Shawn's Milk Review

2008 Movie #155 - Milk

After a slew of mediocre and shit movies it’s nice to finally start delving into the award movies. The Oscar nominations haven’t been announced yet but I’m just now getting into the movies that will apparently be up for a bunch of them. Milk got it all kicked off and it was a great start to things I would say. This is a very good movie that helped to sort of wipe away the memory of things like An American Carol.

The movie is based on a true story that I really knew nothing about which may have helped make the movie more interesting to me. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first gay person to become an elected government official in the history of America. It’s a really good story that I’m surprised took this long to be made into a movie. I mean fuck, look at some of the stories movies have told us this year. You’re telling me Martin Lawrence taking his daughter on a road trip probably got greenlit and made before this one? Disgusting. Thankfully the story has been made into a movie now because it’s one that deserves to be told.

Sean Penn does great in the role of Harvey Milk. I’m not a huge Sean Penn fan (as an actor he’s fine but as a person I think he’s a humourless prick) but I got to respect what he has done here. It could have easily come off as him playing the stereotypical, flamboyant gay character but it doesn’t. He plays it more lowkey, which could be how Harvey was really like I’m not sure. Either way kudos to Penn. Now if you just fucking laugh or smile once in real life we would be in business.

James Franco goes back to his usual, more brooding roles here, which is too bad because he was fantastic in Pineapple Express and I want to see more comedy from him. He’s still good, but it felt like all of his other characters, except this time, gay. I didn’t even know Emile Hirsh and Josh Brolin were in this movie but I’m big fans of both of them and they do great work here.

I can see why this one has a lot of award talk around it. It’s a well told story with great characters and performances. It keeps you interested and really makes you want to see what happens, unless you’re not me and knew the actual story it was based on. Check this one out for sure.

****/5