Latest news with #TheShawshankRedemption
The Citizen
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
What to watch: Stephen King's ‘The Institute' – Binge it or skip it?
Although it has a slow start, by episode three, the plot and web of intrigue begin to reveal themselves. There are some great shows to look forward to this weekend as couch time temporarily fills in for droll time at the office. It's winter, it's cold and cuddles on binge are on the menu. Stephen King books are always a fun read; his horrors are as scary as they come and short stories like The Shawshank Redemption are an exercise in artistic depth to the absolute. However, sometimes the feature film versions of his work do not translate so well onto screen. Carrie was an excellent film and a pacesetter of its genre, Pet Cemetery less so. Shawshank Redemption, absolute genius in cinema. Now, there's a series on Showmax called The Institute, based on another of King's works. The Institute has had mixed reviews that range from worse than watching paint dry through to applause for its entertainment value. But really, what do these mean when all you want to know is whether it's worth your time, or whether you should flick off. Don't do the latter. Because even though the show starts off a bit higgledy piggeldy, by episode three, the plot and web of intrigue begin to reveal themselves and unravel at the same time. It's a bit of a slow start We meet Tim Jamieson, a cop who is somewhat down on his luck and on his way to New York to work as a security guard. But after giving up his seat to someone else on an overbooked flight, he elects to hitchhike to his destination instead. During his journey, he passes through a one-horse town and sees an ad for a night patrol job at the local police station. Applies. Gets the job. And just like that, he's paused in the small town and slowly befriends the locals. Typically for a King story, there are a host of rather strange sideshow characters in the show. Tim befriends a hobo, Annie, who lives in a tent and prophesies strange things, until she's found dead. Stackhouse, we will get to him later again, is the eerily and brilliantly cast head of security at The Institute, set just out of town, signposted as a Biosecurity Research Complex. Secret experiments on kids It is anything but. The small town of Du Pray is home to a secret organisation that identifies young children for their psychic abilities, kidnaps them at an early life stage and submits them to a raft of cruel tests and training. The objective is ostensibly to protect humanity's future to eventually be able to predict instances or segues of conflict before the arise. On the flipside of Tim's narrative, Luke Ellis is drifting in and out of sleep, and the next, he's jolted awake with chemical spray in his face. Then, he wakes up later with a bit of relief. He's still in his bedroom. That is, until the room starts feeling unfamiliar and as he steps out, not into the familiar passage of his childhood home, it's been replaced by a corridor filled with other kids who look just as confused, and just as kidnapped. Enter Ms. Sigsby, The Institute's prim and polished head honcho. She tells Luke that all this – his abduction, this testing, this psychological torture – is for a greater good. Make it through, pass the final test, and you're heading home. As a bonus, his memory will be wiped clean. No harm, no foul. Hero doesn't drink the Kool Aid Luke, though, didn't drink the Kool Aid. While the kids endure shock therapy and psychological manipulation, Luke and his unlikely allies lay the groundwork for a prison break that may be their only shot at survival. The Institute is run by a collective of somewhat shady operatives and medical staff. At the head of the snake is Stackhouse, brilliantly played by Julian Richings and Ms Sigsby, played by Julia Louise Parker is as cool as they come. The young cast is led by Joe Freeman as Luke Ellis. Keeping the narrative alive outside of the goings on at The Institute is Tim, well played by Ben Barnes. The series is a slow burn of dread and as things unravel, so does the plot structure, too. It feels like the show makers were too much in a hurry to finish off the show. In his books, Stephen King is the master of pace. On screen, The Institute is a bit like a mother-in-law driving. Slow start but accelerating and decelerating in a few of the wrong places. It never answers questions fully and makes viewers cross their fingers for a season two to tie up loose ends. Having said that, The Institute is really entertaining. It has flaws, but they are not gaps wide enough to spoil anyone's appetite to find out what happens next. And a lot happens in the show. It's well worth a weekend binge.
