Channeling my inner Jersey girl. Normandy, not NJ.
The whole movie is pretty much apolitical. Williams comes from back when entertainers knew not to alienate half their audience. Fancy that.
As a movie, it's well-crafted, energetic, unapologetic, slightly self-reflective, sans the angst. The musical pieces also reminded me why I never was into boy bands. Or girl bands. Not the audience. Williams somewhat comes off as a Jamiroquai wannabe with Oasis envy, in a male Spice Girls act. Dreadful.
Being unfair here. From what little I've heard, he's a genial chap. Certainly seems so from his biopic.
Still, I enjoyed the movie. Probably means it's good.
And well, monkey.
Created: 04-26-2025
It's good, but not great
Well, the bar is now so low, simply not having Streep play Jesus in the Old Testament is almost enough.
I don't consider myself a scholar of the Bible, bit I'm pretty sure the writers played a bit loose with the source at times. Pretty sure monogamy wasn't a thing for the kings of the times.
At least, they did not introduce non-sense: men are men, with beards on their chins.
The cast is a solid ensemble of could-have-beens: talented enough that they could have had a bigger career, but not lucky enough.
Or too ethnic: they (almost) all look appropriately Semitic. No black-washing this time, go figure.
Visually, the series is adequate but uninspired. Or inspired, actually. Mostly Lord of the Rings (Lang's Samuel is very Gandalf-y), with some Dune, and a tad of Shogun.
Again, I'm not an expert on the period, but the clothing might be off part of the time, jewelry is sometimes suspicious, weapons are anachronistic more often than not, and the architecture, especially in wide shots, often looks Medieval, Central to Eastern Europe to me.
Anyway, the script flows well, narration is clear albeit not inventive, and the cast works hard at selling their parts.
Uloom and Fehr are stand-outs (always liked Fehr), Lang, well, is about as good as he was in Conan. Or Braven. He really should avoid filming with Momoa.
Created: 04-19-2025
Smashing.
First series: fantastic writing, concise, meaningful dialogs, tight photography.
Found it superior to Daredevil. The Punisher is less super-hero, more gritty film noir.
Well, there's still Hollywood trauma recovery, and Hollywood balistic, which are somehow more jarring in a more realistic context.
I would say the purely action part is inferior to the Ennis run of the comic, as Castle can be something of a meathead, whereas Ennis' Punisher was a cold, calculated, tactical killing machine.
Characters are great, no effort skipped in developing even tertiary characters, and the acting is rock solid.
Still, white men can be good or bad, but all bad characters are white men. It's Hollywood, baby.
Second series, well, introduces a single mom love interest (young boy, sort of makes sense in Castle's case), and a sassy, mean, juvenile girl-boss. The kind to give lip when she's just been rescued from assassination, and is even further out of her depth than she is up her own arse.
In short, an unlikeable moron. An unfortunate choice for someone present in most scenes.
She does get better over time, but only marginally. Far less screen time, which is an improvement.
The female mercs start kicking less arse in the second half, because a 100 pounds disadvantage is one hell of a disadvantage.
Tactically speaking, everybody has a two-digits IQ; the "woods at night" scene is particularly egregious.
Honestly, it feels like they started to wokify the whole thing, and thought better of it halfway through.
The new actors are, well, probably less expensive. At least, Stewart is excellent. Photography still top-notch. Music's good. Alice In Chains, always nice. The writing is still decent. Sort of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Punisher style, with a side dish of Harley Quin (although Mr J is rather unconvincing).
Still excellent, but definitely a sophomore slump.
Created: 04-01-2025
Burr has become the less masculine version of Kathy Griffin (lifted from @williamdistefano5698)
Although I would argue he's become yet another Fallon, Colbert, Kimmel, et al.
Judging from his public declarations of late, he's now a woke male feminist. And a slogan-braying socialist donkey.
Also, anti-white racist, so I'd tell him to sod off, but I guess his wife is already doing that.
