Prison stuff. In prison movies.
K-11 sounded to me like a submarine, or a lubricant. I hadn’t realised that it is a real segregated housing option for gay and transsexual men at Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, around which this drama is based. Loosely based, and with extra salaciousness, one hopes.
Posted on May 20th, 2013 at 10:46 pm. Updated on May 20th, 2013 at 10:47 pm.
Shapeshifter is brought to us by the same production company that produced Dead Men Walking (2005). Same year, same filming location (the old Lincoln Heights Jail), same terrorising of guards and prisoners by non-humans showing the same flesh-eating techniques, same inexplicable removal of her shirt by the heroine to reveal the same singlet top, same low budgets. Why not combine those budgets and make one better movie, one wonders? (more…)
Posted on April 25th, 2013 at 10:15 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2013 at 10:24 pm.
Vacation is one of those rare prison officer-centred prison movies. If it were not so understated, it would celebrate ordinary men – plodders, the unambitious, and a murderer – acting with honour.
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Posted on April 10th, 2013 at 10:46 pm. Updated on April 10th, 2013 at 10:46 pm.
I’m not overly conversant with the horror genre, but I think that what this movie is trying to say is that it is a horrible job being a prison warden. (more…)
Posted on March 31st, 2013 at 1:22 pm. Updated on March 16th, 2014 at 8:30 am.
Not to be confused with So Evil, So Young (1961) or The Weak and the Wicked (1954). But it does share something with both of those British movies – the young women in this reform school are not particularly bad, or wicked, or evil. Some, surprisingly, are even youngish. (more…)
Posted on March 26th, 2013 at 9:42 pm. Updated on March 26th, 2013 at 9:42 pm.
“Nice but preposterous,” was my wife’s judgment after watching this made-for-TV offering. Or maybe it was the other way round. Anyway, she is rarely wrong. (more…)
Posted on March 19th, 2013 at 9:00 pm. Updated on March 19th, 2013 at 9:00 pm.
Some prison films are prepared to sacrifice almost any correctional principle for the convenience of the storyline or to accommodate the filmmaker’s artistic vision. This is one of them, I’m afraid, and I struggled with it as a result. (more…)
Posted on March 14th, 2013 at 8:36 pm. Updated on March 14th, 2013 at 8:36 pm.
In Un Chant D’Amour (1950) the writer Jean Genet explored imprisoned men’s longing for intimacy. In his play Haute surveillance, published in 1949 and later made into this Vic Morrow film, he allowed his characters physical contact, but their longing remains unfulfilled. (more…)
Posted on March 11th, 2013 at 3:31 pm. Updated on March 11th, 2013 at 3:43 pm.
This invites comparisons with Scum (1979), updated and set in the context of the London riots of 2011. But it owes more to Doing Hard Time (2004), a less auspicious film which features another hurt, angry and apparently law-abiding man intent on avenging a terrible crime… and who is similarly prepared to surrender some high moral ground by senselessly attacking police – simply to get into jail and to get access to those who have wronged him. (more…)
Posted on March 3rd, 2013 at 11:23 am. Updated on March 3rd, 2013 at 11:23 am.
“Now listen here, you cons. When I sent you up here I thought you were rats… and now I know it.” Not necessarily the smartest thing to say to a packed mess hall when you’re a DA who has been placed in a prison amidst 6,000 enemies – many of whom you’ve personally sent up the river. And perhaps a little harsh on his new colleagues… After all, what sort of reaction did he expect? (more…)
Posted on February 21st, 2013 at 8:33 pm. Updated on March 4th, 2013 at 9:21 pm.