Hacker Cinema
The Green Mile
1999 · Film · 189 min
Directed by Frank Darabont
A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
6 positive9 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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15 comments on Hacker News
Hard disagree about declarative "X is Y". It's a failure of weakening attention span. There are plenty of excellent long movies:
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984) 3:49
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 3:47
- The Irishman (2019) 3:29
- Malcolm X (1992) 3:22
- The Godfather Part II (1974) 3:22
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 3:21
- Schindler's List (1992) 3:15
- Gandhi (1982) 3:11
- The Green Mile (1999) 3:09
- The Deer Hunter (1978) 3:03
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) 2:59
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) 2:58
- Casino (1995) 2:58
- Braveheart (1995) 2:58
- The Godfather (1972) 2:55
- Django Unchained (2012) 2:45
What I most object to is lazy storytelling for lazy, second-screen audiences lacking in style and subtlety having a robotic, spoon-fed, infantile, unnatural, expository narration quality in every character like it's a commercial for an antacid.
Well adding to the above list of what could be considered stand out movies, these below are some I really enjoyed / admired -- in no particular order.
Dark City
Ice Planet (2001)
The Green Mile
Mortadelo & Filemon: The Big Adventure
Flodder 3
Gettin' Square
Midnight Run
The Accountant
Slipstream (2005)
To Kill a Mockingbird
North by Northwest
In the Heat of the Night
What the Deaf Man Heard
The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn
Short film - Forklift Driver Klaus – The First Day on the Job
It’s my opinion, and probably only my opinion that the shorter his stories, the better they are. I love love love his short stories, but his novels are only meh for me—-two exceptions being the The Stand and Misery. I have read most of his stuff except for anything released in the last 3 years or so.
I think even his short stories adapt better to movies as well…Shawshank, Stand By Me, The Green Mile…all three to me are simply awesome movies but were heavily adapted from the source story. Misery was good as well, but I kind of blame the casting of Kathy Bates as a genius move that really made that one work.
You don't get "The Green Mile" from this, because it's a tool. You get "The Green Mile" with artistic vision. The tool has to be told what to do. But now a director can shoot a film with actors who don't match the physical description of a character in a story, and then correct their race/gender/figure/whatever with AI. That probably means they save money on casting. A director can shoot a scene inside a blank set and turn it into a palace with AI. That saves money from shooting on location or saves money from having to pay for expensive sets.
So now a director with a limited budget but with a good vision and understanding of the tools available has a better chance to realize their vision. There will be tons of crap put out by this tool as well. But I think/hope that at least one person uses it well.
But because it will make shooting a movie more accessible to people with limited budgets, the movie studios, who literally gatekeep access to their sets and moviemaking equipment, are going to have a smaller moat. The distribution channels will still need to select good films to show in theaters, TV, and streaming, but the industry will probably be changing in a few years if this development keeps pace.
But what they're describing is a case where someone with the storytelling ability but not the money or technical skills could create something that looks solid.
You're imagining "pls write film" but the case of being able to film something and then adjust and tweak it, easily change backdrops etc could lead to much higher polish on creations from smaller producers.
Would the green mile be any less hard hitting if the lights flickering were caused by an AI alteration to a scene? If the mouse was created purely by a machine?
Sure, but would it interrupt with auto-complete nonsense too soon or would it know when an interruption would help?
> This reminds me of
>> A cool spring day?
> that movie where uhhh
>> Star Wars is a movie.
I'm human, so I can understand when I have enough info for a good guess (The Green Mile?) but that's a much different skill than what an LLM does, right?
That's not really true historically. There's the whole Wild West ethos that still makes its way into pop culture (Star Wars, Breaking Bad, Clint Eastwood, Toy Story 2, Back to the Future Part 2, etc), which glorifies outlaw life and people making it through their wits rather than the support of authorities. There are cities like San Francisco and Las Vegas, basically built on criminals building a local civilization. Prison movies like Shawshank Redemption, the Green Mile, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest have us rooting for the inmates. We keep electing Kennedy clan members, even though the family fortune is built on Scottish distilleries and securities manipulation. American history includes bomb-throwing anarchists, 3 revolutions, massacres by private security forces, hippie communes, the KKK, police forces bombing their own citizens, and plenty of extrajudicial lynchings.
