yelofneb-63037 **could contain spoilers I wish that Stacy Cochran had made more movies with Winona Ryder because she got the best out of a brilliant actor who had been unfairly beleaguered by yellow press innuendo, despite a great start in her early career.Boys is a beautiful movie that transcends the petty moralism that has since taken over the U.S. movie industry and, perhaps, the whole of U.S. society, since that simpler time when it was made.Watching it for the first time again, since 9/11, it's like taking a very pleasant backwards time trip to a previous more tolerant age, when the idea that love is all we need still mattered. That time seems almost forgotten, now, and it almost seems like rebellion to insist on remembering that finding love, in whatever circumstances, is the best thing of all.As a matter of fact, that is still true, and this fact is a very good reason to watch this movie again, and again, and again. Be subversive and watch this and other love-positive movies from pre-9/11. Love does not need political definition.Politicians should think about, as most people do, that making love possible is the primary goal of any proper human society. This movie does that because anyone who has only been in love for a week or even for many more years can't watch this without smiling in approval as the credits roll up to reveal the details of one of the best soundtracks ever in a '90s movie.It's a great little movie with two great leading actors with excellent on-screen chemistry for their roles, and great support, especially from the younger cast members.It ages well, and it's unfortunately too unique, because I really wish that there were more Stacy Cochran/Winona Ryder movies.

Scarecrow-88 A young prep school teen(Lukas Haas, quite good)gets involved with a mysterious young woman(Winona Ryder, who doesn't register or emote..not one of her better performances)who has a secret she is hiding. During the film snippets of a past acquaintance(Skeet Ulrich)may answer that very secret. Chris Cooper has a thankless, clichéd role as profane, short-fused father of Haas. Jessica Harper has the thankless role as Haas' mother, the typical hush-hush-wife afraid of her hot-tempered husband. John C Reilly also has a minor role as a kindly officer trying to locate Ryder over the whereabouts of baseball star Ulrich.The oh-so-big mystery isn't anything to write home about and Ryder is merely a confused dame. The supposed fireworks between Haas and Ryder is non-existent & the film is really unfocused. We get a lot of story on Haas' life in a school for rich annoying kids and with little chemistry between the leads(not to mention a plot which doesn't provide us much in why either would prefer to have such a relationship), there is very little to get excited about. I'd say see the film for Haas' performance, because the rest of this mediocre effort isn't worth your time.

Chris Knipp Look, you don't watch every movie because it's a good movie. "Boys" – the title has wandered in from some gay porno flick shopping list -- is for all intents and purposes a bad movie and even nice film critics have been mean to it. But if this is a failure, this is not your average failure. Oh, no. It has moments, and an interesting, borderline cultish, cast. Skeet Ulrich is almost forgotten, but in his fleeting appearances he has a dysfunctional neediness, luminous sex appeal, a scary attraction – you see that also in "As Good As It Gets," where he robs and beats up Greg Kinnear. There's something dangerous – and expendable – about Skeet. We may think of John C. Reilly in PT Anderson's "Magnolia," and see that same homely touching appeal on idle here in his Maryland State Police role. This was probably the only time the mercurial, offbeat Lucas Haas was conventionally cute enough to match up with a pretty -- at times quite beautiful -- girl like Winona. And her dazed, out-of-it quality – she's clearly a young lady who makes nothing but wrong choices in men -- contributes to the curiously touching moments the two have in the amusement park when the high school boy briefly but intensely falls for the 25-year-old and proposes marriage and eternal loyalty and they kiss sweetly and the rest of the world disappears. That's the high point. Now, there's nothing more tedious than the boys in the opening segment nattering at each other, threatening to rat on each other, but curious to get in on any trouble that's going to come down—but the way they behave and look in this movie is completely natural and believable. Like most real schoolboys they're likely to bore each other to death before they'll ever enter into some sort of Lord of the Flies adventure. Chris Cooper – what is he doing here? He's playing an archetypal father, the one we don't see in "Dead Poets Society," the flipside of his twisted military dad in "American Beauty." James LeGros and Catherine Keener complete the surprising cast. Using a classic college campus – St. Johns, Annapolis -- for a fancy prep school works and heightens the posh effect. The movie doesn't altogether work otherwise. It's energy is sluggish; it has no drive.. But you come back to it looking for something that didn't come together, but might have, because some choice ingredients were there. And won't come this way again.. Check out Haas in "Johns", dated the same year, with David Arquette for another good offbeat role, a wilder, quirkier one that also seems to fit him like a soft old glove. He's never had the role he deserves, but what an actor. James Salter, whose story this is based on, is a very fine writer. The music isn't inappropriate; it's just obtrusively loud, the way schoolboys would play it, if they weren't being properly supervised.

patrick colgan This film is really strange. I think that the part that deals with the relationships between the college boys is over simplified and stereotypical, while John's relationship with Patty is well done. I think this film could have been much better with little effort.Winona Ryder is as always beautiful but remains once again enclosed in the same character she has been doing time after time.