Rating: 
Summary: Overblown and heavy on the cheese
Review: Am I the only one that realises this movie isn't all that great? It seems to me that any movie with Tom Hanks is automatically elevated to best-picture status, which is complete garbage. Not to disrespect Hanks, who is a very fine actor, and he proves so here. His performance is great, but the overlong movie surrounding it is pretty lame. Too much time dealing with mice, not enough character depth. Everybody is either a fair, kind hearted man or a complete jerk. The good guys are all dull and uninteresting, and the bad guys are all phony baloneys. The entire movie, in fact, has trouble convincing us that this is real. Too much sentiment, too many overblown, overrated performances, an overlong script that could have used a lot more editing, heaps and mounds of pretention, and an overall general sense of falsehood make this the single most overrated movie of the year. This movie proves that even Oscar has his lapses in taste. You're far better off with the far superior 'The Shawshank Redemption', also directed by Frank Darabont and based on a Stephen King novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Walkin' The Mile
Review: This was an excellent Film. Both my husband and I were on the edge of our seats with every scene. Tom Hanks is outstanding in this film. Yet our hearts were taken by John Cofey played by Michael Clarke Duncan. What a tear jerker! I would recommend this to anyone looking for a good movie. This one will be watched multiple times at my house.
Rating:
Summary: We cannot rely on award shows...
Review: When a movie comes out on the big screen it either does well or it does not. People rely on the actors they have come to love when deciding to see a movie. Sometimes others rely on reviews or even wait to watch award shows to tell them whether it is worth watching the movie. This very well done movie did not win awards. It did not do well considering who was in it. It is not as "good as the book". It is not Shawshank Redemption. It was not meant to be anything more than a story that fills your heart with every emotion imaginable. You love, you hate, you spit, you laugh, you cry, and then when the movie is done you comtemplate the meaning of life. I actually had faith in humanity when I was done watching this. The character Coffey is one you can not only just love,you wish you could go into the screen and hug him. I was overcome by powerful yet I think realistic acting. It will probably never be considered the best movie of the last century. It was in my opinion, a very special film. It did not deserve and award. Sometimes, no award is sufficient praise for a human masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Best film of 1999.
Review: THE GREEN MILE was somewhat overlooked at the Oscar awards. It received 0 awards and only 5 nods. In my opinion, it was the best movie of 1999. It had more substance and a better story than any other movie that year. The Oscars are all politics anyway. In THE GREEN MILE, there is some incredible acting and directing. In fact, everything about this movie is superbly done. The movie is about Paul Edgecomb who supervises executions on death row. He meets John Coffey, the man accused of the murder who has supernatural powers. Tom Hanks does a great job as usual. So does Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey They made Duncan look huge when, in actuality he is 6'5". Another good choice in casting was Sam Rockwell as "Wild Bill". This guy does an outstanding job as the crazy, sick, and sometimes funny, psycho. He made you believe that he was really a madman. THE GREEN MILE is an amazingly touching film. So if you want to see a movie that far surpasses anything from 1999, THE GREEN MILE is it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good movie that is hamstrung by its own 'gravitas'
Review: If there ever was a movie made to win a bunch of Oscars, "The Green Mile" is it. It has the serious story, the serious actors, and the serious length that the Academy likes to reward with serious numbers of statuettes. But it's this calculated "We're making a Great, Important Film" attitude that really hamstrings "The Green Mile", a good film that could have been far better with less liberal doses of gravitas. This isn't to say that "The Green Mile" doesn't have its strong points; it's beautifully made, well acted, and does have some wonderful moments. To begin with, the cast is excellent. Tom Hanks turns in another wonderful everyman performance as prison death row guard Paul Edgecombe, who tries to let his charges live with as much dignity and respect as a person waiting for his turn in the electric chair can. The rest of the actors portraying Edgecombe's crew are also fine, but Doug Hutchinson stands out as the smarmy, abusive Percy Wetmore, a man who most assuredly gets what he deserves. Harry Dean Stanton has a great turn as Toot Toot, a old-timer con who helps Edgecombe's crew rehearse executions. ("I'm fryin! I'm a done tom turkey!" he exclaims from the electric chair, as Edgecombe pretends to turn on the juice.) Frank Darabont's direction is suave and self-assured; like his previous film, "The Shawshank Redemption", "The Green Mile" portrays prison life with just the right amount of depressing reality and everyday humanity. And though "The Green Mile" is too long, you have to hand it to Darabont for making the film long enough for its various characters and storylines to flesh themselves out; too bad he spent too much time focusing on Mr. Jingles, the prison's resident circus mouse. The problems with "The Green Mile" start with Mr. Jingles and John Coffey, a huge, powerful, but barely coherent man who lands in Edgecombe's care for killing and molesting two young girls. As time goes on, it becomes apparent that John Coffey has magical healing powers (check the initials); he heals Edgecombe's urinary infection and the warden's brain tumor, and even fixes Mr. Jingles after Percy crushes him. The plot centers around Edgecombe's growing certainty that Coffey couldn't possibly be guilty of the heinous crime that landed him on death row; the Big Question - whether they can execute this guy or not - is the other plot center. Michael Clarke Duncan plays Coffey as a virtual mountain of pain, and the pain shows through in every shot. Problem is, there's not much more to Coffey than pain, and that's a major failing of the film, and of Duncan's performance. Perhaps the original point of the Coffey character was to show a man who simply wanted to die, but Coffey is so depressing and one-dimensional, and dominates so many scenes, that I suspect a goodly part of the audience wanted to see him die after the first hour. That brings us to the subject of length. The main criticism of "The Green Mile" is that it's too long, and I agree. Having said that, I don't mind long movies at all...as long as they give me fascinating characters and situations, and don't beat me about the head and face with how important they are. This is why other long movies like "The Godfather", "Titanic", or even "Boogie Nights" seem to fly by, while "The Green Mile" drags dutifully and laboriously onward. Thankfully, Darabont wisely avoids the trap of talking too much about capital punishment; given the film's subject matter and a particularly brutal execution sequence, "The Green Mile" could have been an anti- (or pro-) execution manifesto. But given that that death by electric chair - a particularly grisly death AND topic if ever there was one - lurked behind every frame of this film, couldn't it have focused more on people and less on Big Themes like the Messianic Man Who Must Die? Darabont's mistake wasn't making "The Green Mile" too long; it was filling "The Green Mile" with so much fluff (like the mouse), self-importance, and Great Cinema flourishes that the movie sagged under the weight of its own inflated self-expectations. That's sad, because "The Green Mile" could have been a lean, mean, prison fable that really would have walked off with a zillion Oscars.
