Jun. 20, 2002 - 10:52 pm

cover
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

so i wanted to rent Open Your Eyes (1997) from Movie Gallery, but it was checked out yet again. so i started looking for my 2 movies to get for June with my free rental coupons. i decided to look throught the "favorites dvd" section. i spotted this film which i had heard the name of tons of times. i also noticed the great cast and the very cool cover and it was on the way out the door with me.

Kevin Spacey, John Cusack, and Jude Law in a small role. good stuff. it didn't turn out to be great though, so it gets a 6/10. this movie has a very confusing plot. it's rather nonsensical. basically there's a reporter who goes to Savannah, GA to cover a Christmas party that this rich guy is having for Town and Country magazine. while he's there the rich guy kills a young man who the reporter saw him violently arguing with earlier on in the evening. a trial develops in the last half of the film and that part blows. the first half of the film before the trial is excellent.

in the first half we have some crazy voodoo crap happening and a huge fiasco with a transvestite named Lady Chablis who is one of the most hilarious and likeable characters i've seen on the screen this year. i don't really like the little romance that happens on the side with the reporter and a local town girl. it doesn't really go anywhere and is very useless.

i think whatever good came of this movie was there because of the original novel and not because of the filmmakers. apparently the novel was screwed up and shortened and simplified quite a bit to make the film. it's directed by Clint Eastwood who i don't think does very good work generally. at least it's not remarkable. although i did quite like Unforgiven (1992) and A Perfect World (1993) which he directed.

so i think yeah, we need to watch the first hour and a half of this film and then turn it off when you see the trial coming on. the rest isn't really worth watching. but the beginning is awesome. the IMDb's trivia tells me that Lady Chablis was played by the real Lady Chablis. the movie is partially based in truth, and the real transvestite plays herself. best line of the movie...The Lady Chablis: "It's like my mother always said: 'Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it.'"