Good Will Hunting

First and foremost, Good Will Hunting is a film riding young, exuberant energies.Read Full Review »

Director Van Sant, who made the lyrical "Mala Noche," "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho," returns to his favorite hunting ground -- the subworlds of grimy, poetic lost boys -- and pulls us right inRead Full Review »

The script's bare bones are familiar, yet the film also has fine acting, steady momentum, a sharp eye and a very warm heart.Read Full Review »

Damon convincingly matches Williams recrimination for recrimination in this portrayal of mutual tough love, even with the latter giving what may be the best performance of his career.Read Full Review »

Gus Van Sant, working from the tangy, well-written script, gets so much humor, grit and emotional truth out of this tale that the familiar formulas behind it simply fall away.Read Full Review »

Stuffed--indeed, overstuffed--with heart, soul, audacity, and blarney. You may not believe a minute of it, but you don't necessarily want to stop watching.Read Full Review »

An ordinary story told well. Taken as a whole, there's little that's special about this tale -- it follows a traditional narrative path, leaves the audience with a warm, fuzzy feeling, and never really challenges or surprises us.Read Full Review »

It's the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective.Read Full Review »

While the charismatic performances of Damon and Affleck make Good Will Hunting a difficult entertainment to resist, doing just that is not as hard as the film would like to think.Read Full Review »

It isn't surprising that the film was originally based on actors' improvisations, since it creates a universe of tremendously enjoyable characters and allows them plenty of room to roam, but has only the most predictable notion of plot and nothing whatever to say beyond be-yourself pieties.Read Full Review »