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Girls Incarcerated: Young and Locked Up (2018)
Highlights Serious Societal Problems
Girls Incarcerated looks at serious societal problems and hints at the complex systemic issues around an Indiana reform school. Unfortunately, it fails to interpret or critique these issues, missing opportunity after opportunity to delve into the psychological and environmental issues that landed these girls in the criminal justice system to begin with.
The series glosses over a few of the horror stories that led to the featured girls' problems, but it provides none of the context that would easily show how political and social apathy, the prison industrial complex, and anti-science policymaking have created this mess.
The filmmakers repeatedly fail to critique the unscientific "discipline" and teaching methods that seem to be employed, and they never challenge the (probably illegal) anti-LGBTQ+ religious indoctrination that's rammed down these kids' throats at a taxpayer-funded institution. There's nothing in the series that adequately educates viewers on the generational trauma, parental failures, or psychological issues that drive juvenile delinquency/crime, and there's no acknowledgement that many of the methods employed here are actually major contributors to recidivism.
In short, the series is voyeuristic and shallow, offering no vision for improving these institutions. Instead, viewers are treated to poverty porn that may appeal to people with empathy but no serious interest in the complex solutions needed to fix our broken criminal justice system. It will also appeal to the lowest common denominator of conservative rage-watchers - the sort who will focus on all the wrong things (swearing, acting out) while failing to comprehend the systemic problems that created the bad behavior in the first place (hint: it's not just bad parenting). Worst of all, the show lacks the psychological and intellectual insight to show its viewers a better way. It offers a reality TV approach that never takes a meaningful position on anything, and the show is lifeless and vapid as a result. Once again, these girls deserved much better treatment than they got.
Avatar (2009)
A Video Game
Avatar has:
- A derivative story that's been told better a million times before (shocking, given that the films/stories it rips off - like Pocahontas and Gone With The Wind - weren't good to begin with)
- A script with stale dialogue that's worse than most fan fiction and uses stereotypes in lieu of character development
- A juvenile plotline that's bereft of originality and feels like it was written in the 1950s
- Possibly the least likeable protagonist in a decade
- Unimaginative sci-fi tropes, mostly plagiarized from superior books and films
- Wooden and unidimensional characters that are little more than laughable caricatures
- Subtitles in "Papyrus" font (seriously)
- A ham-handed attempt at an ecological morality lesson
- Generally good special effects that can't even begin to make up for the film's other deficiencies
Avatar targeted dim-witted popcorn-eaters and scored big with that disturbing large demographic. After being forced - for nearly 3 hours - to watch an idiot bumble his way through a video game environment that should have killed him in a matter of minutes, anyone with a better than room temperature IQ will find themselves frustrated beyond belief. This is especially true for people who have an elementary understanding of writing or filmmaking.
James Cameron targeted the bottom of the bell curve and hit his mark with the finesse, subtlety, and intellectual verve of a Michael Bay film. If you thought 300 was a masterpiece, Avatar is for you. Everyone else should steer clear.
The Family (2019)
A Profound and Deeply Needed Documentary
This is a required-watch for anyone interested in the impact of religious political influence on American politics.
"The Family" is a well-researched documentation of the intentional and secretive infiltration of American politics by one tentacle of the religious right. It highlights the ongoing decimation of supposed divisions between church and state, categorically investigating the influence of just one of the many "Christian" organizations wielding outsized power in Washington. "The Family" examines the achievements of a largely-ignored organization that's pursued global political dominion, with the professed aims of subsequent Christian indoctrination of the masses. It narrates a complex web of illegal and legally-dubious behavior that has impacted American politics on a deeper level than almost anyone would like to admit. Highly recommended for political junkies, as this shines a light on what's previously been a poorly-documented yet integral piece of Washington D.C.'s swampy puzzle.
300 (2006)
A Great Film for Stupid People... Not for Anyone Else
If you actually like this movie, perhaps it's time to reevaluate your life.
