Pleasantville vs Sling Blade
Pleasantville
This movie is beautiful to look at. Once they go into pleasantville, the use of colour against black and white looks fantastic, the scene with the leafs falling off the tress in particular is great. The performances are pretty much spot on throughout the entire thing. Tobey & Reese are both great here, Tobey in particular, this is definitely the best I've ever seen him be. The performances from Macy and Allen as the Pleasantville parents are great, and Daniels is good as the cafe owner.
Unfortunately, it seems to send out a message that in order to turn colourful and real, you have to go have sex as often as possible. Excluding a few, the whole town turns into technicolor by going upto the hills and having sex in their cars and somehow this is portrayed as a positive thing. They don't show any repurcussions that could come off, nobody gets pregnant, nobody gets any diseases, it's simply shown to be a wonderful carefree thing and I don't believe that's a good message to send. There's also an extra-marital affair in which we're, I assume, supposed to sympathise with the cheater rather than the loving husband who's done nothing to deserve it which annoyed me and then at the end, the husband is one we're expected to forgive when he turns into technicolor by admitting he misses her. Again, not a fan of that.
It also makes heavy handed comments on racism and fascism, big surprise folks - it's bad. Also, it's weird for a movie so concerned with racism, including a massive nod to To Kill A Mockinbird towards the end in a terrible court room scene, that there isn't a single black person in the entire movie; even with Pleasantville 'opens up' it's still an all-white town.
However, despite these problems I did really like it and I certainly think people should see it as it took me by surprise.
Sling Blade
Now this is something completely different, there's a few outstanding performances in this. Billy Bob Thornton's is the obvious performance here as the 'simple' man, released from the state hospital for the murder of his mother, starting a new life in a small town. Upon release he makes friends with a little boy and, perhaps incrediously, is allowed to move in to the garage at the boy's house with him and his mother. The other great performances here are from Dwight Yoakam as Doyle, the alcoholic, abusive lover of the boy's mother, Lucas Black as Frank the boy and perhaps best of all is the almost unrecognisible John Ritter as the gay best friend of Linda, the boy's mother. It says a lot about the performances that, while almost all of the characters are stereotypical, they feel like real characters from the minute they step on screen. The only poor performance is from Rick Dial as the boss who gives Karl (Thornton) a job.
This movie had a lot going for it. Obviously the performances as stated earlier, there's the deliberate pacing in the direction from Thornton who keeps the movie going at a steady pace and doesn't feel the need to rush anything. The soundtrack is fantasic and while the ending is perhaps a little predictable there's a great touching moment between Karl and Frank towards the end which made me forgive the predictability of what was to follow.
I don't want to say too much more about what happens as I want the next person who watches it to not know too much about it. So, progession for Sling Blade I reckon, uh hum.