They need more time to breathe.
To Frank Darabont’s credit, this doesn’t feel rushed even though the book is over 600 pages.
It’s just insanely long at over three hours.
I love this book so much.
The way Stephen King released it was especially cool.
He broke it up into 6 parts and released one part a month over the spring/summer of 1996.
Each section was just under a hundred pages and I would devour it.
It’s clearly one of my favorite movies of the 90’s.
However, it’s not even the best Stephen King prison movie of the decade directed by Frank Darabont.
Darabont’s career is frustrating.
He’s only directed four movies.
His Stephen King adaptions range from brilliant to very good: The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist and this.
The only other movie he directed was The Majestic which is a mess but still has some good moments.
I know he did get frustrated with the Hollywood system.
He also wanted to make a Civil War movie that he could never get funding for.
All of this is a shame.
The Green Mile is a perfect example of that Darabont can do so well.
It’s a beautiful film to look at despite it taking place on death row.
The Thomas Newman score is perfectly executed.
Finally, the performances and casting are all home runs.
Look at that cast even beyond Tom Hanks.
No one knew who Sam Rockwell, Doug Hutchison or Michael Clarke Duncan were.
All three are fantastic in the movie.
Rockwell’s wild overreacting is a perfect counterbalance to Hanks, David Morse and Barry Pepper being so stoic.
Hutchison is a weird creep in real life but he’s also the perfect villain in this.
Michael Clarke Duncan is so great in this.
The sadness in his eyes at the pain around him.
How happy he’d get with the small things in the world.
It’s a pretty fantastic performance in a part that could have gone very badly.
You have to believe he is capable of supernatural things or the whole movie goes awry.
You could never tell that story as a stand alone movie.
We just need Frank Darabont to direct it.
The Green Mile
54.
Man On The Moon
55.
Boyz N The Hood
56.
Grosse Pointe Blank
57.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
63.
The Usual Suspects
65.
In The Line Of Fire
66.
My Cousin Vinny
67.
The River Wild
79.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
Stir Of Echoes
82.
Mission: Impossible
83.
For Love Of The Game
86.
Being John Malkovich
87.
Men In Black
88.
Glengarry Glen Ross
92.
Die Hard With A Vengeance
93.
The Blair Witch Project
94.
Any Given Sunday
99.
The Wedding Singer
100.