Within a couple of minutes, it's apparent that 300 has nothing to offer but a slick new (for the time) aesthetic and some almost hilariously bad blood and violence. The writing is abysmal. The acting is absolutely horrendous. There is no historical accuracy, whatsoever. There is no realism, and there is nothing about the lack of realism that redeems its absence. The shallow themes running through the movie are juvenile. The direction is terrible. The cinematography is, well, OK.
Really, every single thing that could be screwed up in a movie is screwed up in this movie - minus the aforementioned aesthetics. 300 is over the top, and while that is not necessarily a reason to dismiss it, everything else about it is. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should completely dismiss this steaming pile of excrement as a cinematographic failure. It should have been aborted before it hit the screen. Instead, what should have been aborted was let loose on the public, and we all know the sort of teenage frat-boy wannabes who wound up liking this. They are the sort that latch onto anything with blood and violence as a some kind of great justification for their insecurities, fragile masculinity, and moronic nationalistic tendencies. The only way this could be a more obvious ploy to appeal to bible-thumping brain-dead middle Americans would be if they'd gotten Mel Gibson to star in it and he'd wrapped himself in an American flag for two thirds of the movie. It gets one additional star for pushing Hollywood visuals in a new direction, but everything else about it is ridiculous, pathetic, immature, utterly pointless, and deserving of the lowest rating possible. The fight scenes (that make up the majority of this film) are so absurd that they might as well have been dreamed up by an 8 year old... and I think that's pretty much the greatest maturity level this film could even aspire to. Do yourself a favor and don't watch it.
Unbroken (2014)
Unbelievable
I would not have thought it possible for anyone to suck the life out of a story so vital as Zamperini's, but Angelina Jolie has proved me wrong. With this film, she has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and turned one of the most compelling true stories of all time into a boring, flat, and almost entirely uninspired mash-up of disjointed vignettes. The acting is lousy, the cinematography is uninspired, the score is stereotypical and overly romanticized, the costumes and sets are sterile reproductions that harm the films realism almost as much as its unimpressive CGI, the writing is atrocious, the traditional Hollywood pastiche of airbrushed patriotism is tiresome, and the direction is horrendous. Do yourself a favor and skip this mess. Hopefully a good filmmaker will come along in a few years and do the story justice... Until then, it'd be best to pretend this abomination was never made.
Peaky Blinders (2013)
Solid, But Not Quite Excellent
Great acting, great casting, solid CGI, good (but not quite spot-on) attention to historic detail, and overall good writing are let down a bit at points where the show should shine the most - it's various climaxes. Unfortunately, these simply beggar belief.
While the motivations and action during the remainder of the series is very believable, the first season shoot-out with Kimber is almost absurd, as Ada's intervention with her baby seems a stretch, and Kimber's stand-around-and-wait-to-be-shot attitude is simply ridiculous. It seems even less likely that when shots were fired, everyone holding a gun wouldn't have opened fire themselves... out of terror/adrenaline, if nothing else.
Likewise, the Tommy/Solomons face-off at Solomons' desk overreaches. It seems Solomons' men would have watched Tommy very closely and would therefore known there was no way he could have planted a grenade. That they wouldn't have suspected something with Tommy tying his shoelace (the most elementary of diversions) is hard to fathom, and spooling out a trip wire would have been literally impossible to do without anyone noticing. Moreover, Solomons is borderline nuts, and he would almost certainly have gone to intervene in the detonation of the imaginary grenade before dropping his negotiating position by 65%. These points are simply not believable, and they seriously undermine the integrity of the show as a whole... Apart from these glaring flaws in the writing, Peaky Blinders is an enjoyable watch and warrants mild praise.
Workaholics (2011)
Peurile
This show is forced and not particularly funny. The acting is terrible, the writing bad, and the humor juvenile. There are some bright spots in the first season, but overall, it is more painful than funny. It may appeal to a younger audience (there's a lot of high school or college frat-level humor), but it's simply not smart or well-written comedy, and I can't see it appealing to a much wider audience than that. Do yourself a favor and watch Broad City or Silicon Valley. Both have a similar level of maturity, but they are actually well-written and humorous... and the acting in each of those shows is light years better than what you'll find here.