Boys Don't Cry

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes, boys do cry! I did!
Review: This film was stunning, sad, beautiful, inspirational. HilarySwank plays Brandon Teena, or Teena Brandon. She is woman with asexual identity crisis. When she is uncovered as a girl, her white trash friends decide to teach her a little lesson. I watched this film and at the end I was bawling my eyes out. The film was so sad, touching and poignat, that I couldn't stand it. I don't know why it wasn't even nominated for Best Picture because it could have won. Hilary Swank one Best Actress and she DEFINITLY deserved it. She was so excellent that I thought she deserved the Oscar from the first 5 minutes. Chloe Sevigny plays Lana, the woman who Brandon befriends and falls in love with. Sevigny was excellent in her role as second heroine. The acting in the film is nothing short of spectacular. This film touched me so much! I'm not afraid to admit that I DID cry. I couldn't believe that such a wonderful film could be made. And I didn't believe that these events actually took plave only 7 years ago.

Rating:
Summary: Response to Mr. Nemeth
Review: While Mr. Stanley Nemeth's review is certainly articulate and I agree with him about the moral emptiness of "American Beauty" I found "Boy's Don't Cry" to be a fascinating story which was motivated by a real event and was brilliant in performance and script.It might be "knocking at an already open door," as Mr. Nemeth states, but we do not enter this door without fresh horror at the kind of ignorance and brutality that lies inside that darkened room.

Rating:
Summary: BRUTAL, SURPRISING
Review: Kimberly Pierce's brutal movie is not what you might expect. It does not make a hero/heroine out of the doomed character of Brandon Teena; instead, this movie exposes, through an unusual series of real-life events, the pathetic simple minds that live all over this country of ours. The white-trash, hopeless characters that populate this story are without exception reprehensible, and as the story moves towards it ultra-violent conclusion, it becomes clear that even Brandon Teena, for all of his/her conflict and struggle, is more than an active participant in his doom. This movie exceptionally well-played, and directed and written without a specific viewpoint; the filmmaker wisely allows the characters, their actions and the pitch-perfect atmosphere and set decoration evoke a soulless pocket of people without a conscience. Boys Don't Cry is an eye-opening experience in surprising ways, and despite Hilary Swank's marvel of a performance, it is not Brandon's sad identity crisis that will haunt you long after watching his story, it is the fact that the people in this movie really live out there, and in large numbers. Now that is blood-curdling.

Rating:
Summary: A sad look into sometimes the nightmarish hell of the world.
Review: A story of a mischevous young man who like any teenager is a slight trouble maker when she comes into the small town. She befriends a group of boys and manages to get her self a girlfriend but what brandon teena knows is a deep dark secret that if she reveals may even kill her.

Played perfect by Academy Award winner Hillary Swank she gives this mixed up woman identity and depth that few movies have.This movie is a sad look that we have much to learn as human being about exceptance an incredible and thought provoking film.

Rating:
Summary: BRUTAL!
Review: This film is totally raw and certainly does not hold back. I can see why Hilary Swank won the Oscar. She seemed totally absorbed in the role. There are some discrepancies in the storyline (particularly the ending), compared to the actual documentary footage I've seen. But overall, it was a gutsy piece of work for newcomer Kimberly Pierce. A good film, but I certainly wouldn't buy it.

Rating:
Summary: An Exercise in Easy Self Congratrulation
Review: It's remarkable that one year features two Hollywood films that win all the awards yet fail to challenge the thinking of the big city people who pass them out. I didn't think a stronger exercise in big city (non-suburban) self congratulation than "American Beauty" existed, but I had not yet seen "Boys Don't Cry." Who is honestly challenged by this complacent examination of homophobia in small town, white trash America? As regards the majority of the kinds of people who will flock to such a film, isn't "Boys Don't Cry" banging on an already open door? There's no real conflict of views, since one side is obviously sympathetic and "advanced," the other benighted and beneath contempt. Neither the skill of the acting nor the technical polish of the photography and direction can remove the inevitable boredom that always afflicts tales of Giant the Jack killer.

Rating:
Summary: Basically a TV movie but with more controversial material
Review: Watching this movie in the theater, I thought from the very beginning that it felt like a TV movie. It was far too much of a cry out for the world to become comfortable with unconventional sexual politics to be called art. The director Kimberly Pierce should just become a politician rather than be a filmmaker if all her stories are going to be thinly disguised university-campus speeches. Plus, what's up with the movie's structure? Instead of letting us know all about Teena's problems within the first act we are kept in the dark about her whole background throughout the entire movie's course, learning bits and pieces even far into the film. Because of this, we never really know why she makes the choices she does or why she acts the way she does--we really have no clue who this person is. And if the director wants us to like Teena Brandon, well, she screwed up big time on that. From the beginning Teena is clueless, overly irresponsible, and doesn't seem to care about the heterosexual girls' views on finding out that they've been making out with a chick. She just laughs it off and keeps getting into trouble until she gets herself killed. Real tragic. And one more thing: the director doesn't seem to have a clue how dumb Teena's behavior is. Pierce stages Teena's exploits as if they are just those of a regular teenager partying and enjoying life, complete with a rock soundtrack. The movie feels like it's "too cool" at times to get really deep.

