Woody Allen’s first film has him playing the hopelessly inept Virgil Starkwell in a documentary-style account of his life. It no doubt says much about Allen’s own fantasies that while Virgil is an utter failure and decidedly unattractive he somehow attracts and weds a competent, beautiful woman. Virgil, unable to do anything else, devotes himself to a life of crime, but is equally hopeless in his chosen field. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:49 pm. Updated on April 18th, 2020 at 2:36 pm.
Based on the true story, apparently, of some award-winning prisoner gardeners, this is a cut above the average prison comedy. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:46 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:46 pm.
An extraordinary prison film, defying classification. Based on a manga by ex-prisoner Hanawa Kazuichi, it details the humdrum life of prisoners in a Hokkaido prison, chronicling their unquestioning submission to the regimented regime, and their happiness in their institutionalisation. It is hard to imagine a gentler, more wistful movie about prison. There is no real plot, but the film centres on the main character and narrator, Hanawa (shown as an older man, in his 60s, perhaps), who is obsessed with guns and lands in prison for possession of illegal firearms and explosives. He and the four others who share his cell willingly ‘surrender (themselves) utterly to the routine, arbitrary rules and the grinding sameness of life in the prison system’, to quote one reviewer. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:43 pm. Updated on March 4th, 2010 at 9:39 pm.
This purports to be a prison movie spoof, or rather, a gay spoof of prison movies. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:35 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:06 pm.
While lots of ‘Best Prison Movies’ lists include this nine-time Academy Award-nominated film, it’s hard to regard it as a prison movie when not one second of the film shows the main protagonists in jail.
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Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 9:27 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 9:36 pm.
A surprisingly poetic film about… deliverance, really. Alex (Hill Harper) is a former drug user serving a sentence for a rape he is adamant he didn’t commit. He also has AIDS. His family have little contact with him; they are too ashamed, too busy, and too cowed by Alex’s unforgiving father. But it is Alex’s relationship with his disappointed father that is the story’s heart. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 14th, 2009 at 8:56 pm. Updated on April 21st, 2020 at 11:01 pm.
In order to make some much-needed cash for himself, Eugenio, a 65-year-old prisoner impersonates a young woman and begins corresponding with a lonely Portuguese truck driver living in Boston, hoping that he will send money.
Posted on May 12th, 2009 at 9:42 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:46 pm.
‘Among Reds.’ Penelope Cruz stars in a film about a well-heeled woman who has to mix it with a range of different prisoner types while serving a 10 year sentence as a political prisoner. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 12th, 2009 at 9:39 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:46 pm.
Consistently referred to as the daddy, the granddaddy, and even the great-granddaddy of all prison movies. You get the picture. And it’s reputation is deserved… many of the classic prison scenes that we now associate with the genre are packed into this one drama – a new fish, some hardened cons, a practical, fair-minded Warden trying to maintain discipline in his grossly overcrowded prison, a stool pigeon, a love story, a great mess hall scene, an exercise yard teeming with prisoners, escapes, smuggled guns.. You name it, it’s in there. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 12th, 2009 at 9:33 pm. Updated on September 23rd, 2015 at 10:13 pm.
An extraordinary film and an oddity in the genre because it has none of the usual elements of the prison movie: no escapes, no riots, no institutionalised violence (well, you don’t see the brutality). Not even a knifing. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 9th, 2009 at 4:10 am. Updated on August 29th, 2019 at 8:47 pm.