Prison stuff. In prison movies.
They had a bit of fun with this campy melodrama, I reckon. One prison guard tells her reliever that she’s heading off “to catch the last show at the Bijou.” “That prison movie?” says the other, incredulously. “Yeah.” “They never get things right in prison pictures.” “I know. But I like to pick out the flaws.” Me, too. (more…)
Posted on February 21st, 2010 at 3:05 pm. Updated on March 14th, 2010 at 2:12 pm.
Take a new teacher with a past, a campaign against setting up a school in a prison, and an array of troublesome prisoner students. The temptation to bring everything to a happy conclusion (inspiring teacher redeemed, criminals reformed, star pupil singing ‘To Sir, With Love’… that sort of thing) must have been pretty strong. Fortunately, it’s resisted. (more…)
Posted on February 13th, 2010 at 11:04 pm. Updated on February 14th, 2010 at 7:32 pm.
There might be a bit of sentiment in me rating this so highly. I well remember reading the book by Donald Powell Wilson on which it is based, nearly 40 years ago… and being awfully impressed. I just can’t remember why. (more…)
Posted on February 6th, 2010 at 11:10 pm. Updated on February 6th, 2010 at 11:10 pm.
Just how much acclaim should you give a film for its worthiness alone? As an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Mickey B is just OK (and even then, much better, I suspect, if you’re familiar with the plot of Macbeth; half the pleasure is in the recognition of each new character and scene). But as a story of a group of real prisoners, mostly murderers and long-termers in Maghaberry Prison in Northern Ireland, making some important discoveries about themselves while making the film, it’s inspiring. (more…)
Posted on February 6th, 2010 at 9:02 pm. Updated on August 13th, 2012 at 10:24 pm.
You’d think that this should be a terrific movie, based as it is on the bloodiest escape attempt in Alcatraz’s history – dubbed the ‘Battle of Alcatraz’ – in which two guards and three inmates were killed in an abortive bid for freedom over 48 hours in May 1946. And it was shot on location, which gives it some cred, straight away. But while it’s not a bad film at all, it’s as if someone has surgically removed the adrenalin. Too many prison movies make the mistake of ramping up the drama and losing something in the process; I reckon this one goes the other way. (more…)
Posted on January 30th, 2010 at 5:42 pm. Updated on January 30th, 2010 at 5:42 pm.
I was given this movie by someone who lovingly brought it back for me from Jordan. It doesn’t have subtitles and my Arabic is really, really poor. Really poor. I’m told, though, that the title translates (a little obtusely) as ‘Tell me my thoughts without you.’ It could be a wonderful comedy, or it could be awful; I have no idea. (more…)
Posted on January 28th, 2010 at 10:09 pm. Updated on March 9th, 2016 at 3:52 pm.
I don’t know whether it was the grainy print, or the DVD cover which has Leonor Benedetto looking like a bloke in drag, or maybe the general sleaziness, but Atrapadas (which translates as ‘Trapped’) has a definite ’70s feel about it. I kept waiting for Pam Grier to make an appearance. (more…)
Posted on January 26th, 2010 at 9:16 pm. Updated on February 2nd, 2010 at 7:54 pm.
Bénédicte Liénard has strong views about prisons. “Prison… is the absence of desire, of life, of what makes life.” They’re places where nothing happens, she says, and she made a documentary about it, Heads Against the Walls. Rather than just make the doco and walk away, she took her cameras back into Lantin Prison near Liège in Belgium to run classes for prisoners, as “the system has no answers for people with lives adrift.” And then she wrote and directed this film (in which some of those prisoners play themselves) – a slow-moving but powerful examination of life being sucked out of oppressed women… and not just in prison. (more…)
Posted on January 24th, 2010 at 1:41 pm. Updated on January 25th, 2010 at 11:45 pm.
There are echoes of all sorts of other movies in Diamond Geezer (known as Rough Diamond in Australia). The plot (master criminal seeks perfect alibi by escaping from prison, committing a huge robbery and then returning to prison before anyone notices that he’s been gone) is very reminiscent of Two Way Stretch (1960). The main character, Des (David Jason), seems to borrow some features from ‘Blanco’ Webb, the elderly prisoner Sir David played in the Porridge TV series. And the prison’s top dog, Mr Fellows (Gary Whelan), carries on a fine British film tradition [The Italian Job (1960), and Porridge (1979) for starters] of crime lords ruling the prison from their prison cells, not always in a gentlemanly manner. It’s all very comfortably familiar. (more…)
Posted on January 17th, 2010 at 4:38 pm. Updated on January 25th, 2010 at 11:45 pm.
Carl Upchurch had it tough. Born in 1950 in South Philadelphia, his first memory was apparently of his grandmother killing his grandfather. He grew up in gangs and in and out of trouble, and spent 10 years in jail. Then he found ‘the light within’ and became a religious man, a voice against his fellow prisoners’ meek acceptance of the inevitability of their lives and their incarceration, and an activist for political and social reform. Conviction is his story. (more…)
Posted on January 11th, 2010 at 7:24 pm. Updated on January 11th, 2010 at 10:08 pm.