An old man in a nursing home begins to cry as he watches the flickering figures of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing in Top Hat. Decades ago, he saw the same movie under far different circumstances and, as he says in a voice-over, "sometimes the past catches up with you whether you want it to or not."
The past, specifically the year 1935, when he watched the movie alongside a condemned man he was guarding, has caught up to Paul Edgecomb (Hanks) with a vengeance in The Green Mile, an exhaustive and exhausting inspirational drama that once again finds director-writer Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) faithfully adapting to the screen a prison novel by Stephen King. Edgecomb's flood of tears is in response to memories of his years spent supervising prisoners on death row and overseeing their executions. One prisoner, a gargantuan, childlike man named John Coffey (Duncan), haunts him still. Coffey, convicted of raping and killing two small girls, turns out to have mystical healing powers. Edgecomb becomes convinced Coffey is innocent. (Hint for the symbolically challenged: Not for nothing are Coffey's initials J.C.)
At 3 hr. 10 min., The Green Mile—the title refers to the green linoleum upon which a condemned man takes his final walk—wears you down. You either completely buy into the movie's simpleminded view of right and wrong and the good guys getting revenge thanks to miracles, or you find yourself, echoing Peter Pan on behalf of a fading Tinker Bell, muttering cynically, "If you believe in fairies, clap your hands." Hanks, doing a variation on his sincere Everyman, holds strong at the center of the movie while Duncan (Armageddon) does what he can in a role that calls for him to be both noble and dumb. Hunt, playing Hanks's supportive wife, works wonders in a small part. (R)
Bottom Line: A bottom-buster at three-plus hours but hokily effective
Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Stephen Rea
Featured attraction
Sometimes the end is only a beginning. That's the case in The End of the Affair, a richly poignant romantic drama based on a semiautobiographical novel first published by British author Graham Greene in 1951. Here, the end of an affair between novelist Maurice Bendrix (Fiennes) and upper-class housewife Sarah Miles (Moore) is really the starting point for a journey of self-discovery for both. As we see in flashbacks, they launch their romance in London during World War II, shortly after her husband (Rea), a milquetoast civil servant, introduces them at a party. Soon, they are sneaking off to steam up the sheets (and sofas and rugs) every chance they get—until one day, without warning, Sarah abruptly ends the affair and Maurice is left to wonder why. What made her call it quits, and how he uncovers her reason years later after hiring a private detective to follow her, will change and color forever what love means for each of them.
Director-writer Neil Jordan (The Butcher Boy) has made a lovely, thoughtful film about love, jealousy and religious faith. It is a movie that slowly reveals its layers and continues to resonate long after it's over. Fiennes, his limpid eyes pools of intense longing, is well-suited to the role of passionate lover, while Moore, her flaming auburn locks set off by flattering period costumes, beautifully captures a woman who can do that most delicate of balancing acts, holding onto opposing emotions at the same time. (R)
Bottom Line: A love affair movingly dissected
Sean Penn, Samantha Morton, Uma Thurman
Woody Allen's latest comedy is as slight as the trim mustache decorating the upper lip of its central character, a jazz guitarist. Set during the 1930s, Sweet and Low-down is a mockumentary tracing the strum und drang career of fictional musical great Emmet Ray (Penn). He may be a virtuoso, but Ray stinks as a human being, lacking morals (he moonlights as a pimp), scruples (he's a kleptomaniac) and any clue about how to treat a lady (his idea of a swell time is taking dates to the dump to shoot at rats). He justifies his loutish behavior by citing his talent, boasting, "I'm a truly great artist." Allen, no stranger to highly publicized loutish behavior himself, lets Ray protest too much.
