This third offering in the Black Cat series is closer to The Joy Luck Club (1993), it seems, than to the original Black Cat (1991). After the opening five action-packed minutes it’s decidedly light on in derring-do and prison movie-staples such as intimidation, intrigue and violence (although there is some of the latter), preferring to focus on the journeys of four women in prison and the bond they develop. (more…)
Posted on November 14th, 2009 at 11:40 pm. Updated on November 15th, 2009 at 7:45 pm.
I’m not sure whether my favourite bit is when a bullied older prisoner commits suicide after being unfairly denied probation (that’s not the good bit), and the authorities handcuff his corpse as it’s being carried out on a stretcher (the handcuffs sending our hero into a vengeful fury). Or when one of the ‘Gang of Four’ prisoners who run each of the prison wings commits hara-kiri during a one-on-one bout with Ricky, and then tries to strangle his opponent with his intestines. It’s bloody, it’s not high-brow, it doesn’t take itself at all seriously, and it’s mostly good fun. (more…)
Posted on November 7th, 2009 at 5:01 pm. Updated on March 25th, 2016 at 11:16 am.
Paul Lamont (Giancarlo Esposito) is a bookish correctional officer working in the most bookish part of Brooklyn’s King’s County House of Detention – the law library. He’s a bit at odds with his fellow guards; he’s studying law at night school, he’s not yet so cynical that he regards every prisoner as scum, he has a middle-class schoolteacher wife, and he thinks a bit too deeply about the impact of what he does at work. He takes his work home with him. In every sense, it turns out. (more…)
Posted on November 3rd, 2009 at 9:17 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 1:14 pm.
This is a film that promises a great deal, and delivers much less. Worse still, it only takes just a few seconds of the opening scene’s awful acting and poor direction to dash any hopes you may have had for it. From time to time it begins to drag itself out of its meandering pointlessness, only to collapse again under the weight of cheap sets and a banal storyline, as if being about an Aboriginal couple in prison and a troubled Aboriginal man is enough. Not all movies need sheer triumph or tragedy to work, but it helps if you care what happens to the characters. (more…)
Posted on November 2nd, 2009 at 9:38 pm. Updated on March 5th, 2016 at 10:16 pm.
Mansour Ziaee (Hosein Yari) comes from a little village in Iran’s north, where his family farm sheep. He convinces his parents and his newish wife to sell up and start a new life in Tehran, where they all squeeze into a tiny house. Mansour can work as a welder, but is told by his boss that there is no more work, and to stop ringing him. He’s called a villager, an idiot. His dreams are dashed; he feels betrayed. The next time he sees his boss, on a city street, his picks up a brick and smashes his head in. He is sentenced to death. (more…)
Posted on October 26th, 2009 at 8:31 pm. Updated on October 26th, 2009 at 9:34 pm.
“This is Frankie Stossel. A child of God. Was he born to be bad?” the narrator asks in the movie’s opening scene as a newborn baby is smacked into life. Unfortunately there’s no-one around to give this lame 60s morality play a similar kick start. (more…)
Posted on October 24th, 2009 at 4:35 pm. Updated on December 11th, 2009 at 8:58 pm.
Eduart (Eshref Durmishi) is a young Albanian who travels to Greece, hoping to become a rock star. He has the looks, but not the talent, it seems. To keep alive, he thieves. He also hustles. At a gay bar, he is picked up and taken home by a rich bloke who is not really his type. He is caught rifling through this bloke’s desk, but that seems to not to dampen the older man’s ardour once an initial attempt to get him to leave is out of the way. Eduart, more appalled than panicked, strangles him and flees. (more…)
Posted on October 21st, 2009 at 9:37 pm. Updated on January 11th, 2010 at 10:39 pm.
Of all the film noir prison movies, few match this one in its compelling depiction of the gangster-in-prison still acting like a gangster. (more…)
Posted on October 17th, 2009 at 10:45 pm. Updated on October 18th, 2009 at 4:35 pm.
This is not a softcore exploitation movie, 1928-style. You’ll find it filed under ‘Gay-Themed Films of the German Silent Era.’ But while it is all of those things, it is also much more: a push for penal reform, a brave contribution to the debate about the purpose of punishment, and some poignant studies in guilt and prisoners’ longing for intimacy. (more…)
Posted on October 11th, 2009 at 7:19 pm. Updated on October 16th, 2009 at 6:12 am.
Yeah, it’s a bit schmaltzy at times, but this is an under-rated (or at least undeservedly less well known) addition to the prison sporting contest genre. It has its formulaic elements, too, but is a much better bet than the other rodeo movie of which I’m aware (Stir Crazy, 1980) and the series of The Longest Yard movies (which aren’t about rodeos but take prison sporting events to some very strange places). (more…)
Posted on October 4th, 2009 at 6:10 pm. Updated on January 12th, 2010 at 9:06 pm.