olddave

How about Jennifer Love Hewitt? She really handled this role well. Marsha Norman's script was actually a bigger problem than the actress everyone was worried about. While I am stunned to admit it, as I have only seen Love on Party of Five, she's a very capable actress. She's every bit as captivating to watch as Audrey Hepburn. I'm anxious to see her future projects. Bravo, Love! You've made me a fan.

Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, and now The Green Mile. They all begin with old croaker characters who begin to tell us a three hour story. Unfortunately, they come back at the end of the film as well and are sometimes nominated for Academy Awards. Too bad the stories can stand on their own without these unnecessary flashback structures. In this case, the sequences which take place in the present and are the bookends of The Green Mile ruin the film. They tack on a good 20-25 minutes and the audience gains nothing for their extra time.

This is an average good film. I had to give it a 7 out of 10 because people are being too easy on it. Better films about prisons include: Bad Boys and Dead Man Walking, both with Sean Penn, Shawshank Redemption, and Cool Hand Luke to name a few. This film joins End of Days (though is obviously much better) as films that mess too much with religious symbolism and are too obvious with it. John Coffey is a goofy Jesus Christ, one who sucks the tumors out of one woman only to spit them into a troubled man. The real Jesus Christ would've been more forgiving.

If we spent less time with Jingles the Mouse, less time with the old croaker actors (the woman is really bad), less time with everybody but John, this would be a much better film, and no longer than 130 minutes. While a good effort, this had better not be this year's best picture. And please, Tom Hanks has enough oscars. Let Jim Carrey and Kevin Spacey duke it out.

In the mid-1980's, as VCR's were becoming standard equipment, some folks thought they might be a great vehicle for gaming as well. That was the mission of this title, a revved-up version of the popular Parker Bros. board game. The result, is one of the most wonderfully horrible videos ever produced. It is a joy to watch the credits and see just how many people were assembled to make such a mistake. The opening "how to play" sequence is amusing in its complexity, and the simplicity with which it is described by the program's host. The audience will quickly recognize that the game is hardly playable as they shuffle their black suspect cards with their red, blue, and green clue cards and a few other cards in the compartmentalized tray with included viewfinder and detective casebook. That said, Walter Covell makes the film as the mutton-chopped Colonel Mustard with a fondness for hunting and pizza. In fact, his exclamation "Pizza!" is the film's most memorable moment, it is beautifully overdone. Miss Peach is the film's seductive southern belle, too bad she's very nasty and apparently very cold. It is a game filled with glaring errors, Colonel Mustard spilling soup on himself, and visible string holding up the candles. My god, I've seen it too many times. Get it, at once, but don't attempt to play the game, just have some pizza!