Milk (the movie)

Saw it tonight.

Me and the wife were genuinely moved. Were with a friend who used to work for Jerry Brown, and thus knew many of the players.

Penn is amazing. Since and including Spicoli (and Michael O'Brien in the criminally underrated and forgotten "Bad Boys") he has been great in just about everything he is in.

 

Found it interesting that Sean Penn has never been in a movie that grossed over $100 million, Mystic River was his highest with $90 mil.

 

I don't feel like the film showed White killing Milk wholly because he was gay. The preceived betrayal of not allowing him to have his seat back was the engine.

 

I think White's problem was that in his circle he was "the Man." Once he got to City Hall, he realized nobody cared and he became an outsider. He later admitted that he wanted to kill Willie Brown and Carol Ruth Silver that day.

 

come on, dog. penn does some good stuff, but he's not god.

he was not so good in:
crackers
racing with the moon ... terrible
shanghai surprise ... even more terrible

and that's only through '86.

 

The only reason that doesn't surprise me is that he worked so rarely for such a long time.

 

I liked it but have a quibble with one decision--

What if they hadn't revealed the killing at the beginning?

Can you imagine what a surprise that would've been for so many who didn't know the story?

Not that the point of every movie should be a 'Crying Game' moment... but I thought it would've worked here.

 

The reason he showed the killings at the beginning is to not have the shooting be the apex of the film. Penn didn't want the shooting of Milk to define who he was, rather, he wanted Milk's work to get gays to come out of the shadows and stand up for themselves to be what the movie was about.

 

Granted, I grew up near the Bay Area where everybody over the age of 10 knew about Harvey Milk, but I don't think it took away from the film. I think they did the same thing with Gandhi where they showed the assassination in one of the first scenes and then looked back on his life. It's pretty common with bio pics.

 

When I see that thread title I am reminded of the giant boob rolling down hill squating milk in Woody Allen movie - Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex.