Prison stuff. In prison movies.
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 14th, 2009 at 9:15 pm. Updated on August 27th, 2009 at 10:29 am.
Sharon Stone stars in this formulaic Death Row story, which tells us nothing new (or even interesting, really) about a woman awaiting execution. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 14th, 2009 at 9:11 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 6:44 pm.
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! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on July 11th, 2009 at 6:55 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:09 pm.