crispian2000 Reviews

Deep Fake Love (2023– )

Enjoyable nonsense.

[8/10 · 13 July 2023]

Don't get me wrong, 8 stars would usually mean it was very good. No, this is very bad. It's so strange a concept that I honestly can't believe any of it is true, the contestants, their partners, the singletons, the supposed deep-fake videos, the plots... any of it at all, the whole thing comes off as made up and, well, fake.

It's basically another version of Temptation Island.

These are the reasons I can't believe it's real... When you've got such very good looking fit young people and you put them with another bunch of very hot good looking people who try to flirt with them, they will forget their partners. The whole premise of this show is that through the most advanced technology, they make it look like their partners are messing with other people, when they'd do that without the expense or complication of deep-fake tech anyway. The segments of the supposed "faked" scenes, would require that the tempters act out these scenes with actors taking the places of the contestants. Therefore the tempters themselves have to be actors and their newly formed connections are faked for the show. The contestants themselves are hilarious and the scenes when they're partying and dancing and talking round the pool area is so obviously filmed without any music so you can hear their dialogue, considering the supposed high tech of this show, you'd have thought they might have at least dubbed in some music so it doesn't look like everybody's dancing in silence.

The contestants themselves, well, they're beautiful to look at, this is something that Spanish TV tends to do extremely well, but are any of them genuine relationships? I haven't got a clue and I don't really care. It's a nonsense programme that was an easy watch that was so preposterous that it gave me many laugh out loud moments.

Dinosaur - with Stephen Fry (2023– )

Oh dear, this is not a visual feast.

[2/10 · 13 February 2023]

First off, Stephen Fry tells us "let's start at the beginning" then in the next breath says we're going back 155 million years and introduces the largest animal to walk the earth. This is obviously NOT the beginning, how did the Dinos evolve? Grow so big? We're told that we're on a land mass called Pangea, yet Pangea ceased to exist 150 million years ago when the land masses had already started to drift apart, so again, this is NOT the beginning.

We're shown a mechanical metal jaw biting into a watermelon as an indication of one Dinosaur's strength, I've seen a man on Britain's Got Talent smash multiple watermelons using his forehead in under a minute before now, all it proves is that watermelons visually look cool when being smashed open, but are no indicator of the strength of a jaw or teeth. This is science for infants.

The worst aspect of this show has to be the visuals. The dinosaurs are poorly rendered and badly animated, akin to the graphics of a game on a Play Station 1, which are made all the less credible when they seem to have used a Zoom meeting style software to superimpose Stephen Fry onto the scenes to attempt to put him there with the giant beasties. At times Stephen's out of focus and low resolution and at all times his image is no more convincingly "there" than when watching the person signing in the bottom right of the picture, on a programme that's being signed for the deaf.

What a shame.

My Son (I) (2021)

Improv at its worst.

[3/10 · 29 January 2022]

Oh dear.

Having seen James McAvoy talking about him having to improvise his part of the movie, I thought it might be interesting. I mean, Mike Leigh makes his movies that way and they add a greater realism to the result. Well, that's certainly not the result in this film.

My Son is a bit of a mess. I always thought James McAvoy is a great actor and he is, he's just a lousy improviser, which in turn made the rest of the cast seem to produce somewhat hammy performances. Bit of a pointless plot too.

Overall it has the feel of a 6th form college project filmed on nice cameras.

Anne Boleyn (2021)

This could have been so powerful.

[1/10 · 4 June 2021]

Such a wasted opportunity. The casting added nothing to a story that's been told so very much better before, so as a project about Anne Boleyn, it was a bit of a pointless project. If they wanted to make a slightly alternative/ modernised version of the story, they could have so easily have kept all of the script and all the cast but shot it in a modern London borough council sink estate (somewhat like Baz Lehrman did with Romeo and Juliette- but without the music). The themes of modern day power struggles, infidelity, rumours, religious leaders and of course one mustn't forget to (de-)cap it all off with an "honour killing" are all just as relevant in Multicultural cities of the 21st century as they were in Anne Boleyn's time. Filmed like that it could have made a powerful statement and drawn parallels to the past without pointlessly reducing this story to a poor joke.

