best prison movies

Movies to See Right Now

by
PRISONERS

Although I haven’t had a chance  to write about them yet, I like the suspense thriller Prisoners (with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman) and Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon.  I hope to post about them this weekend.

I haven’t yet seen the Tom Hanks thriller Captain Phillips or the rollicking Danny Trejo action comedy Machete Kills, which open today. You can read descriptions and view trailers of it and other upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My other top recommendations:

Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including Letters from the Big Man).

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the provocative eco-terrorism drama The East.

On October 17, Turner Classic Movies will be showcasing the excellent prison drama Convicts 4. It’s not aptly titled – it’s about one convict (Ben Gazzara), whose talent as a visual artist blossoms in prison. Convicts 4 is soon to be on my list of Best Prison Movies.

More prison movies (the raunchiest of the genre)

by

It’s not often that I get accused of being too high brow, but my friend Steve has criticized my heretofore well-regarded list of 10 Best Prison Movies for not including Women in Chains (1972).  Women in Chains is part of the subgenre of women-in-prison exploitation movies.  A prison setting offers a filmmaker the possibility of violence, sex and S&M to exploit.  With women’s prisons, nude shower scenes and catfights are added to the mix.  Steve fondly remembers this aspect of Women in Chains.  But, Steve, it was a made-for-TV movie, so it couldn’t have been THAT racy.

The absolute master of this genre is the website BigBustOut.com – The Original Encyclopedia of Women in Prison Films, which lists over 300 women-in-prison movies.  BigBustOut.com also has an excellent history of the genre. I’ve included BigBustOut on my list of Other People’s Great Movie Lists.  Here is BigBustOut’s take on Women in Chains.

My own guilty pleasure from 70s prison exploitation films is 1971’s 1,000 Convicts and a Woman, which I saw in a drive-in during a misspent evening of an otherwise upstanding youth.  1,000 Convicts and a Woman doesn’t make BigBustOut because it’s not about a women’s prison.  Instead, the oversexed daughter of the warden returns from finishing school and moves into the men’s prison.  Played by vamp-eyed blonde Alexandra Hay, she immediately begins to tease the incarcerated, with forseeable results.

 

Coming up on TV: Midnight Express

by

On July 23, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting 1978’s  Midnight Express. This film is so gripping that, thirty-plus years after its release, you can’t hear “Turkish prison” without immediately thinking of Midnight Express.  It’s probably done more to keep American kids from bringing drugs into Turkey than any other factor.  Midnight Express is based on a true story, and is amped up considerably by Oliver Stone’s screenplay.  Nominated for six Oscars, it won two.

TCM is also showing Cool Hand Luke on July 23.  Both are on my list of 10 Best Prison Movies

Pete Postlethwaite and my DVD of the Week

by

The great character actor Pete Postlethwaite died last week, and this week’s DVD pick honors his finest film work. In the Name of the Father (1993)  is based on the true story of Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) of the Guildford Four, wrongly convicted of an IRA bombing that killed four British soldiers and a civilian.  The four were coerced into confessions by torture and threats against their families.  The real IRA terrorists, captured later for another act, confessed to the crime, but the British government suppressed the evidence of the Guildford Four’s innocence.   Gerry Conlon wound up in prison with his father Giuseppe (Postlethwaite), also convicted of an IRA plot as a member of the Maguire Seven – and Postlethwaite’s performance is one of uncommon inner strength.

The film was nominated for seven Oscars and is on my 10 Best Prison Movies.

Toy Story 3 and Best Prison Movies

by

One of the main threads of Toy Story 3 is how the toys escape (while sending up virtually every convention of the prison movie genre).  On NPR’s Fresh Air, Toy Story 3‘s editor Lee Unkrich and  screenwriter Michael Arndt recently discussed how they watched many prison movies for inspiration.  The interview is here.

The movie that they call the “most boring” is Le Trou, which actually tops my list of Best Prison Movies.

10 Best Prison Movies

by

So how does A Prophet stack up against other films in that time honored genre – the Prison Movie? Can a French film rank high among the Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Folsom fare?

My top ten includes familiar themes – the fact-based stories, the great escape attempts, the characters who resist the oppressive authority and those who work the system to become crime bosses.  Plus Death Row.  My list includes American penitentiaries, British, French and Turkish prisons, enemy POW camps and Southern chain gangs.  But some of the best known prison movies do NOT make the cut.

Edward James Olmos, Pepe Serna and William Forsythe in a very under rated prison movie

See my list of 10 Best Prison Movies.

DVD of the Week: A Prophet

by

This week’s DVD of the Week is a film from earlier this year:  A Prophet (Un Prophete).  It is the story of a young French-Arab from his first terrifying day in prison to his release.  Once he starts to adjust to his role in the prison as the toady of a Corsican crime boss, no one else in the movie knows what he is really thinking.  It evokes the DeNiro scenes in The Godfather: Part II, except set with gritty realism in contemporary France. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.  One of my Best Movies of 2010 – So Far and pretty high on my list of 10 Best Prison Movies.

Check out my other recent DVD recommendations at DVDs of the Week.