RSS

Category Archives: Legal System

Compliance (2012)

90m; U.S.

Director: Craig Zobel

Cast: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker and Pat Healy

Synopsis: “In the middle of a bad day Sandra (Ann Dowd), the harried manager of a fast-food franchise, receives a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer. He accuses an employee named Becky (Dreama Walker) of theft and instructs Sandra to subject the pretty teenager to a series of humiliations: detain her in the stock room, confiscate her belongings, conduct a strip search and on and on. As the title suggests, at each step of this increasingly elaborate and unnerving hoax, Sandra and Becky do what they are told.”

-‘Compliance’ Raises Questions About Human Behavior; NYT 8/10/2012

Trailer

1 Comment

Posted by Metro Council on August 30, 2012 in Big Business/Corporations, Class, Consumerism, Drama, Legal System, Netflix Watch Instantly, Service Workers, Women

Hot Coffee (2011)

13 Jul

86m; U.S.

Director: Susan Saldoff

Synopsis: Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts?Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.

Contact: http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/default.asp

Trailer

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on July 13, 2012 in Big Business/Corporations, Documentary, Legal System, Politics

The Gatekeeper (2002)

13 Jun

103m; U.S.

Director: John Carlos Frey

Cast: John Carlos Frey, Michelle Agnew and Anne Betancourt

Synopsis (IMDB): Adam Fields is a rage-filled U.S. Border Patrol Agent who often crosses the line in his job. A member of a vigilante group, Fields decides to go undercover with a hidden camera and cross with a group of undocumented immigrants. His plan goes awry, however, when the group is forced to work for a drug ring. Suddenly, Fields realizes that he has more in common with the migrants and their search for home, family and freedom than he thought.

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on June 13, 2012 in Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Legal System, Migrant workers

Tags: Government, Police/Fire

Up the Ridge (2007)

13 Jun

55m; U.S.

Director: Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby

Synopsis: In 1999 Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ’s for the Appalachian region’s only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge, the region’s newest prison built to prop up the shrinking coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, though the lens of Wallens Ridge State Prison, the program offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. The film explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences. Connections exist, in both practice and ideology, between human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and physical and sexual abuse recorded in American prisons.

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Legal System

Tags: Music

Second Chances – Union Made (2008)

07 May

55m; U.S.

Director: Kelly Candaele

Synopsis: Follows union members who came out of street gangs and prison into the building trades unions and as a result changed their lives

Contact: kcandaele@sbcglobal.net 323-547-1183 (Cell)

Leave a comment

Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Construction Trades, Documentary, Legal System, Working Class

Sounder (1972)

07 May

105m; U.S.

Director: Martin Ritt

Cast: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield and Kevin Hooks

Synopsis (IMDB): The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. After some weeks or months, the wife and mother, Rebecca Morgan, sends the oldest son, who is about 11 years old, to visit his father at the camp. The trip becomes something of an odyssey for the boy. During the journey he stays a little while with a dedicated Black schoolteacher.

Leave a comment

Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Farm & Food, Labor History, Legal System, Working Class

Spare Parts (2003)

07 May

87m; Italy

Director: Damjan Kozole

Cast: Peter Musevski, Aljosa Kovacic and Primoz Petkovsek

Synopsis (IMDB): Embittered widower, Ludvik, spends his nights transporting illegal refugees in his van from Croatia, across Slovenia, and into Italy. The young and inexperienced Rudi acts as his helpmate. Together they become a well-trained duo who almost every night convey “spare parts” to Italy. Of course the story of their illegitimate exports into Europe ends tragically, for everyone. The whole idea of this account is that everyone – including ourselves – is looking for happiness: the “spare parts” because of the misery they are plunged into without, and our characters because they can’t find it inside

Leave a comment

Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Legal System, Migrant workers

Sweet Sixteen (2002)

07 May

106m; U.K.

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Martin Compston, Michelle Coulter and Annmarie Fulton

Synopsis: Liam is a young, restless teen struggling to realize his dream in the gritty and dismal streets of Greenock, where unemployment is rampant and little hope is available to the city’s youth. He is waiting for the release of his mother, Jean, from prison where she is completing a prison term for a crime that her boyfriend actually committed. Her boyfriend, Stan, is a crude and obnoxious drug pusher is partnered by Liam’s equally rough and foul-mouthed, mean-spirited grandfather. Liam is determined to rescue his mother from both of them, which means creating a safe haven beyond their reach. But first he’s got to raise the cash–no small feat for a young man It’s not long before Liam and his pals’ crazy schemes lead them into all sorts of trouble. Finding himself dangerously out of his depth, Liam knows he should walk away. Only this time, he just can’t let go

Leave a comment

Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Drama, Legal System, Working Class

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009)

07 May

120m; U.S.

Director: Bradley Beesley

Synopsis: Since 1940, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary has held an annual rodeo in which inmates compete, to the delight of thousands of spectators. Since 2006, female inmates have been allowed to take part. Many of them are young mothers, separated from their families because of drug-related crimes. The rodeo poses the real possibility of lifelong injury, especially for these amateurs with only minimal training, but both women and men participate to relieve the intense boredom of prison life. This two-hour, heartbreaking documentary introduces some of them, and in the process provides a poignant portrait of the inhumanity of the U.S. prison system.

Leave a comment

Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Documentary, Legal System, Sports, Women