prison
A Prayer Before Dawn boasts a fantastic central performance from Joe Cole, but unfortunately, wastes an astonishing true story in favour of genre cliches.
Bolstered by the quiet compassion that has always been her strong suit, Lynn Shelton has turned in another stunning independent feature with Outside In that no one who enjoys the quieter side of life should miss.
A Gentle Creature is a divisive film, too exaggerated to be a realistic condemnation of the corrupt bureaucracy it seeks to lampoon.
Survivors Guide to Prison is a terrifying must see. Featuring a vast array of legendary celebrities, it is less a documentary and more of an alarming SOS to America.
Director S. Craig Mahler follows up Bone Tomahawk with Brawl In Cell Block 99, an unflinchingly violent and truly original revenge thriller.
Last Rampage is a gripping crime thriller and a delight for true crime film fans that examines the strong influence and bonds within family.
The Work is an essential piece of filmmaking that’s powerful in its observation and packs a strong emotional punch.
Imperial Dreams is a statement and truly is a cautionary tale, though not without hope – and, more importantly, stark realism.
The documentary Off The Rails tells the unusual story of a man with Asperger’s whose extreme love for transit has landed him in jail 32 times.
Ava DuVernay returns to the documentary format with 13th, a look at the amendment of the United States Constitution that simultaneously abolished slavery and established a loophole for denying rights to targeted groups. The troubling wording in the amendment has to do with convicted criminals, who are the only people exempt from the abolishment of slavery and involuntary servitude. That exemption, while small at the time, has snowballed into a huge issue thanks to America’s system of mass incarceration.
As soon as Justus D. Barnes fired point-blank at the audience in Edwin S. Porter’s influential The Great Train Robbery, the idea of violence to control an audience was introduced.
Because the Internet can take a person virtually anywhere in the world and provide potentially infinite vats of knowledge, raising children in a dictatorial environment nowadays seems more ridiculous than ever. The mechanics of detaining an adult with an existing awareness of the outside world is even more bewildering, because chances are they’ve read about the Josef Fritzl case and have at least some idea of how to escape. Alas, cinema, ever the portrayer of such cultural terrors, has provided startling means with which to explore such a phenomenon.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is prison films.
The tale of survival is a common one in the world of film. These stories present harrowing experiences that an individual or group must overcome before finally seeking rescue by the end. What these films rarely discuss, though, is the aftermath of the experience:
SHOT CALLER: A Terrifyingly Accurate Castigation Of White Supremacy
What Shot Caller lacks for, narratively, it makes up for in its complex character study guised as a prison drama, expertly exposing human nature’s animalism.