» Girls in Prison (1994, USA)
Let’s make it clear from the outset: this is not a campy remake of Girls in Prison (1956). I wish it were. (more…)
Posted on January 27th, 2013 at 9:17 pm. Updated on January 27th, 2013 at 9:17 pm.
The Strip Search
» H3 (2001, Ireland)
I think I breathed a sigh of relief on coming to the end of H3: “Thankfully, that might be the last of these that I have to watch.” Which is a bit bewildering, because I’ve found other films dealing with the dirty protests and hunger strikes by republican prisoners in Northern Ireland in the early 80s [such as Silent Grace (2001) and Hunger (2008)] very watchable. It wasn’t any aspect of the conflict that troubled me, and it certainly wasn’t the repetition in the storyline; I can’t recall having a similar reaction after seeing my 67th escape movie or innocent-man-in-prison movie. (more…)
Posted on January 11th, 2013 at 9:37 pm. Updated on January 11th, 2013 at 9:37 pm.
» Death Race (2008, USA)
I don’t know what possessed me to watch this movie. Made in 2008, it is set years into the future (2012), at a time when the US economy has collapsed, all prisons are run for profit and cage fights in prison have become so passé that they are no longer guaranteed to make money. With just a handful of days to go in 2012, I may well have been curious to see just what advances in correctional management I had missed. (more…)
Posted on December 24th, 2012 at 4:17 pm. Updated on December 24th, 2012 at 4:18 pm.
» Doin’ Time (1985, USA)
Made by some of the same people who brought you Police Academy I and II. That’s as much as you need to know, really. Or if it’s not, the fact that it has yet to make its way to a DVD release probably tells you much the same thing. (more…)
Posted on December 2nd, 2012 at 7:08 pm. Updated on December 19th, 2013 at 7:57 pm.
» Atmen / Breathing (2011, Austria)
Part prison movie, part undertaking movie, part discovering-where-you-came-from-and-who-you-are movie. (more…)
Posted on October 16th, 2012 at 1:04 pm. Updated on October 16th, 2012 at 1:04 pm.
» R (2010, Denmark)
Comparisons between this and A Prophet (2009) are inevitable; for a while, the trajectories of the main protagonists in both movies, two young men introduced into hostile new prisons, are almost identical.
(more…)
Posted on September 18th, 2012 at 9:18 pm. Updated on September 18th, 2012 at 9:18 pm.
» Silent Scream (1990, UK)
Larry Winters was 34 when he died of a drug overdose in his Barlinnie Special Unit cell. He had been in jail for over 13 years. He was intelligent, damaged, talented and – even without the licit and illicit drugs he consumed in large quantities – most probably mentally ill. This film serves almost as a justification of his violent, troubled life, but also as an advertisement for the Barlinnie Special Unit, which took dangerous men and made them less so through its revolutionary approach of normalisation and prisoner empowerment. (more…)
Posted on June 10th, 2012 at 10:24 pm. Updated on June 10th, 2012 at 10:24 pm.
» Por sus propios ojos / Proper Eyes (2007, Argentina)
It is the absence of men that one first notices in the visitors’ queue. There are resigned wives, dutiful girlfriends, tired mothers, teary grandmothers. But no men. (more…)
Posted on April 30th, 2012 at 9:30 pm. Updated on August 5th, 2012 at 5:24 pm.
» Layla Lavan / White Night (1996, Israel)
1986, and two first-timers are received into a maximum-security prison. One, Yonatan (Idan Alterman), is placed in a big shared cell which includes an imposing drug boss (played by the film’s director, Arnon Zadok), who wastes no time in imposing himself sexually upon the young man. From his first day, he is enslaved. Clichéd, yes, but through Yonatan, everyone’s worst fears about prison are quickly realised. (more…)
Posted on April 19th, 2012 at 10:56 pm. Updated on April 19th, 2012 at 10:56 pm.
» I’m Going to Get You… Elliott Boy (Canada, 1971)
It’s forty-odd years since I’m Going to Get You… was released. Maybe it was brave and ground-breaking in its day by virtue of its depiction of homosexuality and corruption in prisons. But my guess is that it was a tawdry, poorly-made film back in the 70s… and it remains so today. (more…)
Posted on December 28th, 2011 at 10:20 pm. Updated on December 28th, 2011 at 10:20 pm.