Anyone that knows me well knows I have seen an embarrassingly low number of movies in my life. Pull up any list of the top 100 movies of all time, and I assure you I have seen less than 10% of them. That being said, there is one movie that definitively impresses me more than any other film I've seen in my life, and that is Good Will Hunting.
This is far from a lifetime obsession. I had never seen the movie until the pandemic took away any excuse I had to put off watching good movies. And admittedly the first time I watched it, I thought it was really really good, but it didn't astound me. It wasn't until a year or so later when I started casually rewatching clips of it on YouTube that I really got hooked.
I've always believed one of the true hallmarks of a great album is when you hear the album's name and immediately think of specific moments, not specific songs. For example, when I think about Jeff Buckley's Grace, I don't think about "Hallelujah" and "Lover, You Should've Come Over." I think about the explosive last chorus of "Mojo Pin" and the bridge of "Last Goodbye." It usually proves that all of the emotion and tension the artist is trying to build across the entire record is translating well because there are clear, memorable moments where that tension gets released.
Good Will Hunting feels the same way to me. As a whole, the plot is really unique, and all the performances are solid, and the whole backstory of Matt and Ben writing it is gobsmackingly touching. But like great albums, Good Will Hunting is a true movie of moments. The bar scene. The park bench scene. The dorm room fight scene. The construction site scene. You can keep going forever. There are certain moments that are so fantastically written and performed that they not only elevate the entire film tremendously but also stand tall individually as incredible pieces of art. There's arguably not a bad scene in the entire movie, but it's undeniable that whenever there is a crucial moment that the entire emotional center of the movie rests upon, Good Will Hunting knocks it out of the park. And that payoff doesn't really get old.
I think it's the greatest film of all time. Or at least of the 40 that I've seen.
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