Metro
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
I've seen 1,000s of movies – here are 5 criminally underwatched crime films
Steve Charnock Published August 5, 2025 2:39pm Updated August 7, 2025 9:34am Link is copied Comments As a kid, I'd get a little bit of pocket money from my parents in exchange for doing a few chores. I was only so keen to help because washing the car and the dishes allowed me to buy videos. Never clothes, or sweets, or books. Just films on VHS. I had hundreds. Then, when I got my first proper job, DVDs were the thing. So all my wages went on those little round cinematic beauties. Now? Well, thanks to streaming I've got a lot less clutter. But even more access to movies, movies, movies... (Picture: Metro) I love Letterboxd, but as a pretty recent convert to the film reviewing and tracking platform, it's impossible to log everything I've ever sat down to watch. It's in the thousands, though. My favourite genre? Crime flicks. Of course, I've seen all the classics. Some dozens of times. You don't need me to tell you that The Godfather is a good film though, do you? Instead, let me help build up and improve your watchlist with some under-the-radar minor classics. None are super obscure, though. You should be able to find them all out there somewhere. These are five of the most criminally underwatched crime films waiting to make your next movie night… (Picture: Getty) One of the most thrilling and tense subgenres of cinematic crime comes in the panopticon-shaped visage of the prison film. We've all seen and - rightly - love The Shawshank Redemption for its drama and emotion. Many movie buffs will love the likes of Papillon, Bronson or Escape from Alcatraz for various reasons. And let's not pretend The Rock isn't great, c'mon . But for overlooked prison thrills? This Ric Roman Waugh tale of a normal fella slowly being pressed into an incredibly tough prison gangster is - like its protagonist - hard to beat (up). Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars in what's possibly his best performance to date. But it's all about the supporting cast here. Omari Hardwick, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, and Holt McCallany are all menacingly good. It's grim, it's sinister, it's violent. But it's not just a superior genre piece - it's also an effectively damning indictment of the US penal system (Picture: Bold Films/Participant Media) Martin Scorsese may not have invented the sweeping gangster epic, but he certainly perfected it and made it his own. The Goodfellas template has been used by plenty of filmmakers since its release three and a half decades ago. Not least by Scorsese himself in Casino, The Departed and The Irishman. There's also the likes of Ted Demme's Blow and Doug Liman's American Made. My third pick here is another 'American', the not-entirely-originally-entitled American Gangster. Behind the camera is the legendary Ridley Scott. In front of it? Hollywood god Denzel Washington as real-life 70s Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas. True, this isn't much of a leftfield pick. But what it is is an underappreciated one. It's simultaneously a mob movie, but also a tight police thriller - thanks to the side of the film handled by Russell Crowe's detective character. Both leads are on form, but this is a glorious crime saga improved by its stellar ensemble cast. There's Lymari Nadal, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin, RZA, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Armand Assante, John Hawkes, Richie Coster, Carla Gugino and - best of all - Ruby Dee as Lucas' disapproving mother (a performance for which she was Oscar nominated) (Picture: Universal Pictures) Some movies don't get the audience they deserve due to questionable marketing signed off by nervous studio bean counters. This Michael Shannon crime biopic was presented to the world on its release 12 years ago as a mob film. And anyone unfamiliar with the mind-shatteringly bizarre story of Richard Kuklinski will have bought that as a premise. If you'd read the excellent Anthony Bruno book that Ariel Vroman's film's based on, however, you'd know that Kuklinski wasn't just an enforcer and hitman for the Gambino crime family. He was also a serial killer. The man killed for both business and pleasure. You won't find much in the way of emotion here, but as a portrait of a stone-cold murderer with ice in his veins, this is high-grade material. Shannon is perfect here. The man's portrayal of a born killer pretending to be human is genuinely chilling (Picture: Bleiberg Entertainment/Rabbit Bandini Productions) We've seen some tightly-plotted stories here, with some intricately-written plots. This next pick is less interested in story and far more into mood. Not everyone will like this arguably slightly overlong neo-noir that's also accused by some of being a