Tag: con

Two Way Stretch

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 14 August 2025
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Director – Robert Day – 1960 – UK – Cert. U – 78m

****

Three prisoners plot a heist with the perfect alibi… that they are incarcerated in prison at the time – classic British prison comedy is out on UK Blu-ray on Monday, August 4th

Very much of its time, this British prison comedy concerns three convicts and an outside contact who sets them up with the perfect job. The top-billed performer is Peter Sellers, a British household name by this time thanks to radio’s long-running comedy series The Goon Show TIMES, but far from being a straightforward vehicle for Sellers’ indisputable comic talents, the film is very much an ensemble piece, with a main cast that reads like a who’s who of British comedy acting talent of the time.

Prisoner Dodger Lane (Peter Sellers) and his two cellmates Jelly Knight (David Lodge) and Lennie Price (Bernard Cribbins) have engineered themselves a cushy existence in one of H.M. Prisons where every morning at 7 a.m. sharp, groceries are delivered by van via a rope through their cell window and their beloved cat Strangeways is periodically taken out for a walk by friendly Chief Prison Officer Jenkins (George Woodbridge). The latter is due to retire shortly, and soon after that, the three men’s sentence (for the same crime) is due to end.… Read the rest

Tags and tended to give better performances when surrounded by personal friends, Arthur Mullard, audio commentary, Bernard Cribbins, Beryl Reid, British, British comedy, British prison comedy, Bryan Forbes, cabinet-making, cat, cell window, comedy, con, conman, convict, cracking rocks, cushy existence, David Lodge, disciplinarian, do-gooder ladies, due to retire, freewheeling ad-libs, gang, garden, Gemma Ross, George Woodbridge, grocery van, H.M. Prison, hardened criminals, heist, improvisational style, incarceration, insecure, Irene Handl, life of crime, Lionel Jeffries, Liz Fraser, Mai Zetterling, Maurice Denham, obsessive, Paul Joyce, perfect alibi, perfect job, Peter Lydon, Peter Sellers, prison break in, prison break out, prison escape attempt, prison garden, prison governor, prison workshop, prisoner, prize marrow, progressive regime, quarry, reform, rehearsal-based preparation, Robert Day, Robert Ross, Roy Boulting, safe-cracking, Sidney Gilliat, suspicious behaviour, Thorley Walters, Two Way Stretch, UK, unrepentant, Vic Pratt, vicar, Warren Mitchell, Wilfred Hyde-White

Features Live Action Movies

the G

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 June 2024
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Director – Karl R. Hearne – 2023 – Canada – Cert. 15 – 106m

*****

A 72-year-old conned out of her home and assets calls up someone from her past to exact revenge – gripping thriller is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, June 21st

After a brief opening in which two men complete the task of burying a third alive, this switches to a hospital appointment of Mrs. Hunter (Dale Dickey from Hell or High Water, David MacKenzie, 2016; Winter’s Bone, Debra Granik, 2010), 72 years old and gruffly describing herself as “socialite, retired”. She is accompanied by her grown-up granddaughter (Romane Denis), photogenic legs in tight shorts, and giving the middle finger to men who come on to her. The elder drives the younger home, deliberately missing the turn-off so they can spend more time together talking in the car.

Then Hunter returns to her condo to care for her bedridden partner Chip (Greg Ellwand from February, Oz Perkins, 2015), hit a bottle of vodka and perch precariously on a stepladder on her balcony to fix a dicky light. She is watched by a man from a car parked in the street. Next morning, there’s a knock at the door, and men including “your legal guardian Rivera” (Bruce Ramsay) and his assistant (Jonathan Koensgen) come into the apartment bearing a court order to move the couple to a facility.… Read the rest

Tags 72-year-old, ageing, apartment, assault, assets, bedridden, Bruce Ramsay, burial alive, Canada, car, care facility, carer, compliant, con, condo, conned, couple, court order, crime, curmudgeon, Dale Dickey, driving, female curmudgeon, funeral, gangster, gardening, gran, granddaughters and grandmothers, grandma, granny, Greg Ellwand, home, hospital, hospital appointment, incarcerated, Joey Scarpellino, Jonathan Koensgen, Karl R. Hearne, Kathleen Fee, knock at the door, landscape gardener, legal guardian, locked door, locked in, money, move house, phone, prisoner, resident, retirement, revenge – thriller, Richard Chevolleau, Roc Lafortune, Romane Denis, scam, surveillance, unrepentant, vodka, women’s support group

Features Live Action Movies

Concrete Utopia
(Konkeuriteu Yutopia,
콘크리트 유토피아)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 April 2024
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(Konkeuriteu Yutopia,
콘크리트 유토피아)
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Director – Eom Tae-hwa – 2023 – South Korea – Cert. 15 – 130m

****1/2

A massive earthquake makes the residents of the sole Seoul apartment block still standing close their doors to survivors outside – out on UK digital platforms on Monday, April 1st

Concrete: a structural material made of aggregate, cement, and water. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) Harsh. Unyielding. Impenetrable. Opaque. Not alive. Commonly used in today’s world in the manufacture of buildings, and associated with Brutalist architecture.

