I wonder if audiences in 1938 felt at all cheated, expecting to see a dramatic prison break and getting nothing of the sort. Well, that’s not entirely true; we do see an attempted escape, which our hero thwarts, and we learn much later that there has been a successful break. But those incidents are far from the main game. Perhaps Break is used here in the sense of an ‘interruption’ to or a ‘brief rest’ from civilian life. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 28th, 2009 at 10:14 pm. Updated on March 11th, 2017 at 8:24 pm.
The blurb on the back of my DVD reads, “When a man is falsely convicted of the murder of his wife’s lover and ends up on death row, he develops intense relationships with three women.” It’s not a great movie, admittedly, and there is some detail in the plot to which you have to pay attention, but you’d hope that enough of the movie’s publicists would have stayed awake long enough to know that he was accused of killing his wife and then strung along four women romantically. His wife. Four women. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 27th, 2009 at 6:37 pm. Updated on March 7th, 2016 at 10:44 pm.
James Cagney as the ruthless, psychopathic gangster ‘Cody’ Jarrett holds this film noir classic together. He’s not your everyday, two-dimensional gangster. His third dimension comes principally in the shape of his pathological relationship with his fiercely protective Ma (Margaret Wycherly), whom Cody loves more than his vapid wife Verna (Virginia Mayo). More than anything, in fact. He’s also prone to crippling headaches and a deteriorating mental state which render him temporarily vunerable, but when his Ma is around she makes sure that his position as gang leader is never compromised. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 25th, 2009 at 10:16 pm. Updated on August 25th, 2009 at 10:29 pm.
It’s hard not to enjoy a movie about a progressive girls’ borstal where the main character, Ann (Jill Ireland), is warned that her monthly visit with her father must be short, and the visit is then terminated after precisely 1 minute 12 seconds. When she pleads for a little longer, she’s told, “I’m afraid the rules have to be obeyed.” Wonderful stuff. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 24th, 2009 at 2:53 pm. Updated on September 1st, 2009 at 9:55 pm.
I knew that this wasn’t a prison comedy per se, but people persist in including it in their lists of prison movie favourites. I have no idea why. I mean, no-one lists The Italian Job (1969) as a prison movie despite Noël Coward’s cameo as Mr Bridger constituting some of the best prison scenes of all time. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 21st, 2009 at 9:17 pm. Updated on August 27th, 2009 at 10:28 pm.
?ukasz is a young, out-of-work graduate when he is picked out of a Police lineup by a doddery old lady. He is duly charged with an assault and remanded into custody. He appears genuinely bewildered by the allegation and strongly protests his innocence, and in the absence of any other evidence linking him to the crime, we tend to believe him. He is temporarily placed in a cell with a swaggering old hand who tells him that he has to choose one of two streams – to be put in with staunch, hardened criminals, or be one of the ‘wankers’. An assessment officer suggests that he work in the kitchen, but as this would place him in the wanker category, he declines. It is at that point that we know that while he may have a major in geography and may be innocent of all criminal activity, at the very least he is a fool. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 19th, 2009 at 7:02 pm. Updated on August 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm.
An awfully pedestrian movie in which the Good Guys triumph over the Baddies. Hooray! Not to be confused with several ‘Women in Chains’ or any ‘Schoolgirls in Chains’ movies. Confusingly, though, none of the girls are in chains (not even after what might be the softest riot on film, ever) and few, if any, are still girls. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 19th, 2009 at 12:22 am. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 9:22 pm.
As in The Quare Fellow (1962), where the wife of the condemned man has a quick fling with one of the Prison Officers who is watching over her husband, Monster’s Ball gives us the wife of a man who has just been executed finding solace in the arms of the Correctional Officer who led her husband to the the electric chair. It seems that this sort of thing must happen all the time. At least in this film, neither of the protagonists is at first aware of the earlier intersection of their lives. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 18th, 2009 at 3:20 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 9:05 pm.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on August 1st, 2009 at 10:23 pm. Updated on November 30th, 2013 at 10:57 am.
This is an impressively shot exercise in American self-flagellation and patriotic absolution. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 18th, 2009 at 6:51 pm. Updated on August 27th, 2009 at 10:33 pm.