Aaron Wittwer (ajwittwer)

What the hell Nic Cage? What the hell!?

Wow. This is John Hillcoat's extremely bleak and dismal feature film debut, written and scored by Nick Cave, and it certainly is a brutal one. The film follows a series of events in a maximum security prison that led to a riot and a lengthy lockdown; how the events were reported vs. how they actually occurred, showing the way in which the prison system is manipulated in order to create fear and subsequently the demand within society for protection. This is done almost entirely through narration with very little actual dialogue exchanged, though the characters within the prison all take on realistic, believable and individual qualities throughout. The end result is something very powerful and thought provoking. The film falters a couple times in attempting to explain itself too much. A bit of narration towards the end pretty much sets out in detail the entire message of the film which is a shame as up until that point the film had done a good job of avoiding such direct exposition.

Still, all in all, it's a great film and yet another addition to the list of prison films that are a billion times better than The Shawshank Redemption. Not quite as good as Scum, but up there.

Hands down, the greatest movie of all time. It has so many layers that you could watch it a thousand times and still get a kick out of it. If you don't like this movie then I don't like you.

This is the single greatest parody of all time. A straight faced comedy that plays like a melodrama, only every line's a cliche and every character's emotionally dysfunctional. Toss in a few Russ Meyer women, some long-winded moralizing, and one of the best WTF moments ever and you've got yourself one amazing piece of cinema.