bit too talky. But if you let the snappy script, soul and R'n'B soundtrack and beautiful cinematography wash over you, you'll enjoy this much more than if you stare at it pleading for the story to progress at a pace. That's not to say that there isn't a story: Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn are two rogue-ish cops hauled over the coals for a unconventional arrest. Staring at careers that didn't work out the way they'd planned, they decide to knock off some bank robbers and disappear with the cash. S. Craig Zahler's film is an at-times rather bleak ode to 70s exploitation movies. With a sprinkling of refreshingly light-hearted buddy cop movies of the 80s on top. When it's slow, it's slow. When it's nasty, it's nasty. But it's cracking throughout (Picture: Amazon Prime Video) I make no apologies about the fact that I will talk about and advocate for this film at any given opportunity. Its director, Michael Mann, is best known for films like Heat, Ferrari, Ali and The Last of the Mohicans. And while Heat is possibly not only his finest work, but arguably the greatest crime film ever made, it can't be featured in this list. For obvious reasons. Mann's 1986 serial killer classic Manhunter absolutely can, however. If you saw Brett Ratner's 2002 Hannibal Lector movie Red Dragon starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, Ed Norton and Ralph Fiennes, you may well have wondered why Hollywood didn't instead choose to make a good version of that film. The reason may have been because they already had, 16 years before. Based on Silence of the Lambs author Thomas Harris' first Lector novel, Manhunter is a pastel-shaded nightmare. Incredibly 80s in tone, style and soundtrack, it's still somehow incredibly creepy and thoroughly unsettlingly in places. Succession's Brian Cox is unnerving in his cameo as Hannibal the Cannibal, William Peterson is perfectly on edge as intuitive FBI man Will Graham and Tom Noonan is one of cinema's great serial killers as Francis 'The Tooth Fairy' Dolarhyde. If you take away one recommendation from this list, make it Manhunter (Picture: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group) Some of those recommendations you may know, others you may not. But get them on your watchlist and, trust me, you won't regret it. Of course, these are just five underwatched and underappreciated crime flicks. There are hundreds of others. Why don't you tip a few people off as to the mob, prison, bank robbery and serial killer movies you think deserve more attention and love than they get? Nominate your picks in the comments below… (Picture: Getty Images) Next Gallery
Boston Globe
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A journey into hell with Williams's ‘Not About Nightingales'
The mystery of its meaning is not cleared up till late in the play. Let's just say you won't soon forget the moment when the purgatory of prison turns into hell. (Diggle, the scenic designer, does amazing work in that scene.) Advertisement O'Hara helmed the 2019 Broadway production of 'Slave Play,' by Jeremy O. Harris, who is currently Williamstown's creative director. O'Hara is also a playwright of note. His With its intermittent flights into melodrama, its homoerotic subtext, and its lyricism, 'Nightingales' is recognizably a Tennessee Williams play. (With Williams, even the script's stage directions possess a certain lyricism.) It is also recognizably a Tennessee Williams play in the concision and vividness of its character portraits. O'Hara keeps the story grounded, even gritty, with an intensity of focus that largely prevents any drift — an ever-present danger in a drama that features 16 characters. Advertisement Written in 1938 and inspired by a hunger strike by 650 inmates at a penitentiary in Holmesberg, Pa., 'Nightingales' was Williams's fourth full-length play. He considered 'Nightingales' the best play he had written up to that point in his career. He also thought it was one of the most wrenching. In a foreword to the publication of his 1957 'Orpheus Descending,' Williams wrote of 'Nightingales' that 'I have never written anything since then that could compete with it in violence and horror.' The Williamstown cast includes William Jackson Harper — who played the fretful ethicist Chidi Anagonye on NBC's 'The Good Place' — as a prisoner who was brutally treated by the prison's warden and now works for him. Jim is slowly drawn into a romance with Eva (Elizabeth Lail), the warden's new secretary. A haunting figure is Jack (Ben Getz), an inmate whose experiences in prison have led to the disintegration of his mind. Brian Geraghty is the Stanley Kowalski-like convict Butch, all alpha-male aggression and dominance. It is Butch who leads the hunger strike as a form of protest against the nearly inedible food they are served each day. Chris Messina is the creepy Warden Whelan, abusing