No Escape begins with a text crawl which informs us that in the then-distant future of 2022, all prisons are controlled by corporations. It’s a promising enough – though hardly original – basis for a movie, but it turns out to have little bearing on No Escape’s actual narrative, which turns out to be more Mad Max-light than the futuristic prison break movie it initially promises. Continue reading
One of Netflix’s latest film releases, Spanish sci-fi/horror movie The Platform is enjoying a minor splash on the streaming giant, which is the most one can hope for in the reign of Tiger King. Though never stated outright, the movie is presumably set in the future, where the shadowy “Administration” runs a sadistic institution that’s half prison, half social experiment. Continue reading
This essentially straight-to-digital movie, released back in October, slipped under my radar until very recently when I caught some online buzz about it. A serious Vince Vaughn performance is always an intriguing prospect, so I decided to give it a go, expecting a gritty prison movie with (given the director’s previous movie) some hardcore violence. I wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t expect it to be as damn good as it was. Continue reading