Also known as ‘Truth or Die.’ A mediocre made-for-TV film based on the true story of Jerome (Jerry) Rosenberg, a small-time Brooklyn criminal who hit the big time in 1962 when he and an associate were charged and convicted of the murder of two policemen during a robbery. Sentenced to die by electric chair, he was saved after New York first abolished the death penalty (with killing Police one exception), after which he mounted a successful legal challenge to his own death sentence. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:46 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 9:27 pm.
One of comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s last movies. Thankfully. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:43 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 8:30 pm.
There’s so much to like about this film – its authenticity, its subject matter, compelling performances, beautifully filmed… and yet, for some reason, it doesn’t hit you quite like it should. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:39 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 4:26 pm.
Mediocre comedy starring John Lyshitski as an habitual criminal who wants to get back at the judge who kept sending him to prison by ‘helping’ the judge’s son who has been wrongly convicted and sent to prison. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:32 pm. Updated on September 1st, 2009 at 9:39 pm.
A short film (for some reason edited down to just 50-odd minutes), but definitely one of the oddest. You’d expect a ‘30s film called Prison Nurse to glorify selfless, self-sacrificing nurses in the way that Mutiny in the Big House (1939) deified prison chaplains. At least, I did. But this movie is of a very different flavour. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:31 pm. Updated on June 6th, 2010 at 5:47 pm.
Based loosely, it seems, on the story of Father Patrick O’Neil who helped quell a riot at Canon City Prison in Colorado in October 1929 in which five prisoners and eight guards were killed, this film is an unabashed tribute to all prison chaplains. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:28 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:43 pm.
Ringo Lam (who directed the Hong Kong Prison on Fire movies) directs this as well, but if that gives you some optimism, the fact that it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme probably won’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:25 pm. Updated on March 8th, 2016 at 3:02 pm.
The product description promised English sub-titles, the DVD itself teases by allowing English sub-titles to be selected… but nothing. So it’s a bit difficult to rate, this one; my Spanish is very poor indeed, and half the reviews of the movie on the web very earnestly outline the plot of an entirely different film and so offer no help at all. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:22 pm. Updated on June 4th, 2015 at 9:55 pm.
This is not a film that you would ever watch twice. It’s a low-budget offering that offers realism (the writer and director, Sean Wilson, has seemingly done time and the movie is based on his experiences) but forgets that ‘real’ doesn’t necessarily translate to ‘interesting’. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:18 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
I wasn’t exactly blown away by The Hoose-Gow (1929), the only other Laurel & Hardy prison film I’d seen, but this one came with a much more promising reputation. And it opens well, with crew-cut Stan and Ollie trying to tunnel out of prison, only to come up, pick-first, through the carpet in the Warden’s office. In unsoiled, pristine prison uniforms, what’s more. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:16 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.