power in every way he can, the most detestable warden since Bob Gunton's Warden Norton in 'The Shawshank Redemption.' Williams was only 27 when he wrote 'Nightingales,' finishing it in 1938 — two years before his 'Battle of Angels' became his first professionally produced play in a calamitous train-wreck of a production at Boston's Wilbur Theatre. Advertisement His emphasis in 'Nightingales' on social injustice and the politics undergirding that injustice is notable. He dedicated the play to the memory of Clarence Darrow, whom he called 'The Great Defender, whose mental frontiers were the four corners of the sky.' The play languished in obscurity until Vanessa Redgrave became its champion. It was presented in 1998 as a coproduction by the National Theater of London and the Alley Theater of Houston. The next year, 'Nightingales' moved to Broadway, where it had a short run but garnered half a dozen Tony Award nominations. 'Nightingales' was reportedly the first full-length play where Thomas Lanier Williams signed a script as 'Tennessee Williams.' Many impressive accomplishments would eventually be attached to that name, and 'Not About Nightingales' should be counted among them. NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES Play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Robert O'Hara. Presented by Williamstown Theatre Festival. On the NikosStage, Williamstown. Through Aug. 3. Tickets $20-$100. 413-458-3253, Don Aucoin can be reached at
Irish Post
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
Joe McFadden to lead cast in new tour of Shawshank Redemption
ACTOR Joe McFadden has been announced as the leading man in a new British tour of The Shawshank Redemption. Adapted from a novella by Stephen King, the acclaimed stage production from Bill Kenwright Ltd returns with a string of shows later this year, including seven performances in Belfast. Second-generation Irish actor McFadden will star as Andy Dufresne, who was first played by Tim Robbins in the acclaimed 1994 movie that garnered seven Oscar nominations. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, who starred as Andy Dufresne and Red in the 1994 big screen adaptation, speak about the film ahead of a screening in Hollywood last year (Image: Presley Ann / Getty Images for TCM) Glasgow-born McFadden rose to fame in the acclaimed 1996 BBC miniseries The Crow Road, an adaptation of Iain Banks' novel of the same name. He also had prominent roles in both Heartbeat and Holby City, while in 2017 he won the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing with partner Katya Jones. However, he is no stranger to the stage, having played Caractacus Potts in the British tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 2006-07 and the Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show in 2023. Last year, he starred alongside second-generation Irish actress Stacey Dooley in the sixth West End production of Danny Robins' acclaimed play, 2:22 A Ghost Story. Friendship and hope Based on King's Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption from his 1982 collection, Different Seasons, the stage production examines friendship and hope behind the claustrophobic bars of a maximum-security facility. In the story, Andy is handed a double life sentence for the brutal murders of his wife and her lover, despite his protests of innocence. Incarcerated in the notorious Shawshank facility, he quickly learns that no one can survive alone. Andy strikes up an unlikely friendship with the prison fixer, Red — played by Morgan Freeman in the 1994 movie — and things start to take a slight turn for the better. However, when the warden decides to bully Andy into subservience and exploit his talents for accountancy, a desperate plan is quietly hatched. Reg E. Cathey (Red) and Kevin Anderson (Andy) perform pieces from the show the night before its world premiere at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on May 19, 2009 (Image: Sasko Lazarov / As well as McFadden, the forthcoming tour also stars Ben Onwukwe as Red, Bill Ward as the warden and Graham Elwell as Hadley. It has been adapted by Dave Johns and Co. Tyrone native Owen O'Neill. The pair originally adapted the story more than 15 years ago, when it had its world premiere at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in 2009, presented by Lane Productions and directed by Peter Sheridan. In that production, Kevin Anderson (Sleeping With the Enemy) played Andy and the late Reg E. Cathey (The Wire) took on the role of Red. The latest Bill Kenwright Ltd production — directed by David Esbjornson — begins its tour at the Theatre Royal in Windsor on September 5 and concludes at the Grand Theatre in Leeds on May 23, 2026. It will run at the Grand Opera House in Belfast from September 30 until October 4. For full tour dates and to book tickets, please click here.
