I’d read the reverential, slightly fawning reviews and was looking forward to seeing this arty ‘throwback’ (Steve Balderson’s contemporary tale filmed in the manner of a noirish 50s black-and-whiter) with great anticipation. Sadly, I found that it not only failed to live up to the hype, but is not a patch on the Women in Prison films of the 50s, the style of which it seems to try to recreate. If you like the period, watch Women’s Prison (1955), Girls in Prison (1956) or the British Yield to the Night (1956) instead, is my tip. (more…)
Posted on December 4th, 2010 at 10:34 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:03 pm.
Lockdown is a prison movie for traditionalists – murders, stabbings, drug use, drug deals, racial tension, rapes, crooked guards… and in the middle of it all, a good, innocent man struggling to survive. (more…)
Posted on November 26th, 2010 at 9:55 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 5:06 pm.
“From the creator of Police Academy“, trumpets the blurb on my DVD. I’m not sure if it’s true (the DVD cover manages to get every other detail wrong, including all the names of the film’s characters), but – sadly – it might as well be. (more…)
Posted on November 4th, 2010 at 7:10 pm. Updated on November 4th, 2010 at 7:10 pm.
It might not be the best recommendation to say that this wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I had expected. One review had it marked down as ‘hideous’ and another* concluded that it was so beset with problems that it ‘should stay in lock-up, with no eligibility for parole.’ And it’s true; the ending is an absolute shocker, and the 20-second Jerry Seinfeld-Paul Reiser cameo is terrible. But the rest of the film is on a par with lots of other pretty average prison comedies – amongst them Stir Crazy (1980), with which this shares quite a lot. Not the rodeo, thankfully. (more…)
Posted on October 25th, 2010 at 10:22 pm. Updated on October 25th, 2010 at 10:22 pm.
An HIV-AIDS diagnosis. A prison sentence. These men are lumbered with both, held doubly captive. Doubly reviled. Life sentences, and not much of a life at that. (more…)
Posted on August 24th, 2010 at 10:52 pm. Updated on August 25th, 2010 at 6:43 am.
I was ready for this movie to be a bit dorky, a bit ’80s, a bit made-for-TV. What I wasn’t prepared for, having watched it and wondered why so many of the plot lines just seemed to evaporate, was to find that it wasn’t made as a film at all. It turns out to be bits of a 1984 TV series (of which there were only two or three episodes), cobbled together in 2002 into a single, slightly dorky, ’80s, made-for-DVD movie. (more…)
Posted on June 6th, 2010 at 4:57 pm. Updated on June 6th, 2010 at 4:57 pm.
This is a simple story about honour. And love. And how one man finds them both on an island penal colony. (more…)
Posted on April 2nd, 2010 at 5:21 pm. Updated on April 2nd, 2010 at 5:35 pm.
It is inconceivable that this movie could have been made anywhere other than Britain; it is quintessentially British. Like Two Way Stretch (1960), it anticipates the much more commercially successful Porridge series with its gently humourous observations of mundane, day-to-day existence (and celebrations of minor villainy) in the nick. (more…)
Posted on March 13th, 2010 at 4:37 pm. Updated on March 13th, 2010 at 4:37 pm.
This is a smouldering love affair spanning prison and life after. It’s often been compared to Brokeback Mountain, with good reason; a man’s world, two seemingly heterosexual men falling in love, and nearly all of it understated or unspoken. (more…)
Posted on March 8th, 2010 at 10:54 am. Updated on March 8th, 2010 at 10:54 am.
They had a bit of fun with this campy melodrama, I reckon. One prison guard tells her reliever that she’s heading off “to catch the last show at the Bijou.” “That prison movie?” says the other, incredulously. “Yeah.” “They never get things right in prison pictures.” “I know. But I like to pick out the flaws.” Me, too. (more…)
Posted on February 21st, 2010 at 3:05 pm. Updated on March 14th, 2010 at 2:12 pm.