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Reviews
Atlantic Crossing (2020)
Innacurrate Hollywood Soap Opera version of history.
Kyle McLaughlin is a better FDR than I expected, but this portrays his as weak and lovelorn. They tried to make this into a love tirangle and a lot is overlblown and wrong. The actress and writing portraying Eleanor is better.
Now, as a fictional drama for PBS Materpiece Theatre it is ok to waste time and the period details are not bad, but even All Creaures Great & Small and others are better.
But it is not just the romance and soap opera aspects that are inaccurate, this is clearly written with a pro-US bias that seems to trash the British and totally undercuts the Norwegian role in the War - as if the Norwegians were given nothing to do by the British until FDR gives the Norwegians a ship to sail that the Princess has got through her efforts.
The actual ship was about half the length of a destroyer (174 feet long) and was too small for convoy use in the Altantic. Meanwhile, the British had given the Norwegians 5 of the 40 older ships the US sent over to Britain - British worked closely with the Nowegians with a number of ships the Britsh provided as the Norwegians only had 1 modern (1930s) ship they managed to save, but there were others and more importantly the Norgegian merchant fleets and whaling fleets were used in the war effort.
If I was Norwegian I would be pissed off that is makes their part in the war so small and dependent on the US charity. A documentary on Norway's role in WW2 would be interesting - including the role of Qusiling who I don't think was even mentioned by name.
In short, this is about as accurate as Inglorious Basterds.
Framing John DeLorean (2019)
Informative and intriguing approach to mixing new and old
John DeLorean's rise to the top of GM, and what he did there, is even more intriguing than this film has time to show - read the wikipedia entry. He had a lot of success early in life, took big risks and cut corners/used loopholes and angered people off by his showiness, yet somehow he took very stupid and dodgy moves after GM - it is surprising he didn't end up like Iacocca running a major company after leaving GM. Starting a mass production car company from scratch was a huge blunder.
A few factually errors/things I would note - he was acquitted of his second set of legal problems but the film never makes it clear..As a car buff, I cringed when some film footage of what was supposedly the GTO was shown - its actually a 1959 full size Pontiac (though later commercials show the right car), and they are wrong in saying that Chrysler was the last person to successfully start a car company in the 20s - Kaiser was successful in 1945 though the 60s (Kaiser Jeeps) then was sold off/merged into AMC..
Alec Baldwin is still clearly Alec Baldwin under the makeup, but maybe the choice of his is due to an anecdote near the end.
the DeLorean car was mediocre - its V6 was not really up to it being a sports car like a Corvette or Bricklin or even a 240z which was the best 2 door 6 cylinder car of the 70s. DeLorean's marketing genius failed him or else another company would have snapped up the tooling and moved production to Japan or Germany. Even if the car had still been around when Back to the Future was big it would hardly have been a big seller or commanded a high price.
Given all that, the movie includes a lot of information I never knew about, like the involvement of Colin Chapman that I would like to double check out to see how accurate it is.
The thing that is unusual and maybe a little disconcerting is them constantly showing the backstage/back of camera view of the re-enactments... and dressing room shots. I have never seen that approach before