crazydrummer Reviews

FUBAR (2023– )

A team of writers who didn't talk to each other?

[4/10 · 9 July 2023]

While Arnie and the rest of the cast are generally good, the production values are high, the concept and overall story idea is good, the show is completely sabotaged by the most uneven tone of any show I've watched recently. Four stars is generous.

It simply cannot decide if it's a silly almost spoof spy comedy or a serious action/drama. It's as if there were several writers who'd all been given a different brief and then their various segments of script were just pasted together.

One example of many: at one moment the two leads are mocking their therapist for being called Doctor Pepper in a straightforward comedic scene then the show gets serious and tries to show how sleeping with an enemy while on a mission in order to manipulate them would screw you up and damage your own relationships.

The ending of the final episode was also so ludicrously over the top silly and contrived it was an on screen begging letter for a second season.

I sincerely hope there isn't a second season. This needs to be put out of its misery. If, by some miracle there is, I won't be watching it.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)

Oh dear. All the right ingredients but still no cake.

[2/10 · 6 July 2023]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this film that a really terrific script doctor, better editing, better directing and better acting couldn't fix.

Guy Ritchie used to be a byword for slick, well paced, wittily scripted action capers. This appears to have been made while he was on powerful sedatives.

Hugh Grant wastes all his good work earning villain credentials in Paddington Two by turning in a performance so wooden you could have made a fairly sturdy table with it. His accent appears to be a piss poor Michael Caine knock off.

Jason Statham is...well he's Jason Statham. When he's hitting people he's really very good at it but when he's pretending to be a cultured man who loves the finer things in life he's about as convincing as Michael Fabricant's wig.

Aubrey Plaza looks like a woman who is absolutely going to fire her agent for getting her involved in this clunker. Given that she's best known for delivering deadpan sarcasm it's curious that she's given almost no deadpan sarcasm to deliver and the 'funny' lines she does get are so very lame they need crutches.

Cary Elwes is wasted. Completely.

Josh Hartnett plays a pound-land Tom Cruise. I'm not sure that was the intention but that how it comes across.

Bugzy Malone. Who?

The plot, the tech and the McGuffin are illogical and unrealistic. The ending is confusing anticlimactic drivel.

If you have 2 hours spare for pity's sake PLEASE watch something for else.

If you do watch this don't say you weren't warned.

The Flash (I) (2023)

If you've seen a bad review, ignore it. It's fantastic.

[8/10 · 4 July 2023]

It's funny, clever, emotional and exciting. The story is good, the script is sharp and it's well made with just a handful of somewhat dodgy CGI moments (mostly in the opening sequence). Ezra Miller, putting all their personal issues and very problematic behaviour aside, is superb as Barry Allen/The Flash but Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman very nearly steals the film completely. He is absolutely, and predictably, sensational and when he quotes a line from the first Batman movie it sent a shiver down my spine. There are some lovely fan service surprises which I won't spoil here but one in particular made me very very happy and one made me think 'you've got to be kidding me!'

If you like superhero movies this is the best live action one in years and certainly much more satisfying and enjoyable than all the recent Marvel movies. In fact I think it could be the best DC one so far, it's easily on a par with the first Wonder Woman.

The Batman (2022)

A one-note snooze fest filmed with a 40w bulb.

[3/10 · 14 March 2022]

Spoiler free thoughts on The Batman.

It sucks.

Oh? You want details? Here goes...

In life, music and art light and shade are important. This lesson has not been heeded here. This is a one-note movie. It is unrelentingly dark both in tone and in visuals. It's almost impossible to see any detail of anything ever. This darkness can be brilliant when used well, however if the only crayon in your colouring box is black you have a problem.

One example of this is Batman movies typically show Bruce Wayne a fair amount. This is needed to make Batman feel like a real person. Bruce Wayne gets about 3 minutes of screen time here. This Batman is utterly one dimensional. This leads me neatly to...

Robert Pattinson, as I suspected, cannot (or possibly did not) act. He plays the tiny handful of scenes as Bruce Wayne like a petulant teenager. He's morose, surly like an Emo version of Harry Enfield's Kevin character. When he's Batman he moves well and is quite imposing but the suit's doing all the heavy lifting.

The fight scenes are ok. That's about it really. They're ok. There's no sense of jeopardy really. The Batsuit appears impervious to guns, knives, bombs, falling off tall buildings etc.

