I confess: it's a great movie

Rating: 9/10 (11 March 2000)

Surprised. That's how I was feeling after seeing "The Green Mile". I've never expected anything from this movie, in fact, before watching, I used to think that it would be boring, exaggerated, silly, annoying, irritant, ugly and an unjustifiable nominee for the Oscar, occupying space that should be used by much better movies. Most of these "qualities" were deduced from the scenes that were always shown in the television: the little mouse running, the little mouse eating, the little mouse that... like the whole film was about the mouse. And more than this, by some extremely exaggerated ones, where the 2 meters Michael Clarke Duncan asked Tom Hanks to leave the lights on in the night.
I knew that the movie wouldn't be so stupid, of course. It was nominated for the Oscar for some good reason. So, I wanted to take a look at it. After watching "The Talented Mr. Ripley", "The Cider House Rules", "American Beauty" and "Being John Malkovich", it was "The Green Mile" time. I went to the cheaper theater in my town and... surprise! After less than 30 minutes I was completely interested and excited.
Although the mouse really appeared a lot in story, it wasn't as irritant as I thought it would be. In fact, the little mouse was very important in some of the main and most emotional scenes. The movie would be worse without it. I thought Michael Clarke Duncan was good in his role but not amazing. Tom Hanks was. The cinematography was beautiful and the execution scenes were remarkable. And the three hours and eight minutes passed very fast.

I still think that "Eyes Wide Shut", "Magnolia", "Being John Malkovich", "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and even "Election" deserved the Best Picture nomination (much) more than "The Green Mile". But now, at least, I'm not so indignant. "The Green Mile" has its qualities, and these aren't a few. 9/10