Prison stuff. In prison movies.
If there’s an earlier, full-length, talkie prison comedy, I haven’t heard of it. Well, Pardon Us, I suppose, and Hold ‘Em Jail, but they’re a bit like silent movies with words, in parts. And Up the River (1930), though that’s a comedy-drama. There may be fifty others; I don’t know. I do know, however, that there are plenty worse prison comedies than this one. (more…)
Posted on August 1st, 2009 at 10:23 pm. Updated on November 30th, 2013 at 10:57 am.
There have been complaints, I know, that Steve McQueen’s film about the 1981 hunger-strike death of IRA leader Bobby Sands in Belfast’s Maze Prison is politically biased, and that it portrays him as a hero. I’m not sure that it’s an issue. (more…)
Posted on July 14th, 2009 at 9:15 pm. Updated on August 27th, 2009 at 10:29 am.
Moon Jones is the writer and director of this awful, awful mockumentary. He also stars as Luther ‘Satan’ Little, the father of three teenage boys who follow him to prison. Satan is a bad, bad dude. He’s killed people, he sells drugs, he snarls and says ‘bitch’ a lot, and he laughs when another inmate suggests that instead of playing dominoes for cigarettes, they should play for the right to have sex with the cleverest and most sensitive of his sons. Well, step-son. Satan sure is mean, but the scariest thing about the film is when, as the final credits roll over, there is a suggestion that a sequel might be in the offing. Aaaargh! (more…)
Posted on July 11th, 2009 at 6:55 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:09 pm.
They don’t get any more melodramatic than this. Thankfully. (more…)
Posted on June 21st, 2009 at 3:58 pm. Updated on September 27th, 2009 at 8:11 pm.
Based on the apparently unreliable memoir of prison officer James Gregory, this film sets itself a tough task: to provide a credible account of Nelson Mandela’s relationship with a white, apartheid-supporting guard during his last 22 years in prison, while giving precious little air time to Mandela’s perspective. (more…)
Posted on June 20th, 2009 at 11:49 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:42 pm.
This is a very stylised rendering of the true story of Michael Peterson and his alter ego, Charles Bronson, possibly the most violent prisoner in England, who started a 7 year stretch in 1974 and 34 years on has had just a couple of brief spells on the outside, his term increased by series of sentences for offences committed inside prison – assaults and hostage takings. His stint inside has included 30-odd years in solitary or doing the Largactil shuffle, it seems. (more…)
Posted on June 16th, 2009 at 9:00 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:42 pm.
This is an unashamed propaganda film for prison reform and the incumbent San Quentin Warden, Clinton T Duffy, to whom the film is dedicated (along with his ‘men’). (more…)
Posted on June 8th, 2009 at 12:13 pm. Updated on March 11th, 2017 at 8:19 pm.
The Director of this Spanish-language, low-budget movie calls it an ‘amazing story’ and its publicity proclaims that making a movie of the escape was ‘the only option’. Wrong, on both counts. (more…)
Posted on June 7th, 2009 at 6:41 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:05 pm.
I’m deeply, deeply suspicious of any film where the Director casts himself in the lead role and not only gives himself the best lines, but gets to bed the beautiful woman and be the hero all at the one time. Not even Woody Allen can always pull that off, and Rob Schneider certainly can’t in this limp, misconceived comedy. But it’s not just that. This is a one-joke movie, and when that one joke concerns homosexual rape, or any rape (even if it’s mostly about the avoidance of rape), it’s going to have trouble making me laugh.
Posted on May 31st, 2009 at 6:15 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:42 pm.
A curious mix of British prison architecture (well, Dublin’s Kilmainham Jail), the look and feel of a US reality TV show (think ‘Britain’s Unruliest Prisons’ with prisoners dressed in thin beige boilersuits), and some very un-American and unexpected plot twists that unapologetically break faith with the genre. (more…)
Posted on May 23rd, 2009 at 10:38 pm. Updated on September 3rd, 2009 at 10:15 pm.