DRUGSTORE COWBOY;MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO;EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES;TO DIE FOR;GOOD WILL HUNTING

With a best director Oscar nomination for the runaway indie hit Good Will Hunting, Gus Van Sant finally earned Hollywood’s approval. Too bad he did it by repressing the instincts that made him one of the movies’ most unpredictable iconoclasts.

For dramatic contrast, rent the movie that put Van Sant on the cinematic map, Drugstore Cowboy (1989, Artisan, R, $9.98). A lovingly detailed, nonjudgmental account of four hapless junkies in 1971 Oregon, it’s one of those rare movies in which every camera angle and movement seems inspired. Surreal, hallucinatory imagery—like the tiny flying cow (pre-Twister, mind you) that pinwheels across Matt Dillon’s drug-addled face—abounds. The quartet of first-rate performances (by Dillon, Kelly Lynch, James Le Gros, and a very young Heather Graham) and riveting narrative are strictly gravy; what makes Drugstore Cowboy one of the best films of the ’80s is Van Sant’s mastery of the lens.

My Own Private Idaho (1991, New Line, R, $19.98), Van Sant’s next picture, was less impressive overall, largely because great honking portions of it involved Keanu Reeves reciting contemporary variations on speeches from Shakespeare. Watch the tape with the sound turned off, however, and you’ll be mesmerized by gorgeous time-lapse photography and weird, unforgettable visual metaphors. Ostensibly the story of a narcoleptic hustler searching for his mother, Idaho is really the director’s paean to the eerie beauty of the open road; it’s dramatically unsatisfying, but unquestionably among the most visually accomplished films of the past decade. Van Sant’s adaptation of Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994, New Line, R, $19.98) was a disaster, but it was the kind of disaster that only a talented eccentric is capable of producing—wretched, but arrestingly so. To Die For (1995, Columbia TriStar, R, $19.95), his hasty follow-up, was a low-key delight that owed its success less to its rather tired cautionary anti-media gibes than to Van Sant’s deft, masterful construction (with screenwriter Buck Henry) of a complex series of interviews, talk-show appearances, newspaper headlines, and interwoven flashbacks.

Given this eclectic resume, I can’t imagine what attracted Van Sant—a guy who, when asked by a magazine poll to name the 10 best films ever made, filled slots No. 1 through 7 with Larry Clark’s relentlessly sordid Kids—to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s reasonably witty but often painfully schmaltzy story of a slumming genius and his therapeutic breakthrough. Granted, the wounded, defensive title character (Damon) superficially resembles some of the wayward youths in Van Sant’s earlier films—River Phoenix’s perpetually dazed drifter in Idaho; the insecure, easily manipulated teens played by Alison Folland and River’s brother, Joaquin, in To Die For. Still, it’s hard to picture Van Sant getting excited about Robin Williams’ sweater-clad, homily-prone shrink, whose miracle cure involves repeating the same banal reassurance over and over and over until it finally sinks in. Cue strings.

Good Will Hunting looks gorgeous (it was shot by famed Jean-Yves Escoffier, the French cinematographer of Les Amants du Pont Neuf and Gummo), and Van Sant’s skill with actors is apparent, but in most respects the film might as well have been directed by Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, or any number of other Hollywood craftsmen; apart from a goofy slow-motion brawl early on, there’s not a trace of Van Sant’s usual style or sensibility. It’s a good little movie, full of clever dialogue and sharp observations. It just didn’t require a Gus Van Sant. But we still do. Come back, Gus. Drugstore Cowboy: A My Own Private Idaho: C+ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: D To Die For: B Good Will Hunting: B-