For you Americans, I'm implying his wife strap-ons him. Or maybe she got his dick grafted on after he lost it, I don't know.
Seriously, his wife is basically unfuckable, her 'career' suggests a low 3-digits IQ, and his description of her during his show does not scream marriage prospect.
How did she get that much of a hold on him? Or is it his 'Hollywood' break-through? Kompromat?
He even jokes about being a "happy wife, happy life" broken man. And proud of it. And from there goes down the list of usual female liberal talking points.
Some are even somewhat valid; it's always comforting to hear part of the audience boo when broaching the subject of male melancholy.
In this show, he's unashamedly leftist. One could argue he was always overtly political, if common sense counts as conservatism.
But it always made sense (hence the common sense). Female athletes are paid less because they don't sell tickets. Duh.
Now he's basically spewing propaganda, ie: affirmation with no attempt at argumentation. With a varnish of tough guy attitude.
In his intro, he admits that he "did stand up because that was the easiest way to walk into a room (...) and make everybody like" him. Also, "the way I've moved through the world has always been: where's the place I have the least chance of being hurt?"
Well, at least he's an honest coward. Then again, he probably thinks cowardice is a positive trait.
So, self-admitted sell-out.
Some of the material is still funny.
He's entitled to his opinions. But Maddow and Reid say the same for free.
And a plethora of late night talk-show hosts are as mildly funny as he is.
So, what's his point?
I couldn't say, I stopped watching at the half-hour mark.
Created: 03-18-2025
She still got some, but her California is showing
I used to like Shlesinger. Then again, she used to be balanced in her views.
I was probably put off by her investing the first 5 minutes of her routine to berate men for "not realizing women are persons too before having a daughter of their own".
Well, I use routine quite liberally, as it was more preaching than funny.
Also, yeah, maybe. I know for a fact many women can be mothers and grandmothers to males without extending compassion to men, so there's that.
Don't know, maybe it's just me being thin-skinned.
Most of the audience's laughs are at the expense of men. Maybe because most jokes are too.
She has a part about pregnancy shrinking parts of women's brain, and making them unfunny. Even stating she can't afford that, being a comic with two kids.
Yep, agreed.
I was on the fence until she launched into the "real men are like this" tirade.
To echo Palahniuk, not sure one more woman trying to tell me what to do is the solution.
So yeah, she's gone pretty lefty with age. Not full retard, but definitely men=stupid women=victims, and political.
She even states it's the hill she's willing to die on.
Well, it's a free country.
Also, what with the trousers? She used to be hot. Now she's nice-looking for a forty-something.
And, before the cries of 'misogyny' and 'patriarchal male gaze': I remember McDonald, or even Carlin, being somewhat dashing young bucks, but they stopped playing to that at some point.
Created: 03-14-2025
Mesowokeithic
The movie itself is not bad, but the mid-10s pre-wokeism is grating.
Every male character is emasculated to an extent, and acceptable only if he conforms to a female behaviour, or is outright homosexual.
Every male character is both a victim and a champion, and grows up into the leader she knows she can be.
At least it's not overtly preaching. It's last decade. They still understood "show, don't tell"; I guess not all talent had quit at the time.
Created: 03-02-2025
There's only so much an actor can do
Kick-Ass buffed up nice. Taylor-Johnson is undeniably charismatic. Also, he will get the female audience approval.
The rest of the movie is mediocre at best. Crowe is fat and bored. Hechinger doesn't find his pace. Movie is meandering and 45 minutes too long.
Major offender is DeBose, providing the obligatory black girlboss magic.
Where Taylor-Johnson worked himself into current year's beefcake, she is aggressively mid. Because, why bother, diversity hire.
Wokeness is rather subdued, probably left on the floor in the final cut. All the baddies are white men, the local branch of the Society of Magical Negroes is all female, and London is 60% black.
The latter being realistic. So many Somali, London doesn't even feel like Pakistan anymore.
Created: 03-01-2025
