Prison stuff. In prison movies.
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.
I put off watching this movie for years, thinking for some reason that – despite its title – it had not much to do with prison, a little like Ingmar Bergman’s 1949 film of the same name. That was a little foolish, in retrospect, a bit like expecting no music in The Sound of Music or no dogs in Reservoir Dogs. (more…)
Posted on August 1st, 2014 at 9:11 pm. Updated on August 1st, 2014 at 9:11 pm.
It’s easy to see how this came to be conceived, with its echoes of The Silence of the Lambs (1991), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), and Gorillas in the Mist (1988). And it’s easy to see why it never quite reaches the heights of those movies (or at least the first two). (more…)
Posted on July 26th, 2014 at 11:55 pm. Updated on July 27th, 2014 at 12:02 am.
I can’t recall another prison movie in which the main character says not a word throughout the whole film. Well, not one made after 1929, anyway. (more…)
Posted on July 11th, 2014 at 8:59 pm. Updated on July 11th, 2014 at 8:59 pm.
If you’re looking for some light entertainment, this is probably not the film for you. At one level it’s a story of an intelligent first-time prisoner battling to survive in a harsh prison. But it’s much more besides.
(more…)
Posted on June 23rd, 2014 at 9:59 pm. Updated on June 27th, 2014 at 10:22 pm.
This may not have been the first of the law abiding citizen movies – where decent guys engineer their transfer to prison in order to avenge horrible things done to their family members – but it came before Doing Hard Time (2004), Law Abiding Citizen (2009) and Offender (2012). And as far as escapist action flicks go, The Escapist goes OK. (more…)
Posted on June 14th, 2014 at 10:47 pm. Updated on June 14th, 2014 at 10:47 pm.
There is not much that can be said for this other than that it is a singularly distasteful, exploitative film. (more…)
Posted on June 8th, 2014 at 9:41 pm. Updated on June 8th, 2014 at 9:43 pm.
In saying that this is the most interesting new prison movie for some time, I need also to declare my bias: I know a number of the principals connected with its production. (more…)
Posted on April 25th, 2014 at 4:10 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2014 at 4:24 pm.
When this opened where I live, it opened, I think, for just one session in one cinema. That might say as much as needs to be said. (more…)
Posted on April 14th, 2014 at 10:56 pm. Updated on April 29th, 2015 at 10:34 pm.