Thursday, July 23, 1998

Feel-good 'Good Will Hunting' now on video

By Charles C. Ryan

GOOD WILL HUNTING

The second best movie made last year was Good Will Hunting (the best was As Good As It Gets; Titanic was third -- actual Oscars aside) and it is finally available on video.

It is also the local "feel good" movie on several levels. The first is feel good ... as in local kids make good.

Two of the stars, Matt Damon (Will Hunting) and Ben Affleck (Chuckie), are from Southie, which is appropriate since the film is about a boy genius from Southie who makes good, in spite of his troubled youth. But they are also the pair who wrote the script and won an Oscar (reportedly with a little help from one of their costars).

While the basic premise of the film is a bit unrealistic (the troubled boy genius), it still works because of a good script, and some good acting. Putting in good efforts in addition to Affleck and Damon are Robin Williams (Prof. Sean McGuire), who plays a psychiatrist who helps Will out of his funk (and reportedly helped with the script), and Skylar (Minnie Driver) who plays a Harvard girl who falls for the boy genius.

There are no special effects. This is a people film and the combined cast and script make us care for those people.

Rating: HHHH

PLAYING GOD

With the The X-Files: Fight the Future out this summer, it might be a good time to look at what Mulder (David Duchovny) has been doing in his spare time.

He turns in a decent performance as Dr. Eugene Sands in Playing God, but the film's overall mediocrity and his relatively passive character don't let him break away from the typecasting.

Most viewers would probably prefer to see (or re-see) an episode of X-Files than sit through this dreary film about a doctor who lost his license for drug misuse and ends up stitching up mob victims.

Rating: H 1/2

Another film to avoid is Lost Highway. Fans of David Lynch's hit TV series, Twin Peaks, might be tempted to see this one. Eat some chocolate instead.

Lynch reaches beyond logic and fantasy in this sleazy portrayal of sex and drugs gone bad.

Bill Pullman plays jazz musician Fred Madison who may or may not have killed his wife or her look alike, and she may or may not have tried to get him to kill a drug and porn mob boss, and they all may or may not have been puppets in the hands of the mystery man (a heavily made up Robert Blake).

Plot is the wrong word to use with a film that's lost control, but this one isn't worth trying to figure out.

Rating: H (if you're desperate)