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.
Written by Edward Bunker (who did 20-odd years in prison himself) and shot partly in Philadelphia’s closed Holmesburg Prison and several working prisons (substituting for San Quentin, where the film is set), this film about survival in prison should at least have some authenticity. And it does – to a degree. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:27 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
Critically acclaimed Australian movie about a ‘new generation’ prison – with strong, overt references to Jika Jika and Katingal (including a newspaper article on the five deaths from the 1987 Jika fire pasted on one cell wall, and nods to the Russell Street bombing and the murder of Barry Quinn). Co-written by singer Nick Cave and many others in very-1980s polemic – with considerable input, it would seem, from NSW Justice Action’s Brett Collins and Victoria’s Peter Lawless, both of whom have cameo roles. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:24 pm. Updated on March 2nd, 2010 at 8:53 pm.
A confronting black-and-white film version of the 1977 play by Ray Mooney, which purports to depict the struggle of Christopher Dale Flannery in ‘H’ Division, Pentridge, and his campaign which resulted in the Jenkinson Inquiry in 1972. Mooney, an ex-‘H’ Division prisoner himself, should know what he’s talking about, but one suspects that he also uses just a touch of artistic licence. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:21 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
This black-and-white film is sometimes referred to as a classic. Personally, I don’t buy it. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:18 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
Melodrama in which Paul Muni plays James Allen, returned from the First World War with a restlessness borne of a desire not to return to the drudgery of his former civilian life in New Jersey and an ambition to use the engineer’s skills he’d learnt in the army. He soon leaves his shipping clerk’s job, but finds work hard to get right across the country. Down on his luck in the South, he teams up with another down-and-outer, thinking he’s getting a free feed at a diner, when his mate pulls a gun and forces Allen to raid the till. Allen gets caught and sentenced to 10 years on the chain gangs. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:15 pm. Updated on March 10th, 2017 at 9:08 pm.
A real ‘70s action flick; tough and gritty. Jim Brown plays the handsome, stoic Curtis Hook. Hook comes to jail on some relatively minor charges, but everyone knows that he alone knows where the proceeds of a drug heist (an attaché case full of skag and $1.5m in cash) are stashed. So he’s a marked man in ‘the slams’, with everyone wanting a piece of what he’s got on the outside. We are asked to join with Hook and hope that he gets away with all the dough… which means that we have to conveniently set aside the seven drug dealers and two accomplices that he killed in order to walk away with the money. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:12 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
I’m not sure how ‘comedy capers’ are different from ordinary comedies, but this is definitely in the caper mould. Peter Sellers plays Dodger Lane in this black-and-white movie from the Carry On era of British cinema. His character is more a refined cockney crook, if there is such a thing, and the film is less of a vehicle to showcase Sellers’ talents than the Clouseau and Strangelove movies that were to follow soon after. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:09 pm. Updated on March 4th, 2010 at 9:37 pm.