DMAT Movie Reviews

I watched this movie when I was 17 - young enough for this poignantly bittersweet (or should I say sweetbitter) story to stamp its unforgettable mark in my mind.

Hilary's acting was stellar in this - yet in real life she's not at all like that butch lesbian girl she plays in this movie, and so I found it hard to re-adjust my impression of her after seeing her in other movies and in magazines with long hair and being feminine and all... The acting was so good that I honestly detested every single guy that appeared in this movie for being the horrible ba****ds that they were, even though (I know, I know) they are just actors and the real ones are out there and I don't even know how they look. But still... ironically if I'd met my husband back then I'd probably not even give him a second look.

This is one of those movies you either want to watch or can't be bothered to. If you're a guy who really can't be interested in spending some of your time watching a film about 1)a really butch Hilary Swank and 2)a tearjerking movie, then save yourself the trouble. This is a chick-flick in many respects - its theme is about lesbianism, and the fact that this was based on a real life story of Brandon Teena in a stuffy-minded town in Nebraska made it all the more depressing. I walked away hoping in my heart that she's happy now wherever she is. But then this didn't have to happen to her. So all the more it affirms the fact that life's not fair.

This movie is also studded with surrealistic blurry images which actually made the budding love story between Hilary Swank and Chloe Sevigny even more compelling... The soundtrack was excellent and suited this movie's scenes so well. Watch it if you like a semi-romantic and tragic drama... you'll never forget this. I never did.

This movie was great. A true ove story. About hope. And being your self. Brandon was him self. He was happy. Sadly he was killed for not being what the world thought he should be. I love this film. I have seen it 8 times already. And I know I will watch it many many more.
The story was told with such amotion. You can see the love Brandon had, the feer he had, the hurt, the sadness. I love the begining best. With all of its comic reliefs. It gives you time to know Brandon, and to love him.
The end is very desturbing. The beating, the humilation, the rape. The murder.
All to sad.. but all true. NO ONE deserves to be beat, stiped of your pride, raped, and murdered. Boy or girl. Gay or strate. Young or old.
Tom and John messed up there own lifes, there familys lifes, and the life of those 3 people they killed, and there family and friends.
This story is truly sad. But this film is wonderful. I Love hilary and colie preformances! They deserve more awards then they got. and so does the film!

Perk your ears; widen your eyes; and enliven your brain. A new filmmaker has emerged. Kimberly Peirce is an intuitive, risky artist whose heart and brain are on the same level. With Boys Don't Cry, she intricately weaves together compassion for her characters with an austere critical look at their environments. The immediacy and heightened empathy with which Peirce identifies the audience with Brandon Teena is startlingly personal and touching. But the movie's statement about lower-class America and the interconnectedness of ignorance (not evil) and prejudice achieves an incisive objective clarity about our society. It's great evidence to Peirce's phenomenal talent that this movie works on both broad levels and deeply personal ones.

It goes almost without saying that the movie never coasts on the story's controversial exterior (transvestitism, rape, violence). Peirce is the anti-Larry Clark. And her craft with actors is flawless.

Hilary Swank gives a vital performance as Brandon, our highly jaded hero. Swank helps us immediately like Brandon without sugarcoating his immense moral and social flaws. Brandon is a liar, almost compulsively. But we see the necessity of his lies in the grand scheme of the very real pursuit of identity. Swank is convincing at convincing, so to speak, the surrounding characters that he is a man, but we are always subtly aware of Brandon's physical femininity due to Swank's nuanced acting and appropriate looks. She won a deserved Best Actress Oscar.

Chloe Sevigny as Lana, Brandon's lover, gives a wonderful performance also. Chloe Sevigny captures her lower-class midwest mannerisms but her deeper humanity. If her sad accent and stilted posture subtly evoke her rural economic despair, string of loser boyfriends, and overall malaise, then her lizard eyes and engaging smile expose the inner poise and compassion that Brandon helps awaken. The character of Lana becomes the movie's secret weapon.

Sevigny and Swank work together brilliantly. Brandon and Lana have lots of chemistry with each other, and their love evolves to become the emotional life force to the movie. The inevitable tragedy only feels truly menacing when Brandon and Lana's love becomes rapturous.

Boys Don't Cry succeeds on just about every filmmaking level. Peirce's use of pop music rivals that of contemporaries, Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson. She appropriately switches between music that comments directly and music that heightens naturalism. The Cure, Little Texas, and Nina Persson contribute to the movie's musical mileu. The cinematography is also top-notch and richly captures the visual and thematic motif of beauty amongst ugliness, hence dazzling images of power plants, the beauty of a sunset over a rural squalor.

Kimberly Peirce's storytelling skill, gift with actors, intelligence with social criticism, and personal involvement with her characters' struggles, allow these extra qualities to build layers of resonance on her already nuanced work. If Kimberly Peirce's career skyrockets (which I believe it will) Boys Don't Cry will thus be remembered as the stunning debut of a great American filmmaking talent.