Rating:
Summary: Could we get seven or eight stars?
Review: That film is a masterpiece. Darabont wants to be faithful to Stephen King's book. So he centers his tale on the emotional level of this experience and he uses all the symbols he can in the pictures. In fact the setting itself is simplified in many ways because the characters must come first, and they do. John Coffey (JC, like another one) is huge and powerful. He embodies the simpleness of nature, of a true miracle, though we do not know if he is a miracle of nature or of God. John Coffey is living among us and doing all kinds of good things, but he is different, so he is also running a dangerous road. Along that road we meet with justice that is going to produce one of its blazing miscarriages helped by political widwives. And yet we can wonder if this miscarriage is not willed by John Coffey himself who is tired of living among men and women who hate one another, who find pleasure in doing evil things to all those who surround them. John Coffey cannot repair all that evil, and it is too much of a responsibility for a single and lonely man. So he gets trapped and executed, not on a cross, but on an old sparky. This last run in his long life will help a few to redeem themselves, but the world will go on being bad. The worst part, the straw that breaks the back of this miraculous camel is the fact that some men can kill other people by using the love the victims feel for one another, in this case the love of two sisters for each other. The film also shows so beautifully that men do not do evil for the sake of evil, but that they are moved into doing that by their fears, their ambitions, their mediocrity or the system that engulfs them in order for them to survive, to eat and drink and sleep and have a little of comfort. John Coffey is afraid of the dark. But Percy, the supreme prison warden, is afraid of mice, is only moved by his sex-drives, is fascinated by his own death instinct. He has to make other people suffer for himself to be, just be, even if it is to be a monstrous being. The actors really give some density to the characters. John Coffey is the most convincing living human and humane miracle we can imagine. Paul Edgecomb is emotionnally slow and calculated in his actions and movements. He does not overshow his emotions, but lives them intensely inside his own being and this is shown by a certain nonchalance and restrain. Mr Jingles finally is the most extraordinary pet we can imagine : brilliant, intelligent, sensitive, a marvel of animal grace and beauty. And we can understand that it is this grace and this beauty that inspire hatred and fear in those who have something to hide, some deep flaw in their personalities. The main lesson remains though that no one can escape the ugliness of life, and that the longer one lives, the more one can see it. One can only protect himself against it, try not to be invaded by it, and accept to pay for the mistakes one may make here and then, now and there. This film is naturally a direct allusion to our world. John Coffey is black, like the drink he carries the name of, though not the spelling. The world cannot be redeemed by any saviour, but it can be made to think about itself by a saving victim or martyr. We must definitely think of all the miscarriages of justice that surround us, of the horror of the death penalty, and of the unescapable segragation and discrimination that our world conveys and assumes too easily against anyone who is different, be he or she black, big, simple-minded, poor, hungry, truth-seeking, brainy, or just disturbing the peace of our hypocrisy. Will the world be one day better ? The book by Stephen King is a lot more pessimistic on that issue. But the film is in no way optimistic. It shows the true colors of love, hatred, fear and death that all roam among us like so many skeleton in our cupboards and cabinets, even if it is love. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
Rating:
Summary: Another Tom Hanks winner
Review: Tom Hanks and a cast of other brilliant stars bring you up and down for well over 3 hours. I hardly realized it though because that is how deep you get into this reality based jail celled faith building thriller. If you have not seen it yet it is definately worth your time, more worth than the past several movies I have seen. Some gory scenes of pretty real electric chairs frying up a few poor saps doing there time.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding, uplifting tale
Review: This is an oustanding uplifting tale that re-inforces faith. One of the few recent movies that really is a nice adult tale(although it has some tough scenes). Well worth viewing!
Rating:
Summary: the book was better
Review: The Green Mile was a great book. The concept of a serial novel was incredibly intriguing. The movie fails where the book succeeds. This can be explained using the example of Delacroix's execution. The book held nothing back, describing every graphic detail that this reader has come to expect from Stephen King. The movie, while the scene was done well, hides much of the detail expressed in the book. Also, the ending of the movie skips possibly one of the most moving scenes from the book where the main character describes his wife's death.
Rating:
Summary: This movie actually made me......sad...
Review: Hey, this movie could make jerry lewis cry...i don't want to spoil one miniscule detail of the movie to you,so ill just say this:The acting was some of the best you'll see.Tom Hanks was brilliant.The relationships that develop between characters is really good.And, it's funny how they manage some funny jokes into such a sad and dark movie.They do this without making it some half funny/half sad, they keep the gloomy mood with a light remark every once in a while to brighten things up.I think this movie would appeal to all audiences.but it's not the kinda thing you want little jimmy and christina to see:)
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