Juvenile Court

Third to last shot of the film: a lingering wide, centered on an open doorway leading out of the court. An emotional hearing has just concluded, and the film's characters hang there, making small talk, exiting slowly. A cop makes a joke. They leave the room. The door,…

marshlandz

first wiseman that has made me literally physically sick to my stomach. makes an interesting contrast to the stanford prison experiment style evil we see in titicut follies -- the monsters in this film aren't reveling in the power they've been given, but they're far more…

esther

“If you let yourself get depressed about something and you think about it and think about it, it ends up in your mind it’s a lot worse than it really is. I think that’s what’s happened. There’s no reason for you to make yourself so miserable. Now what was it that you said…

Jack Welch

Anyone confusing Wiseman's style with impartiality clearly hasn't seen the crash zooms of absolute horror in this film during the lengthy, excruciating sequence where a bunch of adults, all ostensibly responsible for her protection and care, spend 40 minutes calmly telling…

[radio edit]

Possible contender if any for a new favourite Frederick Wiseman film from what I've seen thus far; especially when considering the social disparity on display in a court here. When watching Juvenile Court, it's hard not to watch the film and imagine yourself in the same…

Jaime Rebanal 🇵🇸

Tough to reconcile what could be considered “sensationalist” material within the rest of Wiseman’s filmography, but this is more a film about the attendant reactions to being presented with such information within the formal—sterile—court environment. Ostensibly about…

Patrick Preziosi

71/100 Ah, that's the stuff. Hadn't seen early, vintage Wiseman since catching a NYC retro back in 2000; this was one of the key titles that I missed, and it confirms that his forte is capturing not so much the inner workings of an institution (see: most of his recent…

Mike D'Angelo

Like the sad antithesis to High School’s cheerful nightmare of conformity. This largely soulless bureaucracy of comfortable white men determining the fates of those who don’t fit in, or don’t want to conform, or all of those who are never even given the chance. Adolescent…

jrhovind

don't think that any of us can live here without fault

marshlandz