Good Will Hunting (Miramax Collector's Series)

Good film crafting
There were few films in 1997 that enjoyed more publicity than Good Will Hunting. Most of the hype centered on the two tyro actors who penned the screenplay. It seems that they had been friends for years and in between college obligations, drinking and socialising, they had been toying with a script on the side. What started out as a rather average comedy, soon evolved into a sophisticated drama. In fact, it could hardly avoid getting better as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck must have received a ton of brutal criticism from every Hollywood executive that they approached.

The true miracle is not that two actors, unknown for writing, could get a script accepted in Hollywood but that the script was so good that it put every other effort for the year in the shade. In my opinion, the motion picture academy was correct in awarding the Oscar for best screenplay to Good Will Hunting. Everything about the script suggested writers with a profound understanding of the human...

A film that rooted itself in my soul and has never left
Every now and then, a movie comes along that absolutely blows your world apart. It gives you a perspective on life that you never had before. It weasels its way into your psyche, unbeknownst to you, and takes root...becoming a major part of your inner workings. It's like Inception! When I first saw Good Will Hunting (1997) in 1998 when it came out, I had no idea that 13 years later this little indie film written by two wet-behind-the-ear kids from "Bahh-ston" would be one of my favorite films of all time. I mean...these two guys, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, are my contemporaries and I was 24 when this movie touched my heart and soul. That's pretty incredible writing from two young guys in their 20s, which won them both Oscars for Best Original Screenplay. Good Will Hunting is firmly planted in my Top 25 films of all time. And I doubt it will ever leave. Especially because the film is as fresh and critical today as it ever was. Repeatedly, over and over, this movie gets to me like so...

Four for the movie, Five for the DVD
The angry one star reviews for Good Will Hunting demean the legitimacy of the angry one star reviews for films such as Titanic, which are truly terrible. Good Will Hunting is not a lavish hollywood blockbuster that cost 70 million to make and trippled that at the box office. It did well and garnered critical praise but it's still a (relatively) art house film handled well by Van Sant who has constructed good, small, location and lifestyle specific American movies.

This movie is the same. I actually agree with some of the legitimate criticism that this movie is predictable and over wound up at the end. The other criticism about how Will shouldn't be a genius and that the film is generally "trite" seems like silly prejudice.

Take my perspective... I'm a young writer of screenplays and saw the silly looking trailers for this movie written by two young guys. I was sort of furious on the inside that these two were being lauded as great and I've never seen a...

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