Rating:
Summary: the bluest eyes in texas are holding him tonight
Review: Not only were all the performances in Boys Don't Cry fantastic, so was the directing by Kimberely Pierce. She directed the film in a modern light, giving Boys Don't Cry and almost "underground" aestectic quality. She used dark midwestern landscapes and splashed them with strikingly bright colours of a city's neon lights. Nebraska never looked so alternative.

Oscar winner Hillary Swank and nominee Chloe Sevigny both give standout performances, humanizing their characters making us believe we are watching a real life situation unfolding. The girl from the tv show "Roseanne" also gives a great performance, along with the actress who played the mother. The 2 guys in the film who played the white trash thugs give me the creeps. That's how good this movie is, it honestly makes you love and hate the characters with passionate intensity.

As for the reviewer who only saw the film as "teena brandon hanging out in bars looking for lesbian sex", well you obviously missed the point of the movie. It's not a trivial "feel-good date movie". It has a deeper, more important theme. Boys Dont Cry is a story about a lost soul searching for his/her identity. While her search is battling against a world with little campassion or understanding of her needs and feelings as a human being. The strident voice of middle American intolerance is Brandon's ill fated downfall in life. He only wanted love, because everybody needs love.

Rating:
Summary: Heart Shattering Masterpiece
Review: Having just seen the film, I have to say "Boys Don't Cry" is one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. Swank's performance could have gone horribly wrong, and yet she kept the tour de force up for the entire two hours of this mesmerizing film. What I liked about it was:

1. The direction: Remember, this is a first film. Kimberly Pierce had worked five years to bring her script to the screen, and does so in a refreshing, UNPRETENTIOUS way I really related to. Like "In Cold Blood" and "Badlands" she focused on the life of these midwestern characters in such a genuine way that I wouldn't be surprised how people might not be blown away by it. In fact, it is a SUBTLE approach that I find more effective in films, I'm all for special effects as in "The Matrix" and the aesthetic elements of say, "American Beauty," but Pierce's ear for dialogue and her vision of Falls City as this vast wasteland where young people don't have much of a future and are filled up with frustrations was inspiring. She told a HUMAN INTEREST STORY against BIGOTRY in such a DECENT way that even the VILLAINS came out as being all too human. The narrative structure, while not flashy, was quite complex and hard to get away with. There was a flow to the film that gave it the heart that was needed to accurately represent the characters. It's a SHAME that Pierce fell to the wayside in the awards season--simplicity seems to be overlooked because most people don't realize that attaining such an ability is the hardest thing in the world.

2. The acting: Hilary WAS a boy. Her movements, her countenace, everything. Our complicity with her character made me realize just how strong a performance she gave. Every second, in her face, I could see the fear of being found out. All the complexities of Brandon Teena came alive with a movement of the lips or with a certain look. The need to please everyone while at the same time compensating her mere existence with lies and deceit. It is a very demanding role that she pulled off magnificently. And more importantly, it is a new kind of role. I've seen the controlling/hysterical woman Annette Bening played (Faye Dunaway in "Network" to name one). But in the type of role Swank had to play she had little to work with (Jaye Davidson's Dil in "The Crying Game" comes to mind) and yet she avoided becoming a pitiful figure, and managed to give Brandon an inner beauty that wasn't preachy or contrived. CHLOE SEVIGNY was incredible. As a matter of fact, she impressed me even more than Swank. It is a subtle, powerful performance that also rises above any other "girlfriend" type role I have ever seen. She endowes Lana with the ability to really love and care for Brandon and is truly the ray of hope in an otherwise dark movie. PETER SASGAARD is also a stand out as John Lotter, because he was so human. An insecure, childish, violent man who is also capable of showing a lot of affection for his daughter. The undercurrents of BRENDAN SAXTON III's performance are also worth mentioning simply because it shows without a lot of words the confusion he must have felt when he found himself attracted to this "guy." There are so many layers to this film that I could go on and on praising it. Of course I have one problem with it:

1. THE FACTS: Like "The Insider," "The Hurricane," and a million other films, BDC plays with the facts. Another person was murdered in that house, an African American male. I feel that for the film's sake, it was VITAL to focus on the Lana/Brandon relationship, but being familiar with the case, I thought they could have handled the misrepresentation of the third victim better.

In short, it was an amazing movie. Best one I've seen since "Election." But unlike "Election," it doesn't deal with already explored themes. This is unexplored territory Ms. Pierce was going into, and she came out--as far as I'm concerned--as an extremely promising filmmaker who will hopefully continue to tell socially relevant stories in this f&#*ed up world in which baseball fans give a standing ovation to a bigott and even wear t-shirts that say "JOHN ROCKER FOR PRESIDENT"

Rating:
Summary: Performances, superb- movie, boring as hell.
Review: I was one of the first to call the video store at which I am on a first name basis with the people. Being a film student, I love what independent film has to offer and I wasted no time in getting my copy of Boys Don't Cry. I must tell you that the performances of Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny were as expected- fine tuned and focused, with Swank's talent stretched to the limit. But the movie itself was positively lackluster and bland. Be it the directing, the storytelling, or the continuity (what's with the sudden shot of the Dallas skyline in the middle of Nebraska, was it just some indicator of how stoned everybody in the scene was?), this film is like real life in two ways. It is made up of pivotal events,but more to the point, it is underdramatized in many places. If I wanted to look at a bunch of ordinary Joe-six-packs just hanging around doing nothing but drinking beer and wasting what little brains they have, I would not go to the movies, I would simply go to a baseball game.