Prison stuff. In prison movies.
German audiences of this silent wartime farce would have been very familiar with the storyline, borrowed from Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus which had opened more than sixty years before the film’s release. What was a merry 8-day prison sentence in Die Fledermaus becomes a single day’s imprisonment here, adding to the merriment. (more…)
Posted on December 30th, 2022 at 7:46 pm. Updated on December 30th, 2022 at 7:46 pm.
I’ve come to expect so much from South Korean movies that it comes as a bit of a shock when a lacklustre one comes around. (more…)
Posted on October 16th, 2021 at 10:56 pm. Updated on October 16th, 2021 at 11:08 pm.
There are plenty of films about political prisoners, and plenty about jail politics. There are not so many where those two overlap to the degree that they do in this movie.
Posted on September 12th, 2021 at 10:40 pm. Updated on September 12th, 2021 at 10:47 pm.
This thriller is so eerily similar in parts to the Spanish film, Below Zero (2021), that you have to wonder whether a scriptwriter somewhere between Spain and Kenya – in Algeria, perhaps – was touting the outline of the story to film producers in all directions, and it got picked up by two filmmakers simultaneously. (more…)
Posted on April 27th, 2021 at 10:42 pm. Updated on April 27th, 2021 at 10:42 pm.
When I think of prison escort vehicles being ambushed in prison movies, I ready myself for two escaping prisoners who don’t like each other (but who are handcuffed together) to start bickering as they attempt to run in different directions. This Netflix film, thank goodness, has none of that… and, for an action-thriller, of sorts, wonderfully manages to defy the predictability of its ending until its ending. It’s a little different on a number of fronts. (more…)
Posted on February 2nd, 2021 at 10:27 pm. Updated on February 2nd, 2021 at 10:34 pm.
This is the story of a political prisoner and his devoted partner. And of her strength, when she was certain that he was the stronger one. (more…)
Posted on November 16th, 2020 at 10:34 pm. Updated on November 16th, 2020 at 10:42 pm.
I understand, to a degree, the attraction of updating this classic. There are quite a few departures from the original, so it’s not an exact remake, but I can’t think of one of those changes that would amount to an improvement on A cavallo della tigre (1961). Other, perhaps, than this being in colour. (more…)
Posted on September 12th, 2020 at 8:09 pm. Updated on September 12th, 2020 at 8:18 pm.
Swamp Women starts with the extraordinary premise that a prison warden would cooperate with a police request to allow three high-profile inmates to escape from their prison in order to help the police recover a cache of stolen diamonds. It’s a murky start and just gets murkier. (more…)
Posted on September 5th, 2020 at 2:36 pm. Updated on September 5th, 2020 at 2:36 pm.
To say that I’m more interested in what prison movies say about the prison experience than cinematic techniques, or the development of film as a medium, is, well… stating the bloody obvious. That probably makes it harder for silent movies, like this one, to make an impression… unless its intertitles are simply exceptional. (more…)
Posted on August 22nd, 2020 at 2:12 pm. Updated on August 22nd, 2020 at 2:12 pm.
One feature of the Australian quasi-biopic, Chopper (2000), is the (real-life) ‘Overcoat Gang’ – so named because its prisoner members wore big overcoats, even in summer, in which they would conceal shivs, iron bars and other weapons, or at least give the impression to their enemies that they were tooled up, even when unarmed. Overcoats kept coming to mind as I watched this very different type of movie. (more…)
Posted on August 15th, 2020 at 1:55 pm. Updated on August 15th, 2020 at 1:55 pm.