The Farm: Life Inside Angola Prison

Like most of the documentaries that wind up being nominated for an Oscar, The Farm, which follows six inmates serving life sentences over the course of a year, delivers exactly what you would expect from a summary of its premise, and not one iota more. In this case, the filmmakers, Liz Garbus and Jonathan Stack, clearly want us to sympathize with the plight of these forlorn prisoners, many of them aging and quite obviously harmless; to that end, they stack the deck, concentrating on what are admittedly appalling injustices (a scene in which smug parole board members deliberately choose to ignore possible evidence of an inmate's innocence is particularly disturbing) while soft-pedaling or completely omitting details of their subjects' alleged crimes. What we learn, basically, is that life for a hard-time con isn't exactly a nude oil massage on the Riviera, which for most of us is perhaps not breaking news. It'd be easier to feel properly outraged, though, if we didn't feel as if relevant details were being swept under the journalistic rug. Still, a strong, optional purchase given the sell-through price and the Oscar nom. (M. D'Angelo)