The Green Mile et al
Movies from the start of 2000
Originally written: April 2000
2000 Oscars
The Green Mile
The Hurricane
Boys Don't Cry
Happy Texas
Mystery Alaska
The Mummy
The Whole Nine Yards
The Oscars have been and gone. Likewise the Golden Raspberries. Wild Wild West cleaned up at the latter, not without some justification, although to call Sylvester Stallone the worst actor of the century, given the competition from William Shatner, was a little unfair. Perhaps, they decided that Shatner, at least, had not starred in a C&W musical with Dolly Parton.
Of the films on offer at the Oscars, American Beauty deservedly won, just ahead of The Green Mile. But I was disappointed that such original fare as Being John Malkovich and The Three Kings were not listed even though some very ordinary stuff was. I have reached the conclusion that, on the Herman test (which movie, if they were all available, would I like to see tomorrow), BJM was the movie of the year.
CM
is the Featured Attractions Review and Criticism section.
Also in
CM
Alphabetical archive of movies reviewed
also in
Movies
Opening Credits
Critical Mess - Reviews
From the Director's Chair - Essays
Lists
But The Green Mile was not far away. I am amazed at the quality of the films made from S King's non-horror material. The best King-based movies have been Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and Dolores Claibourne. The Green Mile is in the same league. It copped an unnecessary bagging from most of the mainstream critics who plain didn't understand it. It is a great film in the urban fantasy mould, rather like Field of Dreams which also copped something of a serve when it first appeared only to be a hit amongst the general public. TGM has had a similar history. In spite of the bagging, it is firmly in the top 50 of the Internet Movie Database top 250 films. The IMDb poll counts only the votes of subscribers, and is an unusually sensible list (Titanic, for example, is not on it). So movie lovers loved TGM. It's made by Frank Darabont, who performed the same offices (writer-director) on Shawshank, and deals with some mystical goings-on on a Louisiana death row in the 1930s. Told from the point-of-view of the gentle chief of the death row warders (Tom Hanks), TGM focuses on the events leading up to the execution of a large black man, John Coffey (played with magnificent effect by Michael Clarke Duncan), convicted of the rape and murder of two white girls. There are two other executions before Coffey's and some inter-action among the warders but the scenario takes us through Coffey's incarceration, the mystical powers he can employ, his dealing with the guards and his death.
There were some interesting sidelights. The inmates on death row were all archetypes of the outsider: the black, the Amerindian, the creole and the sociopath. The warders were largely quiet and passive - a deliberate device of King's better explained in the book than the film: on death row the aim is to keep the prisoners quiet until their death, not to stir them up or create unnecessary fiction. Percy Wetmore, the brash and annoying warder, is there to show us how an alternate approach doesn't work. My reservations are with the framing story, set in a contemporary nursing home but somewhat less a parallel of events in the main story of the film than they were in the book, and the use of Michael Jeter to play the condemned creole, Delacroix. Jeter, whom some will remember from his bit in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King, is a New York actor who puts on the second-worst French accent since John Cleese taunted King Arthur (for the worst see the later review of The Whole Nine Yards). TGM is a three-hour movie but it doesn't play like one. The time flies in this movie and, provided you make the concession to the main fantasy element at work, Coffeys' magical powers, this is a movie that rewards your attention. Highly recommended.
Performance Theatre
Two other films that featured at the Oscars have things to recommend them, although I could not recommend either. Denzel Washington gives a great performance as Reuben Carter in The Hurricane, as do some of the bit players, including the reliable John Hannah and Vicellous Reon Shannon who plays the kid whose efforts lead to Carter's release, but the film doesn't quite work. This is largely because of the way the plot was structured. Even if we admit that Carter was the victim of an injustice, by centring the prejudice in the character of Dan Hedaya's racist cop, instead of the more ingrained racism of an impersonal system, the film never quite makes its point. But the real weakness of the film is that, by twisting its plot so far to demonstrate Reuben's innocence, you're left with the question, how the fuck did two separate juries ever convict him?
Hilary Swank's performance as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry is a masterpiece and deserves the Oscar. She is more than ably supported by Chloe Sevigny as his girlfriend, another great performance, but the film itself is a genuinely difficult thing to sit through. It is so raw and so affronting, and its characters so off-putting and appalling, that you feel like cringing in a corner and ignoring the whole thing. But at the centre there is this hypnotic performance of the young person, born a girl but knowing he's a boy and imitating the worst excesses of maleness he observes around him. And there is the undeniable love the passes between him and the 'trailer-park trash' girl who's his life-mate. Yet it all culminates in such predictable tragedy and is accompanied by such atrocious behaviour throughout that your worst fears about under-class USAmerica are fulfilled and your sense of revulsion button constantly depressed. I'm sort of glad I saw the movie for the two great performances, in the same way I was glad I saw The Pawnbroker in an earlier age, but the experience was so harrowing I will not be repeating it nor can I in good conscience tell others to go and see the movie.
Sometown, somestate
On the other hand, without the same level of performance, there are a couple of feel good movies that I can recommend if you want a fun time at the movies without worrying too much about the ontological significance of the motion picture form. Happy, Texas is a fun movie about a brace of good ol' boy petty criminals mistaken for gay pageant advisers in the eponymous small Texan hamlet. Jeremy Northam is good, Stephen Zahn plays the same character he played in Out of Sight and is annoying but OK. William H Macy plays the sheriff rather then being chased by one and the woman from Profiler is the main love interest. It's fun most of the way.
So's Mystery Alaska. In this one the eponymous snow-bound hamlet is famous for its amateur ice hockey team; the sheriff is played by Russell Crowe; the main love interest is the woman out of Murder One; the out-of-towner is a former local played by Hank Azaria and neither gayness nor mistaken identity play a part. But here there is a great supporting cast including the usually unreliable Burt Reynolds and Maury Chaykin. This is more in the National Velvet school of film where the cinderella sport (or in this case team of sports) gets to play at the top level and prove their worth - Rocky-on-ice without the histrionics. Ice Hockey is not all that great a sport for film but this is an OK and entertaining tale, written by David E Kelly, the writer of Ally McBeal and Picket Fences, inter alia. There are serious bits, an uncredited cameo from Mike Myers and an ending which doesn't try to out-rocky Rocky. I liked it.
We saw The Mummy recently on video, having missed it at the movies but having had it thoroughly recommended. The old Karloff movie about the bandaged-wrapped monster that brought hysterical laughter to the breast of movie-goers has been updated to a more contemporary and frightening scenario, still involving Egyptian high priests and aged curses but incorporating biblical plagues and powers beyond the ken, certainly of Brendan Fraser's adventurer and Rachel Weisz' librarian. I like Brendan Fraser: he was fun as George (of the Jungle); affecting in Gods and Monsters; and very good in this. John Hannah is equally effective in the comic relief role. The effects are great, even on the small screen, and the hokum of the plot can be largely forgotten. Hire it before the sequel they are making ruins it for everyone.
The Whole Nine Yards is very average. Bruce Willis is laid back; Michael Thomas Clarke is huge; and Kevin Dunn does the most appalling fake Hungarian-American accent. But even he takes second place in the Streepstakes to Rosanna Arquette whose French-Canadian accent you could cut with a knife - she's definitely the descendant of Cleese's taunting Frenchman. The nominal star is Matthew Perry, the less interesting of the flat-noses from Friends. His role is pivotal but calls for too much from him that's outside his range. Mind you he does OK, given the impossibility of the role he's faced with. Amanda Peek as his assistant is good, however, and will be very good in better movies. Wait till it's on video.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]