Prison stuff. In prison movies.
I thought that I was too old for Michael Bond’s Paddington books to have been around when I was young. I was wrong. I thought, too, that I might be too old (read ‘cantankerous’) to enjoy a movie featuring a proper, English, whispery-voiced, marmalade-loving, animated small bear. Wrong again.
Posted on April 1st, 2018 at 8:49 pm. Updated on April 1st, 2018 at 8:49 pm.
Seven minutes. Just seven minutes of action inside the prison, and yet it says more about the impact of incarceration than most movies set entirely within prison walls. (more…)
Posted on March 20th, 2018 at 7:22 pm. Updated on March 20th, 2018 at 7:22 pm.
As far as low budget horror films go, this one by the Quiroz Brothers is not so bad. As far as low budget death row horror films go, it is not about a death row, per se, and the term ‘horror’ doesn’t exactly fit, either. But it is decidedly, indisputably, inescapably low budget. (more…)
Posted on February 18th, 2018 at 12:37 pm. Updated on February 18th, 2018 at 12:41 pm.
This is the alternative title of the video (on YouTube) which translates literally, it seems, as something closer to ‘Women’s Scum’. Or sometimes, intriguingly, as ‘Women’s Jelly’. The film’s original title, Life is a Woman, doesn’t appear to have ever had much traction. (more…)
Posted on February 4th, 2018 at 3:40 pm. Updated on June 15th, 2019 at 3:49 pm.
The Najayo Prison for men at San Cristóbal, about an hour out of Santo Domingo, is right next door to the Najayo Women’s Center of Correction and Rehabilitation. So close that the men in the old prison, if they can get to a high window on the upper storey, can pass messages to the women next door, and vice versa, by an elaborate, bespoke sign language. ‘Woodpecking’, they call it. “The thing is that when the woodpeckers drill their holes they grasp onto the tree – the same way that the guys climb to the windows and grab onto the rails so they can talk to us,” one of the women says. Or you can choose to make up your own explanation.
Posted on January 28th, 2018 at 11:18 am. Updated on January 28th, 2018 at 11:18 am.
I’m not the most ardent fan of modern Bollywood productions; most are too long for my liking (this one weighs in at just shy of 2½ hours) and I generally find the musical interludes grating and intrusive. But at least in Lucknow Central (and Qaidi Band, another just-released Indian film about the formation of a jail band) music is integral to the plot, and (despite what was an apparently poor reception from Indian filmgoers) it’s a far-from-disastrous prison film. (more…)
Posted on December 31st, 2017 at 9:07 pm. Updated on January 12th, 2018 at 8:35 pm.
You got me. This is filler. There is really no reason to include this film… Except that I saw the rushes which inferred, I thought, that much of the film was devoted to the minions in prison. It turns out that the prison scenes account for just on three minutes. They manage to pack a fair bit into those three minutes, but it’s three minutes. (more…)
Posted on December 1st, 2017 at 8:18 pm. Updated on December 1st, 2017 at 8:18 pm.
‘Bespredel’ in Russian would seem to mean ‘lawlessness’… but also ‘limitless’ or ‘anything goes’. “What is [bespredel]?” the prison’s top bespredelshchik and string-puller, The Prince, is asked. “[Bespredel] is a trap,” he replies. I hope that helps. (more…)
Posted on November 6th, 2017 at 9:13 pm. Updated on August 28th, 2019 at 7:57 pm.
Is it a good thing, ultimately, that this whistle-blowing film seems a little tame? That the boot camp abuses suffered by the juvenile offenders in Hong Kong’s Sha Tsui Detention Centre don’t seem to be as shocking as those in many other prison movies (which is not to say that gratuitous elbow strikes, and asking a detainee to clean a toilet with his fingers and then clean his teeth with the same fingers, and assorted other beatings and demeanings are not abusive). It’s a good thing for Hong Kong, isn’t it, if Sha Tsui (which caters for juveniles and young adults from 14 to 25) is not as rotten as some other prisons. Somehow, though, the film seems a little pallid and limp. (more…)
Posted on October 20th, 2017 at 5:08 pm. Updated on October 20th, 2017 at 5:08 pm.
Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco (‘the law of the weakest’) is celebrated for (or rather enjoys a reputation for) its unrelenting grimness. And for good reason. If you looked in the dictionary and it said: gr?m a. harsh, joyless, pixotish – you probably wouldn’t baulk… provided that you didn’t know that Pixote is sometimes translated as PeeWee, which doesn’t sound quite so grim.
Posted on October 5th, 2017 at 8:19 pm. Updated on October 5th, 2017 at 8:19 pm.