Steven Boone joins SpoutBlog as a columnist covering politics and social issues and how they intersect with movies. Periodically, he’ll check in–as he’s done below–with firsthand accounts of watching movies with residents of a halfway house in Brooklyn.

A halfway house in East New York, Brooklyn. Spring, 2008. The male residents––ex-junkies, parolees and disability recipients––all gathered for their nightly movie ritual. Four to a room, two bunk beds, one cheapo DVD player and a 13-inch Coby TV set. Audio commentary provided by the audience of (on average) five men: two on the bunks, three hunched around the screen on milk crates. The core crew of film fanatics is Kid and Hef, two old-timer felons, each of whom could be mistaken for a black variation of Walter Brennan in Rio Bravo.

It’s a strange festival. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, Hoodlum, Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion, The Bank Job, Why Did I Get Married?, Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters, and lots of TV-on-DVD: Annie Oakley, CSI, Boston Legal, ancient anime shows. No rhyme or reason in the selections, just whatever’s on hand from the $3 bootlegger or the public library.

But a festival theme emerges, a word hovering in the air unspoken during each screening: justice. Michael Clayton, about a corporate attorney (George Clooney) who finds himself at war with a corrupt, murderous agrochemical business, is plainly about justice for this audience so intimate with crime and punishment. Lots of “aw shits” and “hot damns.” If Michael Clayton is the Opening Night feature, then the festival centerpiece must be the heist flick The Bank Job. …Read more