Tag: ex-con

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Features Live Action Movies

Kaneko’s Commissary
(Kaneko Sashiireten,
金子差入店)

Director – Go Furukawa – 2025 – Japan – Cert. N/C 15+ – 125m

****

An ex-con runs a service delivering clothing, other supplies and messages from loved ones to convicted prisoners – plays UK cinemas in the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2026 which runs from Friday, 6th February to Tuesday, 31st March

A young mum, babe in arms, takes bags for her husband to a drop-off facility / creche so she can visit him in prison. The helpful assistant informs her that the commissary will be unable to accept most of the contents of the bag – basically, any clothing other than underwear. And off she goes for a prison visit with her husband, who has anger management issues and takes out on her the fact that she failed to visit last month, telling her, “it’s easy for you to abandon me.” His unabated rating and verbal abuse eventually drives her to a primal scream before she walks out, leaving him to ask, redundantly, after she’s left, if their child has been born yet.

His visit isn’t from her but the self-announced “Kaneko from Hosoda’s Commissary”, who has a deliver from his wife; divorce papers to sign.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

This is England

Director – Shane Meadows – 2006 – UK – Cert. 18 – 101m

A young, pre-teenage lad falls in with a gang of skinheads in Post-Falklands War, Thatcherite Britain – originally published in Third Way in 2007, to coincide with the film’s UK release date

The above one line synopsis, although accurate, doesn’t even begin to convey the piece’s considerable strengths. (Note: Meadows would subsequently develop this into a series of TV dramas in the UK using many of the same cast and characters: This is England ‘86, This is England ‘88 and This is England ‘90 in 2010, 2011 and 2015 respectively.)

Meadows is a unique and powerful voice, a teenage school dropout who kicked off his career in features with 1996’s 60-minute feature Small Time and went on to greater things TwentyFourSeven (1997) and critical favourite A Room For Romeo Brass (1999). His highest profile effort is the less impressive Once Upon A Time In The Midlands (2002), which suffers from trying to make an epic with an all-star British cast. Meadows is not about big movies (not yet, anyway) – he began shooting movies with mates as actors and has an uncanny ability to draw incredible performances out of actors and non-actors alike, based as much on the people concerned as on their acting ability.… Read the rest

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When Autumn Falls
(Quand Vient l’Automne;
US: When Fall is Coming)

Director – François Ozon – 2024 – France – Cert. 15 – 102m

*****

A grandmother’s cooking accidentally poisons her daughter, who survives… in the ensuing emotional turmoil, past truths are revealed, which have devastating effects… – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 21st

Michelle (Hélène Vincent) lives alone in rural Burgundy. She goes to church. She goes out picking mushrooms with her old friend Marie-Claude (Josiane Bolasko), who attempts to stop her picking the poisonous ones. At home, Michelle double-checks the mushrooms against photos and blurb in her mushroom reference book. She cooks the mushrooms. She gets a phone call telling her her guests are on the way. She is surprised that the driver is using Laurant’s car.

Her daughter Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier) arrives in the car with grandson Lucas (Galan Erlos) in tow. He is looking forward to spending the Summer with his gran. Valérie, however, is constantly angry, blaming her mum for everything, occasionally making remarks about “what you did”. She is clearly upset by something in their past history, although it’s unclear as to exactly what. Although grandmother has given daughter her former Paris apartment, Valérie also seems keen that Michelle sign over the current house to her under a scheme that would exempt Valérie from paying tax on it.… Read the rest

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Black Dog
(Gou Zhen,
狗阵)

Director – Guan Hu – 2023 – China – Cert. 12a – 106m

***1/2

An ex-con returns to his home town, which is infested with wild dogs, and befriends a stray – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, August 30th

Looking down from the edge of a slope towards Gobi Desert scrubland. In the distance, a coach moving along a road. Suddenly, a large pack of wild dogs come out of nowhere and charge down the slope. The startled bus topples over. The dogs are gone, the driver is getting everyone out of the bus. A man complains that his money, his life savings, have gone. He needs that money. Who has taken it? They are about ten miles from Chixia. One of those on the bus is Lang’s son. The police are called, they arrive and help get the bus back upright. Lang Yonghui (Eddie Peng), as required, shows an officer his parole ID. Lang walks behind the slow moving bus as the police escort the coach to Chixia.

As an announcement warns of a black dog seen around the town that may well be carrying rabies, Lang is strip searched at the station while the other passengers wait to be interviewed.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Cape Fear
(1991)

Director – Martin Scorsese – 1991 – US – Cert. 18 – 128m

*****

A vicious ex-con seeks revenge on the family of the lawyer he sees responsible for his incarceration in prison – review from Strait – the Greenbelt Newspaper, March 1992.

Directed by Martin Scorsese with characteristic and frenetic energy, Cape Fear is his best movie in years. It ranks not so much alongside The Last Temptation of Christ (1988, file under embarrassing personal projects along with Until the End of the World, Wim Wenders, 1991) but rather as a companion piece to early collaborations with actor Robert De Niro like Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980).

Here, the actor is first glimpsed from behind as a muscled torso tattooed with the Scales of Justice and numerous biblical verses. It’s a foretaste of things to come.

While the original Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) had Robert Mitchum as ex-con Max Cady who terrorises the lawyer (and his wife and daughter) responsible for his prosecution, Scorsese’s remake borrows religious elements from another Mitchum-as-villain vehicle, Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955), in which his character justifies his actions in fundamentalist Christian terminology.

De Niro’s Cady is specifically a self-designated vessel of judgement upon the lawyer and his kin.… Read the rest