Director Jiri Menzel, in one of my DVD’s features, tells a political joke from 1950s Czechoslovakia that gave the film its structure: ‘The workers are ordered to attend a meeting, where a comrade gives a lecture explaining, “In the present we have socialism, but in the future we will have communism.” After the lecture, he asks the workers if they have any questions. One of the workers raises his hand and says, “It’s good that we have socialism and will soon have communism, but where is the bread, where is the milk, where is the butter?” The comrade answers, “This is a rather complicated question. Ask me again at the next lecture.” A week later, the workers are ordered to attend another meeting, and the same thing happens – the comrade extols the virtues of socialism and communism, and afterwards asks if anyone has any questions. Another worker raises his hand and says, “It’s good we have socialism and will soon have communism, but where is the bread, where is the milk, where is the butter, and where is the worker who asked about this the last time?”‘ That’s just about all you need to know about this film, really. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 8th, 2012 at 3:29 pm. Updated on July 5th, 2020 at 10:24 pm.
“We have to make them fear us,” says the deposed Superintendent, Mme Appel. “No,” replies her successor – and prison reformer – Yvonne Chanel, “We have to make them love us. That’s far more difficult.” But no more appropriate, I would suggest. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 3rd, 2012 at 11:14 pm. Updated on April 21st, 2012 at 8:27 pm.
The storyline of VIP is apparently borrowed from a real-life Guatemalan corruption case. Which one, I don’t know. Based on the depiction of Guatemalan life in this film, there could be a large number from which to choose. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on March 28th, 2012 at 9:06 pm. Updated on April 23rd, 2020 at 8:22 pm.
As the opening credits of Con Games roll over, we see a prisoner being led into a cell (in order that he might be raped by a waiting prisoner, it turns out), and the cell door doesn’t have a locking mechanism. Maybe such details are unimportant. But it doesn’t augur well. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on March 19th, 2012 at 10:29 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:00 pm.
I’m not sure why this wasn’t called ‘Bad Choices’. Most of the critical choices are arguably not that hard: “Do I join my brothers in a robbery?”, “Do I allow myself to be sprung from jail by a social worker who is pointing a gun at the sheriff who has treated me decently?”, “Do I become a drug trafficker?” – but not all the answers are straightforward in this morally challenging tale.
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Posted on March 11th, 2012 at 8:55 pm. Updated on December 16th, 2013 at 8:21 pm.
This is on so many ‘best prison movies’ lists that one could be forgiven for thinking that it is a prison movie. It is, however, clever, witty and empathic… which all but exclude it from sensible consideration as a prison comedy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on March 6th, 2012 at 10:04 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2012 at 10:06 pm.
There’s an element of misery porn about this movie, which is not about ‘civil’ imprisonment but women detained as political prisoners by the Polish security forces. It’s fair to say that the prison in which they are held is not civil.
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Posted on February 29th, 2012 at 8:58 pm. Updated on July 5th, 2020 at 10:24 pm.
The Experiment opens with scenes of various animals engaged in alpha male battles for superiority, some other animals killing others that are less strong, and humans engaged in acts of degradation and abuse of others. The message seems clear: men are no different to animals, and it is the natural order of things for prison guards to brutally assert their power over prisoners. We soon learn that this natural order involves things such as guards urinating on prisoners, demanding sex from them, and finding justification to deny an ill prisoner access to life-preserving medication. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on February 25th, 2012 at 10:03 pm. Updated on February 25th, 2012 at 10:03 pm.
Director Beto Gómez apparently shot this, his first film, in just seven days for $50,000. “(Back then) I thought making a film was just about grabbing a camera and shooting”, he says of making El Agujero. None of this might fill you with confidence.
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Posted on February 9th, 2012 at 10:05 pm. Updated on March 17th, 2013 at 1:48 pm.
It’s this sort of third-rate film that spawned the whole exploitative Women-in-Prison genre. This one features no cat fights, no shower scenes, no predatory lesbians. Instead, it depicts an island full of uniformly beautiful women in period costume panning for gold in crocodile-infested swamps while being whipped by the guards. Maybe voyeurism was different back in the early ’60s. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on February 9th, 2012 at 9:39 pm. Updated on February 9th, 2012 at 9:39 pm.