Japan Today
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Dark series 'The Institute' adaptation gets author Stephen King's thumbs up
This image released by MGM+ shows Joe Freeman in a scene from "The Institute." (Chris Reardon/MGM+ via AP) By MARK KENNEDY Stephen King has a rule for anyone wanting to adapt one of his books for the big or small screen. It's basically the Hippocratic oath for intellectual property — first, do no harm. 'When you deviate from the story that I wrote, you do so at your own risk,' he said in a recent interview from his home in Maine. 'I know what I'm doing and I'm not sure that screenwriters always do or that producers and directors always do.' Not everyone has listened to King, who has enjoyed hit adaptations — 'The Shawshank Redemption,' 'Stand By Me,' 'Misery,' 'It' and 'The Shining' — as well as flops — 'Salem's Lot,' 'Graveyard Shift' and 'The Lawnmower Man.' The industrious novelist has lately watched as a wave of adaptations are crafted for theaters or streaming platforms, a list that includes 'The Life of Chuck' and the upcoming 'The Long Walk,' 'The Running Man' and 'It: Welcome to Derry.' It also includes the eight-episode series 'The Institute,' which debuts on MGM+ on Sunday. It's about a secret government facility where kids with special talents — telekinesis and telepathy — are imprisoned and put to dark geopolitical uses. Their bedrooms are faithfully re-created and creepy posters — 'Your Gift Is Important' and 'I Choose to be Happy' — line the halls. Does this small-screen adaptation of his 2019 book get King's approval? 'I'm talking to you which is a pretty good sign,' he says, laughing. He even signed on as executive producer. 'When I write a book, it's a single-person sport and when these people do a TV show or a movie it becomes a team sport. So you expect some changes and, sometimes, man, they're really good.' 'The Institute' stars Mary-Louise Parker as a sinister scientist and Ben Barnes as a small-town cop on opposite sides as the group of children are kidnapped and exploited. The series is faithful to the book, but includes some changes, like setting it entirely in Maine and aging the hero up so as not to appear too sadistic. That hero — 14-year-old Luke Ellis, played winningly by Joe Freeman — is the latest youngster with special powers that King has manifested, a line that stretches back to the heroine of 'Carrie,' Danny Torrance in 'The Shining' and Charlie McGee in 'Firestarter.' 'I thought to myself, what would happen if a bunch of kids that had psychic powers could see enough of the future to tell when certain moments were going to come along,' he says. 'But the kids would be wrecked by this process and they would be kept in a place where they could serve the greater good. It was a moral problem that I really liked.' King has a special respect for young adults, who he says can be brave and behave nobly under pressure but who can also be mean and petty. He says he was inspired by William Golding, who wrote the iconic 'Lord of the Flies,' a dystopian novel about a group of schoolboys who while trying to survive on a remote island unlock their own barbarism. 'He was talking to his wife before he wrote the book and he said, 'What would it be like if I wrote a story about boys and the way that boys really acted?' And so I tried to write a book about kids the way that kids really act,' says King. Executive producer and co-writer Benjamin Cavell says King resists the impulse to be overly involved in the process, instead identifying people he trusts to do right by the material. 'So much of the pleasure of King's writing is the access he gives his reader to the deepest, darkest, most private thoughts and dreams and desires of his characters; the adaptor's task is to make all that external and cinematic,' says Cavell. Jack Bender has become something of a King whisperer, helping adapt both King's 'Mr. Mercedes' and 'The Outsider' to the screen. This time, he helped direct and executive produce 'The Institute.' 'I count my blessings to be in the position of someone he creatively trusts,' says Bender. 'He is a genius at tapping into the fears we all share of what's hiding under our beds. For me, both 'Mr. Mercedes' and 'The Institute' deal with those fears by focusing on the monsters inside of us human beings, not just outside in the world around us.' The first thing Bender and Cavell had to figure out was what form 'The Institute' would take — a standalone film or a series. 'In the case of 'The Institute,' which was a 576-page novel packed with rich, fascinating characters that would need time to connect and be with each other, I didn't want to shrink it into a 110 minute movie that would've become the 'X-Kids,'' says Bender. King says that while Hollywood has a seemingly insatiable appetite for his books, he hasn't gotten more cinematic as a writer — he always has been. 'I am one of the first writers that was actually influenced by television as well as movies. 'I grew up with the idea that things should be cinematic and that you should look at things in a visual way, a very sensory way.' King was also pleased that the adapters of 'The Institute' made sure not to change the name of Barnes' small-town cop, Tim. "I named him Tim because I read somewhere that no great thing was ever done by a man named Tim. And so I thought to myself, 'Yeah, well, OK, I'll call him Tim and he can do great things.'' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
