Rating: 
Summary: sevingy should win an oscar
Review: Although everyone talks about what a great performance Hilary Swank gives, it is Chloe Sevingy who really shines.
Rating: 
Summary: SAD, COPELLING TALE
Review: Teena Brandon was one mentally screwed up girl. From her wrestling with her sexuality (denying she was a lesbian) and her self-destructive reckless attitude towards the law. Hillary Swank gives a very brave performance which as tragic as the character is, it's a refreshing change from the cliched "TOOTSIEish" portrayals of people who may ot seem a part of "everyday" society. I personally think Swank still looked rather feminine, but, hey, she IS a woman! Her Nebraska accent and mannerisms are excellent. Chloe Sevigny gives an equally brave performance in her own right as the object of Swank's affections. This film will propel both to the forefront in Hollywood-at least it SHOULD. What a 180 degree turn from "the Next Karate Kid" for Swank! Too bad the film distributor, Fox Searchlight, seemed too timid to release this excellent film to a wider audience. Oh well, I guess that's why video was created.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome movie!
Review: This movie will NOT leave you alone for weeks after watching it! It is one of the most powerful movies I have EVER seen! Hilary Swank won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama, and after seeing this movie, you will agree that she deserved it HANDS DOWN! Not for the faint of heart!
Rating:
Summary: Brutality and sadness and the price of being different
Review: This very powerful movie is based on the true story of Teena Brandon,
a troubled young person who saw herself as a boy. At the age of 21,
she cut her hair, does what she can to change her identity and moves
from Lincoln Nebraska to another small town 70 miles away.It's
Brandon, not Teena, who the audience sees, as he struggles with his
identity in an area of the country where alcohol is the liquid of
choice, dead-end factory jobs are the rule, and a violent machismo
sub-culture dominates the landscape. It is here that Brandon falls
in love, finds happiness for a very short while, and is then raped and
murdered. Directed by Kimberly Peirce, Brandon is brilliantly played
by Hilary Swank. It is obviously an extremely difficult and demanding
role and she has been nominated for an academy award, along with the
Chloe Sevigny who plays the young lady who falls in love with
Brandon. This is the kind of film that is brutal in its intensity,
not just in the scenes of violence, but also in the depiction of
relationships between the characters and the stark and sad world they
live in. It is also an example of filmmaking at its best, from the
casting to the close-ups of the subtleties of young love. In
addition, it makes a social statement as to the price that Teena
Brandon had to pay for being different. Excellent. And a movie I
will long remember.
Rating: 
Summary: TRAILER TRASH GONE WILD
Review: This movie is a downer. It revolves around an emotionally disturbed young woman and her struggle with gender identity. In her confused quest for love and acceptance Teena Brandon poses as a male named Brandon Teena and falls in with some hateful trailer trash. Teena's "friends" are reminiscent of the redneck Texas scum who dragged James Byrd behind their pickup, strewing body parts along the highway. Teena deceived and used a few people. Pretending to be a male to lure an unsuspecting female for sexual gratification is pretty sleazy. And she wasn't averse to thievery either. Even so Teena didn't deserve such horrific treatment at the hands of the chain-smoking, beer-swilling mental midgets in this film. This movie makes you feel bad - sick, disgusted and tainted from all sides. It's scary to think these kind of people take up space on the planet. Several books have been written, there was plenty of tv coverage, and at least one documentary has been made on this case. Too bad Hollyweird and the gay lobby used this poor kid to line their pockets and further their agendas. Despicable.
Rating:
Summary: Effective, but perhaps too simplified and conventionalized
Review: I am giving Kimberly Peirce's BOYS DON'T CRY four stars because, simply looking at it as a piece of filmmaking, it is startlingly effective. But I must also admit that, after seeing this movie, I was a little uneasy about the filmmakers' approach to this based-on-real-life story, one that I think to some extent simplifies and conventionalizes what could have been truly disturbing material.
There is no doubt that BOYS DON'T CRY is acted and directed with great sensitivity and realism. This one of the most vivid depictions of humdrum small-town life I have seen; you really feel as if you are in Falls City, Nebraska, among its wide open spaces and bored citizens. And the performances are excellent. Hilary Swank, of course, won an Oscar for her depiction of Teena Brandon/Brandon Teena, and it is a sympathetic, totally involving performance, one that beautifully conveys the joy she takes in being a male, and her desperation as her ruse threatens to fall apart. The other performances are no less worthy, though, particularly Chloe Sevigny's as small-town dreamer Lana Tisdel, and Peter Sarsgaard's as John Lotter, who will eventually turn on Brandon. And, as a whole, it must be said that BOYS DON'T CRY is effectively tragic and haunting, without ever lapsing into heavy-handed sentimentality.
And yet, there is something about the movie that strikes me as false. I think that, to some degree, Peirce has simplified this fascinating, unsettling story, and turned it into a modern day operatic tragedy (in its own down-to-earth way). She has turned the real-life story into a rather more conventional tale about intolerance---Teena Brandon is tortured and then murdered for daring to be something she is not---and thereby spurned any serious attempts at genuine insight into why Teena Brandon did what she did. What made her feel more comfortable acting like a man, for instance? We never really know; the movie never truly bothers to explain, except by dropping vague hints about a "sexual identity crisis." Instead, Peirce is simply content to tell a story that, at heart, is about how a Love That Never Dies---the relationship between Brandon and Lana (whose loyalty to Brandon I personally found slightly unconvincing, as true as it may be)---can triumph over the rage of a bunch of small-town bigots. What the film lacks, I think, is the willingness to go deeper into its material. On its own terms, the movie is effectively tragic and haunting; but, if Peirce was more willing to dig deeper into its characters, and not settle for simplification and conventionality, BOYS DON'T CRY could have been truly disturbing and thought-provoking rather than merely sad.