Viewpoint (2021)

Pretty obvious who done it.

[7/10 · 27 April 2021]

It's got Phil Davis in it, he always plays the wrong'un.

I write this after the first episode, so have no real insight for the story, but Phil Davis, when's he ever been the good guy?

Otherwise it's a solid 7/10 for the 1st episode.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark (2020–2021)

45 mins doc stretched to 6 hours!

[1/10 · 10 October 2020]

Seriously, as others have said, this is all about the author who sought to solve the crimes but actually solved NOTHING. From the very beginning, we're bombarded with testimonies about what a fantastic writer she was and a wonderful human etc, who cares? Nothing she did, nor any of her sycophantic acolytes, advanced the case, save your self 5+1/2 hours and just watch the last episode on fast forward if you want to know a little about the case, the rest is just pure filling made of pointless personal thoughts and family matters that have NOTHING to do with the case.

The Salisbury Poisonings (2020)

Overly dramatic.

[7/10 · 15 June 2020]

In the main I enjoyed this drama. My only problem with it is the problem I have with many TV dramas, and that is that it was overly dramatic and at times overacted. Too many scenes of Anne-Marie Duff and her obnoxious son which didn't drive the narrative beyond that she was working hard and wasn't home as much as usual. In fact there were too many scenes of character's home lives and not enough of the police investigation in general. The dialogue was at times unconvincing and unnatural too. I'm sure everyone who worked on the case at the time found it draining at times, but the writer turned up the misery on everyone's faces to 11 and for me that's just lazy and not at all like real life at all. They could have cut out about 1 hour of the over sentimental nonsense and made it a really good watch, but they didn't hence 7 stars from me.

Toc Toc (2017)

Light, fun and endearing.

[9/10 · 14 September 2019]

I love occasionally dipping into the Spanish film industry's comedies, they often offer a quirky slant on life and this one I found to be most endearing. Unlike most British comedies which at best might elicit a flicker of a smile one in a while, this had both myself and my Friday night movie mate both laughing the whole way through. Love it.

Inside Look: The Assassination of Gianni Versace - American Crime Story (2017–2018)

Watch it in reverse from episode 8 to 1 then episode 9.

[8/10 · 27 April 2018]

I started watching the first 3 episodes and was getting increasingly frustrated by this format of jumping back in time every new episode, I'd recorded the whole series and after reading other reviews I thought I'd rather watch the story unfold in the normal time frame. Whoever thought of showing the story the way they did needs a jolly good talking to. My advice is watch the episodes 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 9 in that order forget that that it's called "The Assassination of Gianni Versace", in fact get a sticker and write "The Life, Loves and Deaths of Gianni Versace's Assassin" and stick that on the box, then it'll all make a lot more sense and be a great deal more watchable.

C.B. Strike (2017– )

Unconvincing dialogue throughout.

[6/10 · 4 September 2017]

It's a well filmed and good looking crime drama, but it is so very, very unexceptional. You can see the quality of the production and it's got a strong cast, but personally, I find these sort of dramas totally unconvincing, mainly due to the dialogue. Honestly there's not one interaction that feels genuine or incidental, everybody is incredibly rude to each other. Nobody ever says "hello" or "morning" with a smile, everybody is brusque, suspicious and dismissive. OK, I get it, they're trying to create a mean and moody drama, but it just comes off as a little bit hammy. Of course there's an exception to that rule and in fact there is one person who presents them self pleasantly and unlike all the other characters this person appears to be helpful (this means they'll probably be the killer or deeply involved). So far I have only watched the first episode and a little bit of the second. I've given it a star rating of 6 and I can't imagine I'll be able to change my thoughts as this progresses.