The one car chase is dull and rather pointless. The omnipresent dark tone means you never see the Batmobile properly or the Batbike. Which leads to...

Collateral damage is rampant and Batman doesn't give a hoot. All the other iterations of Batman have shown concern for innocents caught up in the violence that occurs while he's fighting crime. This Batman is about as concerned as a US President ordering a drone strike.

Andy Serkis is wasted as Alfred.

Phone call for Jeffrey Wright. It's Gary Oldman calling. He wants his performance as Jim Gordon back. He only said you could borrow it, not steal it.

The Riddler never has a single plausible reason for his actions presented. Nor is his ability to do the things he does ever explored or explained. He's just the McGuffin to hang a lot of Bat activity onto. If you want him to be a motiveless loony like Heath Ledger's magnificent Joker then you need both a better actor and more time to let him BE that character.

Colin Farrell as Penguin? Why? What was the point? He's not significant enough of a character in the film to make the hours of prosthetics worthwhile. He's OK I suppose but no great shakes. He doesn't get to do very much except copy Robert De Niro's turn as Al Capone in The Untouchables.

Is there one good thing?

Yes. Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman. Shes outstanding. She's a believable, three dimensional character. You care about who she is and why she does what she does. The next Batman movie needs to star her as Catwoman and have Batman as a very secondary supporting character.

I think that's about it.

Anyhoo. If you enjoyed it then I'm happy for you. We all like different things and obviously all the above is just my opinion not the cold hard facts.

The Watch (2020–2021)

Unwatchable rubbish

[1/10 · 18 November 2021]

I adore the Pratchett books but this loose adaptation absolutely desecrates the books it's supposedly inspired by. If IMDb allowed swearing this review would have a choice selection of coarse Anglo-Saxon to sum up by feelings about it.

Richard Dormer would be a perfect actor to play Sam Vimes, if they'd only stuck to a more straightforward adaptation of the books.

I couldn't even make it through the first episode as they committed the unforgivable sin of taking the name of a vile psychopathic character from Pratchett's masterpiece ('Night Watch') who Vimes is determined to take down and made him a childhood friend of a young Vimes.

If you want to change the character's personalities, (I don't care about gender swaps - a female Vetinari seems quite a good idea), change the setting's look and feel, and change the plot then why don't you just write an original piece with new names and tell everyone it's Pratchettesque? Oh I know why, because know your work is too poor to get commissioned on it's own strengths so you try to hijack a well known fanbase.

This show should be erased from the universe. It's horrible and those involved in writing it and producing should be ashamed. I feel sorry for the talented actors who found themselves involved in it.

Army of the Dead (2021)

Almost but not quite...

[5/10 · 4 June 2021]

I so wanted to recommend this. It has a lot going for it, a good cast, terrific action sequences, a zombie tiger, an interesting premise and, in the opening set piece, an obvious homage to An American Werewolf In London followed by the best credits sequence I've seen since ZombieLand.

Unfortunately the story that follows makes very little sense even for a zombie movie, it steals several whole sections from Aliens (and other movies) and telegraphs them so far in advance they may as well put up subtitles saying 'stolen idea ahead', there are several completely unexplained and ludicrous incidents and a whole sub-plot that becomes meaningless when one character gets completely forgotten about by the writer and/or the director and just vanishes from the film!

The ending also sucked and it's at least 1/2 hour too long.

So if you just want to enjoy Dave Bautista killing A LOT of zombies and are able to ignore everything else you might like it, but if you want a good zombie movie try Warm Bodies or 28 Days/Weeks Later.

Carnival Row (2019–2023)

A rich and complex world

[9/10 · 15 January 2021]

It's rare to see such a rich, complex and thoroughly realised world when the show is not based on a book. It looks glorious, the effects and design are first rate the story is interesting and the characters well rounded.

Absolutely loving it and can't wait for another series.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Dark Page (1993) Season 7, Episode 7

Cheesy and boring

[1/10 · 12 January 2020]

A truly terrible episode that plays out like an episode of a cheesy soap opera. Nothing believable in the characters or the story. Bad writing, sub-par acting and zero entertainment value. The producers must have been desperate to pad the series out to the required number of episodes to green light this one. I can't understand the high marks from some other reviewers.