The truly great artist here is English actress Morton (TV's Emma), playing a mute laundress with whom Ray takes up early on. Blessed with eyes as large and round as Frisbees and a smile that turns her whole face incandescent, Morton lights up the first two-thirds of the film. Penn is also fine, but Thurman is all sharp elbows as a hot-to-trot heiress. Gretchen Mol, last year's It girl, shows up so briefly as one of Penn's dates that you will miss her if you lean down to tie a shoelace. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Morton is swell, but the Woodman's working in balsa
Anjelica Huston
Huston, who also directs this comedy drama, plays a Dublin widow in the 1960s. Agnes, who runs a produce stand, has no money to speak of and seven children to support, but she endures her ordeals with earthy humor, cigarettes and beer at the pub, and the occasional sob session with her best friend, Marion (Marion O'Dwyer).
Huston is a magnificent actress, and this is a zesty, showy role. But Agnes, opening now in a limited, weeklong release for Oscar consideration and scheduled to return in March, is sentimental to the point of incredibility. Marion becomes ill, one wee son gets in trouble gambling at cards, a French baker tentatively woos Agnes and, in debt to a loanshark, she has to sell her two tickets to see her beloved Tom Jones. Then who should show up to save the day—at Christmas, no less—but Jones himself? It's as if little Frank McCourt's long-suffering mother escaped the poverty of Angela's Ashes by winning on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. (R)
Bottom Line: Sappy life without pappy
Kate Winslet, Harvey Keitel
Maybe it was the scene where Winslet dresses Keitel up in a fetching scarlet frock and matching lipstick. Or the one where he chases after her across the Australian outback, clumping through sand still wearing that same dress and a lone cowboy boot. Either image is enough to signal that Holy Smoke, in which Winslet plays a member of a religious cult group whom Keitel is trying to deprogram, is art-house fare at its most laughably absurd.
Director-cowriter Jane Campion makes films like nobody else. Sometimes, as with The Piano, her singular, go-for-broke style works. Here, it's just annoying. One has to respect Campion for hewing to her own bizarro vision, one Winslet and Keitel enthusiastically share, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to watch. (R)
Bottom Line: Smoke bomb
Sigourney Weaver, David Strathairn, Juiianne Moore
Playing a woman whose world falls apart during the course of a single year, Weaver gives a flinty, knockout performance in a harrowing drama (showing in New York City and Los Angeles for a week and then opening nationally Jan. 21). Her annus horribilis starts when her best friend's small daughter accidentally drowns while in Weaver's care, and it grows worse when Weaver is held on charges that she abused a young boy while working as a school nurse.
What makes Weaver so compelling is that she doesn't try to make this often contrary character more sympathetic. Rather, by embracing the nurse's contradictions, Weaver draws a complex portrait of a woman all too vulnerably human. Directed by first-timer Scott Elliott with a keen appreciation for the messiness of life and ably adapted from Jane Hamilton's 1994 novel of the same name, A Map of the World is difficult to sit through but full of rewards, including a moving turn by Moore as the mother of the drowned child. (R)
Bottom Line: Salutations to Sigourney
>Barry Levinson
You can take the boy out of Baltimore, but not the director he grew up to be. For his latest film, Liberty Heights, Barry Levinson was once again inspired to return home—even shooting scenes on his old block. And yet, says the Academy Award winner (for 1988's Rain Man), "I'm not interested in doing a nostalgic piece. I need a reason to revisit something."
He found that motivation in a 1998 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY review of his film Sphere, which identified Dustin Hoffman's character as a "Jewish psychologist." Levinson, who grew up Jewish amid the segregation and anti-Semitism of the '50s, said he began to wonder "what is it about us that somehow we make these odd distinctions at such peculiar times." Three weeks later he completed the script for Heights, his fourth Baltimore movie (the others are 1982's Diner, 1987's Tin Men and 1990's Avalon).
Though Levinson, 57, lives in Marin County, Calif., with his wife, Diana, an artist, and their children Sam, 14, and Jack, 11, his muse is never far away. While scouting locations in Belfast for his next film, a comedy, "I was looking at all the row houses and I thought, 'Oh, my God! I'm back in Baltimore!' "
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Elizabeth Leonard.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
