Normally I don’t include exploitation films, but this is something of a cult favourite, and supposedly different. “Smarter and more deeply meaningful than many of its European and American … counterparts” says one reviewer. Another, the trusted ‘Prison Flicks’ website, claims that, “The core of the movie is the political critique of post-war Japan, and its attempts to hide rather than reform its corrupt political and economic structure. The movie provides an image of a diseased polity, and Matsu is not so much a heroine as she is a force of nature attacking the old order.” Well, I’m not so sure. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:33 pm. Updated on March 8th, 2016 at 12:30 pm.
I remember reading Borstal Boy as a young teenager and being completely captivated by its bawdy, rollicking style and the irreverence and passion of its author, Brendan Behan. That memory makes this lukewarm adaptation of his autobiography so much more disappointing. Behan was larger than life, and this reduces him to something akin to a minor rebel in a coming-of-age story at an English boarding school. Or perhaps I’m getting the character in the book mixed up with the boozy, ribald celebrity that he was to become before drinking himself to death at 41. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:29 pm. Updated on December 11th, 2009 at 9:00 pm.
If it’s true, as this film’s publicity would have you believe, that this is Korea’s best comedy, you have to feel a bit sad for the Koreans. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:26 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
The title makes it sound like a precursor to the 1970s’ women-in-prison exploitation movies, but this is a fair dinkum Academy Award-nominated film about a woman in prison. You know it’s set in a different era when, in the opening scene, new receptions are being unloaded from the van and they’re wearing hats, gloves and carrying handbags. Fascinatingly, there are no African-American or Hispanic prisoners, either, anywhere in the prison. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:23 pm. Updated on May 7th, 2020 at 4:29 pm.
I don’t like musicals, it must be said, and I was very prepared to dislike this one. But Chicago is sharp, with the (largely song-and-dance) action cutting cleverly between reality and fantasy, and so pervasive is its cynicism that it might not be so out of place in a collection of prison movies. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:21 pm. Updated on February 26th, 2010 at 8:47 pm.
Definitely one of the sillier prison comedies, but not the worst. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:16 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
This is exactly what you’d expect a hard-hitting prison melodrama in 1947 to be like. Although it comes from a very different era, there are some familiar themes, including a heated debate by administrators about whether prisoners are getting it too soft. There is even a number-plate industry (more 14 Gang in Pentridge than Ararat). And there is the unfamiliar, too, such as the population in a post-War US prison being entirely white, save for one prisoner named Calypso who is inclined to break conversationally into song. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:14 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
Lewis E Lawes was the Warden of New York State’s Sing Sing Prison for 21 years up until 1941 and is generally credited with pulling the prison back into line after years of mismanagement. It’s hardly surprising, then, when the film made from his book of the same name paints the Warden in a rather flattering light. The ‘20,000 years’, by the way, represent the accumulated total of the years to be served by all of the prison’s inhabitants and the same book was used as the basis for another film, Castle on the Hudson, in 1940. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:11 pm. Updated on September 13th, 2009 at 6:13 pm.
This is not a prison movie really, but rather a Schapelle Corby-esque drug smuggling movie, much of which takes part in a Thai prison after two young American girls, Alice and Darlene (Claire Danes and Kate Beckinsale) get caught with a couple of kilos of heroin in their hand luggage – after having seemingly been set up by a charismatic young Australian. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:07 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
I’m one of those who just doesn’t get hip hop: it’s not just the invective and misogyny, but notwithstanding odd pockets of creativity, it’s the sameness and the inevitability of the rhythm and tone. And that’s precisely what this film is about. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:31 pm. Updated on March 2nd, 2010 at 8:54 pm.