Grand Piano (2013)

An almost complete waste of time

[1/10 · 24 November 2014]

This tries to do for Elijah Wood's nervous concert pianist what the far superior "Phone Booth" did for Colin Farrell's sleazy publicist and that is: trap someone in a very public place and gradually increase the suspense, tension and menace. Grand Piano almost completely fails in every respect. Elijah Wood's character, Tom Selznick, is returning to the stage five years after breaking down during a performance of an exceptionally difficult piece but he appears to have no depth or believable layers to be stripped away during his ordeal; an essential element in this kind of setup. He is presented as a one-dimensional cypher, a nervous man reluctantly cajoled into a comeback by his exceptionally talented and successful actress wife, played utterly unconvincingly by Kerry Bishé. John Cusack plays Clem the mysterious gunman threatening to shoot both Selznick and/or his wife if he makes a single mistake while playing the famous piece he failed to complete five years previously or if he tries to get help. John Cusack's immense talent is completely wasted on this drivel. He brings a convincing amount of menace to the part but has so little to do I can only assume he took the part purely for a quick pay-check or as a favour for a friend. The reason for Clem engaging in such a grandiose scheme is so painfully contrived and completely ludicrous when finally revealed; that it could very well have originated in an episode of Scooby-Doo in the 1970's and have been recycled here. One of the few enjoyable things about the film is the appearance of Alex Winter (the one that isn't Keanu Reeves from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure) in a small supporting role and the other enjoyable thing is that it is mercifully short at barely 90 minutes long. If you have 90 minutes to spare some time then please don't fill it with this, watch Phone Booth again.

Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014)

A not so fond farewell

[5/10 · 24 November 2014]

I really wanted to get tickets to this but they were hugely expensive and very difficult to get hold of also I couldn't attend the 'live' cinema screening of the last night as we were on holiday. For both of these misfortunes I can now in hindsight be very glad.

A re-union after such a long time is always risky and likely to disappoint, just ask many rock bands that tried to re-capture the old magic, and the Pythons pretty much fail in the expected ways. They're old tired-looking men performing material written by bright energetic young men and it shows. In many of the routines they appear to be simply going through the motions, there's no energy or edge to the performances. The sharp comic timing is generally absent and instead there's heavy reliance on the good will of the audience enjoying the familiar favourites.

Eric Idle and his team did put together a cleverly constructed show, with big musical and dance numbers in a Python style to give the Pythons themselves time to change costumes and, presumably, have a little lie down.

Very little of it made me laugh out loud and the bits that did were generally the big-screen inserts showing famous sketches from the TV-era Python, such as Philosopher's Football, and their series of spoofs on the Olympics, the hundred yard dash for people with no sense of direction etc.

It was great that they included Carol Cleveland, the unofficial seventh Python and the only regular female performer in the shows and films, and there are a couple of funny cameos from Professors Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking at the end of one of the few bits that really did still work, Eric Idle's Galaxy Song from the film "The Meaning of Life". The Argument Sketch, the Dead Parrot Sketch and The Cheese Shop Sketch all worked pretty well as did "Nudge Nudge" but aside from that very little of it would have attracted a paying audience if it wasn't part of an established and historic team.

The DVD itself was badly let down by the appalling picture quality; it was often like watching something on YouTube! It was grainy and fuzzy in almost all the close-ups and I wonder if there had in fact been no close-up shots filmed and the close-up was just a computer- enhanced zoom in on an existing wide shot with the usual loss of resolution that this entails? If so then someone from the film production team needed firing.

For die-hard Python fans only, and even then you'd be better off watching "Life Of Brian" or "Holy Grail" again.

Silent Movie (1976)

Utter drivel

[1/10 · 22 September 2006]

Mel Brooks must have been out of his mind to try this! I vaguely remember seeing it as a kid and enjoyed it then - so I got it on DVD to watch with my family. The jokes are SO obvious and witless - they just don't work. Most didn't even raise a smile and not one raised a laugh. Mel really should have watched some Buster Keaton or Laurel & Hardy to see how physical comedy is done by the masters. The physical comedy is amateurish at best. If he'd watched "The General" or "The Music Box" after making this he'd NEVER have released it. If you saw your mates doing some of these scenes for a charity event then you might laugh - 'cos they are amateurs and you'd enjoy them doing it but these guys are professionals! We expect better. My 11 year old daughter who loves Laurel & Hardy just said "They make the scenes go on too long. The joke's been done and they keep it going long after it's stopped being funny" Sorry Mel. The Producers, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles were your master works this should quietly be forgotten as a brave but doomed self-indulgent experiment.