ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Fran]

The "In the Slammer" Round

Movies with jail or prison connections

[Fran]

From IMDb:  "Doc" Riedenschneider, legendary crime "brain" just out of prison, has a brilliant plan for a million-dollar burglary. To pull it off, he recruits safecracker Louis, driver Gus, financial backer Emmerich, and strong-arm man Dix Handley. At first the plan goes like clockwork, but little accidents accumulate and each partner proves to have his own fatal weakness. In the background is a pervasive, grimy urban malaise.

[memento]

Plot: Episodic look at the life of Cuban poet and novelist, Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990), from his childhood in Oriente province to his death in New York City. He joins Castro's rebels. By 1964, he is in Havana. He meets the wealthy Pepe, an early lover; a love-hate relationship lasts for years. Openly gay behavior is a way to spite the government. His writing and homosexuality get him into trouble: he spends two years in prison, writing letters for other inmates and smuggling out a novel. He befriends Lázaro Gomes Garriles, with whom he lives stateless and in poverty in Manhattan after leaving Cuba in the Mariel boat-lift. When asked why he writes, he replies cheerfully, "Revenge." 

=aside= Fran
Great theme.

[southendmd]

IMDb user:  John Cromwell's insolently insinuating women's-prison drama Caged appeared as part of 1950's bumper crop (All About Eve; Sunset Boulevard; Born Yesterday; etc.). It holds its own even in that legendary class. With the possible exception of Gilda, was any film noir ever freighted with more innuendo? (And, given the milieu and all-but-all-female cast, that innuendo has a heavily Sapphic tinge.) One need only list the characters and the players to get a map of the direction the drama will take: "new fish" Marie Allen (Eleanor Parker); corrupt, sadistic matron Evelyn Harper (the 6'2" Hope Emerson); hard case Kitty Stark (Betty Garde); vice queen Elvira Powell (Lee Patrick); warden Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead); and one tough old bird who almost steals the whole damn picture ("one more like you would be so much velvet"). Cinematography is dark and evocative. Subsequent women's-prison dramas became little more than exploitative, porny rip-offs; Caged (despite a bit too much grey sermonizing on making incarceration more humane) manages to be a a stylish, engaging and -- without ever being grotesquely violent -- shocking drama. Too bad it has never (to my knowledge) made it to video; scan the movie channels and tape it when it crops up -- this one is for keeping.

[oilgun]

From IMDb: My wife and I watched this dramatic documentary on Free Speech T.V. I was prompted to call two death penalty attorney friends in Colorado and Oregon to alert them that it was playing.

It documents the initiative that caused journalism students in Chicago to pursue old, closed cases, to find that a dozen innocent men had been condemned to death. They uncovered law enforcement malfeasance, rigged trials, even the identity of a true murderer from whom they obtained a confession and corroboration from the killer's wife.

Besides the human drama other commentators here have noted, it displays a stellar example of community organizing and media work.

The cinematography is near-flawless, the editing superb.

Perhaps the most stirring part of the entire film is the documentation of the angst felt by the Governor of Illinois, George Ryan, who wrestled with competing interests of the families of both victims and the convicted, with pressures from all sides of the political spectrum and how he ultimately resolved himself to the decision he made.

At the end, one litigant's attorney states that if justice was so flawed in Chicago, how bad might it be in other states, such as Florida (where James Joseph Richardson was railroaded for the murders of his seven children and spent 19 years in prison, including three on death row, while the true killer was ignored), North Carolina (see review for the "Trials of Darryl Hunt" on IMDb) and Texas (where George Bush and Alberto Gonzales were involved in the execution of the wrongfully convicted such as Ruben Cantu)?

[Fran]

From IMDb:  A young street kid grows up and becomes a cop when he realizes that crime doesn't pay. One of his childhood friends is in prison for a murder he didn't commit, and the cop looks for evidence to free him. Meanwhile, the prisoner's brother gets mixed up with a gang of counterfeiters, and inadvertently discovers the evidence that can set his brother free, if he can only get someone to believe him.

[memento]

From IMDB: Deeply entrenched in the subversive world of cult films, "Freeway" could be one of the most engrossing movies I've ever seen. Reminiscent of the films of John Waters, it's a satire of such unfunny things as serial killings, drug abuse, prostitution, sexual abuse of underage children, prison life, random acts of violence, and suicide. Like the best Waters, Matthew Bright finds the pathos in all of these things, shaping the movie into a nihilistic comedy.

Reese Witherspoon is absolutely marvelous as her character, Vanessa Lutz, a sharp-witted "white trash" girl who makes the best out of every situation she finds herself in. Her mother is a drug-addled prostitute. Her stepfather is a jobless, sexually abusive moron who also hits the pipe. Vanessa herself has a history of being in trouble with the law and has trouble reading, but she's far from stupid. We never once doubt that she will prevail, no matter how desperate her situation becomes.

Vanessa is forced to make a move one day when her parents are arrested and a social worker plans on sending Vanessa to another foster home. Unable to face that prospect, she gives her social worker the slip and hits the road to search for her grandmother, who she has never met and who is not even aware of Vanessa's existence. Vanessa's life takes a detour when her car breaks down and she is picked up by Kiefer Sutherland. She does not know that he is the "I-5 Killer", a pathetic but cunning serial murderer who preys on young women he plucks from the freeway. Unfortunately for him, he comes up against the wrong victim when he targets Vanessa.

The rest of the story is best left unsaid, although Roger Ebert gave away most of the plot in his review of the film from 1996 (don't ya just love when he does that?). Bright actually references John Waters several times, first by inserting a brief passage that features the opening theme from "Pink Flamingos" and also by making a plot point out of the fact that Vanessa, who is white, has a thing for black guys (much like Penny Pingleton in "Hairspray"). The dialogue is often outrageous, too. But unlike Waters' early films, "Freeway" is technically well-made and structurally better. It also features a number of terrific cameos and roles, including Brooke Shields as Sutherland's snooty, blissfully ignorant wife.

[southendmd]

Plot:  Clive Owen stars as a prison inmate who goes into an experimental "open" prison where the inmates walk around freely and get job training for their impending releases. While there, he discovers he has a talent for growing flowers. His talent is recognized by a gardening guru who encourages him and four other inmates to enter a national gardening competition.

[Fran]

Tagline:  Neither Mr. Laurel nor Mr. Hardy had any thoughts of doing wrong. As a matter of fact, they had no thoughts of any kind.

From IMDb:  Stanley and Oliver protest that they were only bystanders to the raid but are hauled off to a prison labor camp anyway. They proceed with their usual mayhem....

[memento]

AKA Never Too Late to Mend



From IMDB: This is an underrated portrait of the Victorian prison system and the chaplain who tried to change it. An evil squire(Tod Slaughter) sends an innocent man to the British version of Alcatraz in order to get his filthy mitts on a beautiful girl. The cinematography is what makes this film so memorable. The effective use of light and shadow to accentuate the misery and suffering of the inmates, many of which are victims of a corrupt system, foreshadows a style utilized in many venerable products of English postwar cinema such as David Lean's Oliver Twist(1948) Some modern critics have panned this and many other Tod Slaughter films due to the melodramatic, stagey acting. While films like The Demon Barber of Fleet Street(1936) barely hold up today, Never Too Late is the exception because it is well-acted and photographed and is relevant to the global problem of human rights abuses that in these supposedly progressive times has still to be wiped out. After viewing this, I can see why Queen Victoria passed so many prison reform bills after seeing this story done on stage.