Still, I don't want to sell this movie too short. This is basically a good movie, one that is realistic, well-made, and superbly acted. For real insight into Teena Brandon, you will have to look elsewhere; but what BOYS DON'T CRY lacks in nuance, it makes up for in heartbreaking big gestures. Recommended, with reservations.
Rating:
Summary: A Dramatization of Events
Review: I thought the movie was well-directed and well-acted. They briefly tried to show what loose cannons Tom and John were, although the actor portraying John Lotter played him far more intelligently than he was or is in reality. Chloe Sevigny as Lana was beautiful, sloe-eyed, and mysterious, not to mention extremely understanding of Brandon's predicament, however her boo-hooing scene at the end was quite fake. Hilary Swank was completely convincing as Brandon, the girl who wanted to be a boy - so congenial and flattering that all the little girls wanted him.
Unfortunately, the murder scene was very contrived and didn't ring true. Actually, the only thing for sure that happened was that Lana's mom told John and Tom where to find Brandon, even though she knew that Brandon was in fear for his life for reporting that they had raped him. Brandon wasn't murdered because he lied and deceived - he was murdered because a couple of morons thought that if Brandon was out of the way, he wouldn't be able to testify against them in a rape trial. They were unable to formulate the thought that instead of being tried for rape, they would most certainly be convicted of murder.
Rating:
Summary: That chick from 90210 won an Oscar?
Review: Back in 2000, long before I was up on the Academy Awards, I remember my mother mentioning that Hilary Swank had won Best Actress. It didn't really dawn on me who this Hilary was until I saw a rerun of Beverly Hills, 90210. Wait a minute ... some obscure TV girl that was on some show for a few months won an Academy Award? How does that happen? What goes on ... ?
Well, it's now almost 2005, and I own in my possession every movie that features a Best Actress Oscar-winner (except The Trip to Bountiful because it's not on DVD yet).
Hilary Swank was perhaps the first actress to start the "trend" I mention in my Monster review: a beautiful actress must first "dress down" to deliver a devastating performance. Hilary's performance IS, in fact, devastating, but ... unfortunately so is the movie. At least the last few scenes where Hilary's character is raped, tortured, and murdered (along with this other character named Candace, who is played by none other than Alicia Goranson, who played Roseanne's eldest daughter on THAT show!). Candace's murder is actually more difficult to watch, if you ask me, because at the last second she says, "Please, don't hurt my baby!", and then she's shot, falls to the floor in a bloody heap, and the baby cries and tiptoes away. I HATE stuff like that in movies like this!
To make the WHOLE story even more heartbreaking, well, this movie is based on true events that really happened FOR SURE, quite unlike the Mothman Prophecies. There really was this woman named Teena Brandon who preferred to live life as a boy named Brandon Teena. And Candace and all these other characters were based on real people ... and it makes you wonder what became of Candace's baby, who must be like 12 years old or so by now.
If you know the outcome of the movie when you start watching it, then the whole thing is going to have this dark cloud of remorse hanging over it because you know this man-woman is going to be killed at the end. And that's awful because during the movie you will really come to like Teena/Brandon. And a lot of people have said that you won't feel sorry for him/her by the end of the movie, but ... I do feel really bad that the world, especially America, is in the shape it's in right now. Whether he/she was gay or a crossdresser or weird or screwed up or WHATEVER ... there's nothing on Earth that justifies the murder of someone else just because they're different, and just because they deceptively fool people.
ANYWAY, before I start singing "Ebony and Ivory" ... this movie is the perfect "90s" movie, and you'll never forget Brandon/Teena or Hilary Swank. I hope she turns in another INCREDIBLE performance like this one soon.
Rating:
Summary: SHOCKING!!!!!
Review: I work in a video store so, I managed to walk right pass this movie quite a few times before I actually got the nerve to watch it. However, I'm glad I did because this was the most disturbing movie that I have ever seen. I had heard the story, but hearing about it, and actually watching it is totally different because you get to see the events that occurred for yourself. I couldn't imagine something that inhumane happening to a human being at the hands of another, and that's what made me cry like a baby. No human being deserves to be raped, beaten, humiliated, and degraded just because they aren't what you thought they were. True enough, Brandon wasn't honest from the beginning, but that just doesn't justify what happened to him in no shape, form, or fashion. I had only one question at the end of this movie...What makes people so hateful? Also, what I found upsetting was that the actual assailants didn't even have anything to do with the situation at hand. If anybody had a right to be angry it was Lana, and if she accepted Brandon for who he really was then none of this should've even happened. I definitely see Hilary Swank in a new light now. Before this movie I only thought that she was mediocre at best, but she was absolutely amazing. I give her nothing but the highest R.E.S.P.E.C.T from now on.
Rating:
Summary: superb!!!
Review: This movie was so well cast and well acted. I love this movie because it was so moving and so good. I cried when I saw it. The bad thing about this movie is, after you've finish watching it, it still lingers in your head. Hilary swank very much deserved that oscar. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves a reaaly good movie. It was sad though, but it was good.
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