Word: second
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Based on the 1996 best-selling serialized novel, The Green Mile is Frank Darabont's second flash of lightning. Unlike The Shawshank Redemption, however, The Green Mile climbs over and beyond the high walls of typical prison drama fare. There is a mystical element that injects complexity into a movie that, otherwise, you could have sworn you'd seen before...
...only flaw preventing Darabont's triumphant second effort from being perfect is the manner in which the story begins and ends. Told as a flashback by an older Edgecomb sixty years after the fact, the story opens with scenes that take place in the present. This set-up at the beginning of the film is fine, but the ending just doesn't work. Immediately after the final scene from 1935, the story shifts back to the present for a wrap-up that comes across as contrived (the same problem plagued Saving Private Ryan). Instead of ending the film...
Coming in an unlikely second in endorsements is Dreyfus, who in addition to the support of his fellow Society of Physics Students, has also gained an endorsement from the staff of the Demon, a quarterly campus humor magazine...
...amorphous and cloaked space essential to Machinal's murky insinuations. The lighting, especially because it seems to be lit from the back, creates a silhouette of figures. This space becomes the sordid space of sexual conquest, first with the boss, later as a murky bar and finally in the second act as holding pen for Helen before her execution...
...second act is more convincingly mechanical, especially the final scenes of the play. Helen eventually kills her husband, as the audience anticipates, and the court scene that ensues is fabulously orchestrated. Gunn demonstrates considerable talent in controlling his body. As robot-husband, he is eerily mechanical and almost reminiscent of an Edward Scissorhands figure. Parris and Agresta, both lawyers, reflect the insensitivity and detachment that the law has for human emotion. The bright lighting illustrates a sense of barrenness, and the media, Montoya and Gomes, again engage in their convincing double dialogue and contribute to the scene's mechanical intention...