I think that the time period where this is true is the post-WW2 prosperity. There was a large premium on order and social stability here, along with creating institutions that kept (white, suburban, middle-class, male) Americans safe and gave them a stable upwards trajectory. Much of the support for law & order comes out of the demographic that grew up in this time period, with subsequent generations being much more skeptical of law enforcement and sympathetic to criminals. You don't see 20-somethings flying thin-blue-line flags, but you do see them calling to defund the police.
You're focusing on a very specific niche. Sci-fi and adventure were rarely the interest of good film makers, so few sci-fi or adventure films were made.
But that does not reflect on the larger film industry of the 80s and 90s, which was producing many more incredible movies which stood the test of time. 1999 alone gave us Fight Club, The Talented Mr Ripley, Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, The Iron Giant, Eyes Wide Shut, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Green Mile.
There has always been a lot of schlock cinema being produced, but right now it is dominating much more than in the last few decades.
Same with -The Thirteenth Floor", one of my favourite movie, make sure you don't read any spoiler about it though.
Nexts on the list:
Moon
Ex Machina - I personally have no issue with nudity but I wish there were less of it in that movie because I know it turned a lot of people off
The Green Mile - not quite changed my view, but reinforced it
Westworld 3rd season (first 2 seasons revisit themes from above movies, they are good but not necessarily new themes)
Breaking Bad - I tend not to like series and this is a really long one, but it really does make you question things.
> But Hollywood have always done this - recycling old ideas in new wrapping. And Hollywood have always been criticized for being vapid entertainment, empty spectacle etc.
Not to this degree. The last good year for movies was 1999. This is the list of major releases that year:
The Matrix
Fight Club
The Sixth Sense
Toy Story 2
The Green Mile
American Beauty
Being John Malkovic
Office Space
The Iron Giant
Magnolia
Austin Powers
American Pie
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Eyes Wide Shut
Dogma
Galaxy Quest
The Insider
Notting Hill
Man on the Moon
Analyze This
Detroit Rock City
Mystery Men
Bicentennial Man
This is not even the entire list, just the ones I enjoyed and I'm bothering to type.
You can't look at that list and honestly say nothing has changed, because it's just not true. The energy and creativity has clearly moved somewhere else, to TV and streaming services.
This year alone there's two FANTASTIC shows, Chernobyl and Stranger Things S3 that definitely deserve praise.
I’m trying to remember which service it was on. On second thought looking over IMDB top movies. The list probably is sort of similar. It really is hard to get a conesensus for top movies. Sure my own personal list as a media geek will be different. But no one else is really going to agree with my esoteric specific films.
IMDB does have some films that stick out in the top of their list though. Star Wars being so high, LOTR being so high, Inception, Seven, Green Mile, Gladiator.
No matter though you’re right that consensus is hard to get. And most of the films that I listed as out of place are part of fanboy beloved franchises or headed by fanboy beloved directors.
Even if you just consider the film classics based on his books (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Shining), he'll have staying power as people will find his books through the films.
Then there's the cultural impact he's had. Stranger Things was basically a Stephen King novel and even directly name-dropped him.
Like the movie the green mile you may not want to live forever when everyone you love dies and that cycle continues over and over. Emotionally you might wish you too followed the cycle of life all those you love were following.
I love this thread. I've been a long time HN lurker, but only fairly recently did I create an account and start contributing.
See the honesty and emotion on these comments really makes me feel I'm hanging out with a good bunch of people. It's so refreshing compared to the toxic communities of the other large social sites.
I'm a cryer. I cry a lot, I'm also clinically depressed with social anxiety, which makes social interaction difficult, so my emotional are mostly on the surface anyway. Crying for me is the best form of emotional release. I cry at the big ending in films, I cry at the end of amazing books (The Green Mile totally destroyed me, I was in business class on a plane at the time, blubbering my eyes out...).
On balance though, I also get very angry often. I guess you can't have one without the other...
> No. I know absolutely no people who would choose to be put in prison simply because they would be fed. I cannot imagine a wealthy society (and make no bones about it, our society is wealthy enough that people can be fed) which would permit that.
Have you seen The Green Mile? I think that's the name of the movie, where the lead character contemplating committing a crime just so life would be easier again.
Some people do chose prison; or, enough of their friends are in prison that it's not actually seen as a 'bad thing' for them to be in there. Add to that how we as a society feel about people that have come from prison and are a felon; and sometimes, life may actually be easier for some people on the inside.