Prison stuff. In prison movies.
I’m still trying to work out myself whether this qualifies as a movie. It’s a three-part original video animation (OVA), apparently, following on from the TV series based on Yuichi Kumakuru’s manga. (more…)
Posted on November 30th, 2014 at 1:34 pm. Updated on November 30th, 2014 at 1:34 pm.
The Loners is a classic tragedy. It charts the fall of two proud, patriotic soldiers accused of treason, and follows them through a doomed prison insurrection. Over nothing. (more…)
Posted on November 18th, 2014 at 9:23 pm. Updated on November 18th, 2014 at 9:23 pm.
There are private prisons, and then there are private prisons. (more…)
Posted on November 3rd, 2014 at 6:37 pm. Updated on November 5th, 2014 at 7:49 pm.
It’s 1847, and juvenile offenders, waifs and strays are being transferred from La Roquette children’s prison in Paris to the Colonie de Grande–Île in Brittany. It’s a “Fatherly Home, not a penal colony,” insists the reform school’s idealistic warden, Monsieur Alexis (André Wilms). And to underscore the homeliness, his deputy (Michel Aumont) is required to be referred to as Uncle and all the other staff are known as Cousins. It all sounds really very jolly. (more…)
Posted on October 26th, 2014 at 3:45 pm. Updated on October 27th, 2014 at 7:50 pm.
The South Koreans certainly love a good prison tear-jerker – Miracle in Cell No. 7 (2013), for instance, and Harmony (2010) – both of which also star young children, as does this weepy. But Way Back Home is also very reminiscent of Hell In Tangier (2006) and Left to Die (2012), both of which feature prisoners in third-world prisons overseas, hampered by inept, judgmental and disinterested embassy officials, and eventually released after persistent media campaigns. As this one does. The point of difference from the last two is that in this case the prisoner is guilty. Of stupidity, at the very least.
Posted on October 14th, 2014 at 9:30 pm. Updated on October 14th, 2014 at 9:30 pm.
The crossover between westerns and prison movies is not a common one; Hellgate (1952) and There was a Crooked Man… (1970) being the only other examples I can readily bring to mind. Even in this film, once the scene-setting shootout between men in ten-gallon hats is dispensed with very early in the piece, it settles down into a standard prison movie. Well, as standard as you can get where there is one female prisoner in an all-male jail. (more…)
Posted on October 5th, 2014 at 5:01 pm. Updated on October 14th, 2014 at 9:48 pm.
Eric Love (Jack O’Connell) is 19, ‘starred up’ (transferred to adult prison prematurely from juvenile prison), and out to make a splash. On his first day he violently attacks an unsuspecting fellow prisoner, puts himself into a state of Bronson–esque arousal for the ensuing fight with prison officers and finishes up holding one officer hostage with an aerial at his throat and then gripping another’s privates between his teeth. I don’t know too many prisons that would allow him to just go back into the wing after that… even as an outcome negotiated for the officers’ release, but back to the wing he goes, the new prison Governor a little peeved that she hadn’t been advised of his arrival. It’s a mark of this film that it’s able to overcome that initial credibility gap and still be an exceptional prison movie.
Posted on August 30th, 2014 at 4:38 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:42 pm.
Also known as The Circuit 2: The Final Punch. Except it’s not the final final punch – the temptation to make Circuit III being just too great. (more…)
Posted on August 29th, 2014 at 10:00 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2014 at 10:00 pm.
Cecil B De Mille directed this epic silent film – an unashamed advertisement for Godfulness. Not surprisingly, given its title, it features a godless girl, but it’s more about her conversion to the God-positive side, than focusing on all the nastiness and trouble that her godlessness brings. (more…)
Posted on August 16th, 2014 at 7:07 pm. Updated on August 16th, 2014 at 9:29 pm.
Kala Pani* is described as an ‘epic’ film. It’s a long film, at 2 hours 40 minutes. Even if you edited out the songs (which are slightly at odds with the movie’s dark themes, anyway), the choreographed, vaguely comical fight scenes and the gratuitous model photo-shoot scenes of the main character’s beautiful fiancée… it would still be long. (more…)
Posted on August 9th, 2014 at 11:02 pm. Updated on August 9th, 2014 at 11:02 pm.