Prison stuff. In prison movies.
Is this a prison movie? I have no idea. It’s set in a prison – on Death Row (where prisoners walk their last mile – here, on green linoleum) in a 1930s Louisiana prison, Cold Mountain Penitentiary – and there are some superb prison characters, but it’s also a spiritual, miracle-filled fantasy that at times has as much to do with the prison experience as, say, Bewitched. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 12:50 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
Fabio is a committed but intense, on-the-edge young man who works in a programs-type role in a secure prison, arranging reintegration leaves and putting up cases to the Parole Board. (more…)
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 10:03 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:46 pm.
From the very first scenes, where Randy (Michael Pitt) is silently preparing to go to court, you know things aren’t going to go well for him. His tie is all awry in a schoolboyish sort of way, he’s pasty, he has a constant pouty look, and his hair is tied back in a vain little ponytail. (more…)
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 10:00 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 12:36 pm.
If there’s another prison movie where it is a prison officer with whom the viewer is asked to identify most, I can’t think of it. Well, Brubaker, I suppose, but he was the Warden. And The Green Mile, but it wasn’t Tom Hanks’ prison experience, exactly, that you were asked to share. So this is a bit different, from the outset. (more…)
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:55 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:46 pm.
Based on the true story, apparently, of some award-winning prisoner gardeners, this is a cut above the average prison comedy. (more…)
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:46 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:46 pm.
An extraordinary prison film, defying classification. Based on a manga by ex-prisoner Hanawa Kazuichi, it details the humdrum life of prisoners in a Hokkaido prison, chronicling their unquestioning submission to the regimented regime, and their happiness in their institutionalisation. It is hard to imagine a gentler, more wistful movie about prison. There is no real plot, but the film centres on the main character and narrator, Hanawa (shown as an older man, in his 60s, perhaps), who is obsessed with guns and lands in prison for possession of illegal firearms and explosives. He and the four others who share his cell willingly ‘surrender (themselves) utterly to the routine, arbitrary rules and the grinding sameness of life in the prison system’, to quote one reviewer. (more…)
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:43 pm. Updated on March 4th, 2010 at 9:39 pm.
This purports to be a prison movie spoof, or rather, a gay spoof of prison movies. (more…)
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:35 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:06 pm.
A surprisingly poetic film about… deliverance, really. Alex (Hill Harper) is a former drug user serving a sentence for a rape he is adamant he didn’t commit. He also has AIDS. His family have little contact with him; they are too ashamed, too busy, and too cowed by Alex’s unforgiving father. But it is Alex’s relationship with his disappointed father that is the story’s heart. (more…)
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 8:56 pm. Updated on April 21st, 2020 at 11:01 pm.
Consistently referred to as the daddy, the granddaddy, and even the great-granddaddy of all prison movies. You get the picture. And it’s reputation is deserved… many of the classic prison scenes that we now associate with the genre are packed into this one drama – a new fish, some hardened cons, a practical, fair-minded Warden trying to maintain discipline in his grossly overcrowded prison, a stool pigeon, a love story, a great mess hall scene, an exercise yard teeming with prisoners, escapes, smuggled guns.. You name it, it’s in there. (more…)
Posted on May 12th, 2009 at 9:33 pm. Updated on September 23rd, 2015 at 10:13 pm.
An extraordinary film and an oddity in the genre because it has none of the usual elements of the prison movie: no escapes, no riots, no institutionalised violence (well, you don’t see the brutality). Not even a knifing. (more…)
Posted on May 9th, 2009 at 4:10 am. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:47 pm.