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Prison Break (2005)
Weak and unrealistic
This is a very weak and candy coated portrayal of what it's like to do hard time in a maximum security prison. I was shocked when one character Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell was introduced as being a fearsome respected convict for having raped and murdered a bunch of children.
This is not how it is. In reality, T-Bag would either be dead or in solitary confinement. Child murderers are ostracized in prisons, child rapists aren't tolerated at all. This guy did both and is a badass convict leader acting tough on the yard. I can't believe this made it into the script. The dude even has perfect capped teeth.
The main character in the show, Michael Scofield, gets himself arrested on purpose so he can join his brother who is already in prison. He does an armed robbery and shoots the gun off in the bank, which is a severe enough crime to warrant maximum security prison. Scofield needs to get into a specific prison, however, and pulls it off way too easily. In reality, it's highly doubtful that a prisoner would get to choose what prison they are sent to. I'm not even certain if there was an issue with state prison vs. Federal prison. Bank robberies may be prosecuted either way.
The racial tension between inmates is understated as well. In reality, someone who doesn't stand with their race would be subject to sexual abuse and rape. A new inmate is often required to shank someone from the other race in order to prove themselves. If they don't do it, they get shanked themselves or raped. Or both.
This show is not what prison is like. HBO's "Oz" was closer to reality. "Prison Break" is more of an unintentional comedy than a drama.
Stacey Keach and Peter Stormare stand out as veteran performers, but still have to deliver some silly lines. Keach actually spent 2 years in prison in the United Kingdom for cocaine possession, but his role in Prison Break is as the warden.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008)
Good show despite being stuck in an infinite loop
I had low expectations for this show before watching it since it's based on a series of SIX Terminator movies. "The Terminator" has been so overdone, one of the movies repeats another Terminator movie, but on a different timeline.
The basic concept to the franchise is that Skynet (the evil enemy) and the resistance fighters (John Connor is their leader, in the future) repeatedly send killer robots back in time. Skynet sends robots back in time to kill key figures in the resistance, while the resistance sends reprogrammed robots back in time to protect the key figures in the resistance from the evil robots.
Sounds simple, right? Good guys vs. Bad guys. Except, they keep changing the timeline and changing history.
The initial target for termination was Sarah Connor. Skynet figured, why kill John Connor, when they can kill his mother instead, before he's been born?
In "The Sarah Connor Chronicles", John Connor is in high school, and has a "good terminator" his future self sent back (Summer Glau to protect him. Despite the six overlapping movies, the writers did a good job keeping the TV show from becoming a haphazard mess of confusion. While it is basically the same scenario being repeated over and over again, there are enough unknowns to keep the story interesting, and there's a good balance of badass terminator action with drama. Being relentlessly pursued by killer robots has to be dramatic, there's not much room for comedy.
The show lasted 2 years 2008-2009. Season 1 is 10 episodes, Season 2 is 22 episodes. There is a smaller budget for TV so you don't see the extended car chases with millions of dollars in damage like you do in the films, but if you like the movies you'll very likely like the TV show.
Away (2020)
A complete waste of time
I started watching this because I like science fiction, and this is supposedly a science fiction about a mission to Mars.
The entire first episode consists of Hillary Swank deciding if she even wants to go on the mission or not. Which is a moot point since we know there are 10 episodes. So we already know, she's going to go.
From there, the show turns into mostly a drama focusing on her family at home. Too much of the show takes place on Earth, in a non-futuristic looking environment, to really be categorized as a science fiction. They should have advertised the show as a standard drama, not even mentioning the Mars mission. The mission could have been a good story arc for a drama.
One of the actors in the show appears to have Downs syndrome, and appears to be in the show just because they wanted to hire an actor with a disability. I think she was one of Hillary Swank's daugher's classmates.
I went all the way to the end of episode six before giving up and switching to a different show. I found "Away" to be completely uninteresting and unentertaining.
Lucifer (2016)
This is a very fun show which doesn't take itself seriously.
The main flaw is the writing. Prefacing statements with "Look" and "Listen", which is not how most people talk, is way overused and applied to every main character on the show. You could be immersed in the Lucifer universe suspending disbelief, and by the last season will probably realize "hey, the same people wrote the dialogue for these characters."
The secondary flaw was resolved by the end of Season 5. The idea of Satan living in Los Angeles is wasted by restricting every episiode to a buddy cop scenario with Detective Decker of the LAPD. It's more of a cop show, than a show about Satan. The devil. Lucifer Morningstar.
Lucifer is hired as a "citizen consultant" for the LAPD. He works with Detective Decker to solve crimes. Along the way, you meet Lucifer's family... demons, angels, god, god's wife, Cain, Eve. They're quite dysfunctional. The series is mainly a cop drama/comedy rather than horror or supernatural thriller, although there are elements of just about every genre included. The writers do an excellent job of sidestepping religious issues and speculating the audience into a suspension of disbelief. (Except for the main flaw mentioned earlier.)
It's a fun show, it's almost never serious, and it ends in such a manner that if it comes back, it's unlikely to continue the police drama theme. I also hope the writers learn how to not use "Look" or "Listen" before every sentence.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
No, it's not really thought provoking, or a very good film at all.
I've seen the original Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, I've seen the remake with Tim Roth, I've seen thousands of films during my life. War for the Planet of the Apes seemed to me as simply a showcase for the digital ape effects.
It's full of closeups of different digital ape faces against a blurry background. Af if it's 1957 and we should be marveling at new Disneyland animatronic characters. It's full of distant shots of digital chimps scurrying around. That's most of the movie.
What people are saying is thought provoking, is a simple illustration of two groups in conflict. Draw comparisons to Nazis and Jews, black and white, Shia and Shi'ite, slave and slave owner. The same "thought provoking" questions arise.
The only difference here is that it's put into a science fiction context - what if apes were as smart as humans? Well, what if cats were? Or squirrels? Had this been an action film, I'd say OK, it's an action movie and it's fine. But it isn't. It has some action, but is not an action film. It's mostly a very slow moving, dull, inarticulate drama.
Inarticulate in two ways. A lot of the apes use sign language instead of speech, and the script is not clever or intellectual. A few flashes of well written dialog come up during an exchange between the Colonel (Woody Harrelson) and Caesar (digital ape) and that's all there is. Less than five minutes. The rest of the dialog is mainly focused on vengeance and war or merciful understanding. There's no complexity or intellectual stimulation here.
I'm shocked that nearly all professional film critics give this movie a high rating and praise. Perhaps they all received $5,000 checks from the film studio.