Utopia: an ideal community whose inhabitants exist under seemingly perfect conditions. (Definition from Encyclopedia Britannica.) The English word derives from two Greek words, the compound meaning of which is nowhere. Hence, “seemingly”. Utopias tend to have some fatal flaw. If they didn’t, any story about them would lack dramatic conflict. Thus, the word carries within it a degree of irony.

The eponymous montage of these two words pits them against each other: an unyielding, dead physicality confronts the optimism of a better world. The title evokes JG Ballard’s novels Concrete Island (1974) and High-Rise (1975), the former about a stranded motorist struggling to survive on a spaghetti junction after a car accident, the latter about a newly built block of flats in which the residents descend through social breakdown towards a new order.… Read the rest

Tags Anti-Crime Force, apartment, apartment block, architecture, block of flats, brutalism, Brutalist architecture, buildings, city, community, compassion, con, concrete, congressman, construction, couple, crime, decision-making, decision-making process, delegate, devastation, dystopia, earthquake, Eom Tae-hwa, extinguish, family unit, fire, food, foot in the door, freezing, freezing weather, homeless, hose, identity theft, jet of water, JG Ballard, Kim Sun-young, Korea, LEAFF, LEAFF 2023, Lee Byung-hun, London East Asia Film Festival, London East Asia Film Festival 2023, murder mystery, neighbour, new order, Park Bo-young, Park Ji-hu, Park Seo-joon, payment, people, representative, residents, scam, schoolgirl, search for food, selfish, selfishness, sentenced to death, Seoul, social breakdown, South Korea, special effects, steal, survival, survive, survivors, Taxi Driver, theft, thriller, Tremors, urban, utopia, violence confrontation, vote, weather, Women's Association

Features Live Action Movies

Twilight Cinema Blues
(Ginpei-cho Cinema Blues,
銀平町シネマブルース)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 19 February 2024
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(Ginpei-cho Cinema Blues,
銀平町シネマブルース)
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Director – Hideo Jojo – 2022 – Japan – 99m

*****

Two homeless men find a new spiritual home at a run-down, local cinema which, like them, is struggling to survive – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2024 between Friday, 2nd February and Sunday, 31st March

Down on his luck in his home town of Ginpei-cho, Takeshi Kondo (Keisuke Koide fromShin Godzilla, Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi, 2016) is napping by the riverside in daylight. Along comes another tramp Sato (Shohei Uno from A Far Shore, Masaaki Kudo, 2022; 37 Seconds, Hikari, 2019) to sell him a flier for money and, when Kondo is distracted by the arrival of his old friend Kumika, to steal his bag. After Kondo tracks Sato down and retrieves his bag – “sorry, it’s a habit”, says Sato – the two tramps respond to an ad claiming it can help them play the system and receive welfare payments. Sadly, the people behind the scheme will turn out to be, as a fellow tramp vocally suspects, crooks with a whole other moneymaking agenda.

Kondo attends welfare-claiming training sessions with Sato, but his heart isn’t in it.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

A Day Off
(Hyuil,
휴일)

Director – Lee Man-hee – 1968 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 110m

*****

A man passes the boredom of Sunday in Seoul by spending time in the park with his lover, robbing an old schoolmate then going out drinking and womanising in bars – available from time to time to watch for free at the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube channel (link at bottom of page)

Shot in stark black and white, this opens with a voice-over which immediately makes you think you’re watching a film noir. However, A Day Off is something else entirely – there are no cops or gangsters in sight, the narrative concerning instead a couple of doomed lovers and the opening voice-over bemoaning the hero’s meeting with his lover Ji-Yeon every Sunday. That said, it’s all about poor people struggling to survive on Seoul’s mean streets and the main character is constantly cheating his fellow citizens or stealing money from them, so its subject matter is not entirely noir unrelated.

Heo-uk (Shin Seong-il, a huge star who also has a bit part in the earlier Bloodline a.k.a. Kinship, Kim Soo-yong, 1963) asks a consults a bird fortune-teller as to what the day will bring: her trained bird picks out a card warning him to Stay Away From Women.… Read the rest