Milk

Milk, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Penn as the title character, is a biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to major public office in the US. The film centers on the decade (the '70s) when Milk ran and eventually became a city supervisor of San Francisco. During this time, Harvey Milk fought for gay civil rights and successfully defeated a proposition that would've banned homosexuals from teaching in public schools. Tragically, Harvey Milk was assassinated along with San Francisco mayor George Moscone in 1978 by former city supervisor Dan White.

Kinsey and I were both looking forward to this film and we were not disappointed. Gus Van Sant has crafted a great film with a cast that totally embodies their characters. The acting was really superb in this film. Sean Penn has got to be a lock for a Best Actor nomination. When you look at Penn's performance alongside video of Harvey Milk, it is astounding. Not only are the mannerisms and speech patterns spot-on, but wholly taps into Milk's mood and personality. He doesn't play Milk, he becomes Milk. James Franco, Josh Brolin, Alison Pill all give great supporting performances, with some spotty jobs tossed in by Emile Hirsch and Diego Luna. The supporting role that really stood out to me was Josh Brolin's portrayal of Dan White, Milk's eventual assassin. Brolin plays White as this pathetic, tortured soul, who only wants to be included. The character almost comes off as childlike, which makes him all the more complex when he eventually murders two men. What a great run Brolin has had the last couple years. First a great, overlooked performance in No Country for Old Men, then the only semi-decent thing about American Gangster, and this year, a subtle performance in W. and now, Milk.

The only issue I had with Milk was the subservience to the genre of the biopic. Kinsey and I are familiar with Gus Van Sant's mainstream work like Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting and I am at least familiar with the critical opinions of his more art house fare like Elephant, Paranoid Park, and Last Days. The thing most shocking about Milk was how much it was mainstream Van Sant and not art house Van Sant. I guess I was expecting more of vision like Todd Haynes' presented in his Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. Not that mainstream is bad, or that it makes Milk anything other than a great film, its just a little surprising considering the director. And the main thing that bothered me was a couple standard biopic framing choices. One was the framing device of having Milk describe his life into a tape recorder, and then having basically flashbacks appear showing those life descriptions. It just seemed like too easy of a way to move the film along. And the other one was the standard "what happened to them later" text and pictures at the end of the film, you know, where they show a picture of a character and say that they went on to do so-and-so later in life. That seems like standard fare for biopics now and for some reason it just bothers me. Show what you want to show in the film and don't make me have to read anything at the end.

But, overall, Milk is a great movie and definitely one of the better films we've seen this year.

Wade: 4 stars

Kinsey: 4.5 stars

Drive Home Review: Milk

Click on the title of this post to listen to our Drive Home Review of Milk.

Quantam of Solace

After watching the latest Bond film, Quantam of Solace, I surfed over to IMDb, out of pure curiousity, just to figure out how many of the 22 Bond films I have seen. If I recollect correctly from all those TBS marathons back in the day, I figure I've seen 18 Bond films and a few snippets of the other ones. The reason I bring this up is because of how different this Bond movie felt compared to the older ones. Frankly, it didn't feel that much like a Bond film. Now, I realize that Hollywood is on a big "old character reboot/realisitic action star" kick right now, what with the darker Batman and Superman restarts in the last few years and especially with the Bourne films. But you know what? Just because other groups are making formally fun characters all super-serious doesn't mean you have to as well, Mr. Writers and Directors of James Bond Movies.

Before I go on a rant about character resuscitation, let's talk about this current Bond film, Quantam of Solace. This film is the first true sequel in the Bond oeuvre, basically starting where the last Bond film, Casino Royale, left off. The overall plot resolves around Bond trying to discover whether or not his lover, Vesper, betrayed him and also avenging her death. While trying to do this, Bond somehow gets mixed-up in a General's plot to overthrow the Bolivian government, a man trying to hoard the world's water supply, a Bond girl's revenge, all of this being somehow linked to a shady group known as QUANTAM . . . oh, and there's also some rogue agent, "who trusts who?" stuff thrown in there as well. If that sounds confusing, its because it was. There was some positives about this film. Once again, Daniel Craig does a great job playing Bond with more depth than should be possible. And Mathieu Amalric does a great job playing Dominic Greene, the main villain. In fact, the best part about these last two Bond reinventions (besides Daniel Craig), has been casting high-quality European actors as villains, first with Mads Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre and now with Mathieu Amalric. I hope they keep this up. For the next film they could bring back Blofeld as played by Rolf Lassgard (look him up in After the Wedding).

Anyways, like I was mentioning earlier, my biggest beef with Quantam of Solace is that its taking itself too seriously, making it feel not like a Bond film at all. Look, I loved the serious take on Bond in Casino Royale, but even in that film you had witty banter, martinis, good car chases, and sexiness. That's what makes a good Bond film. The only recognizable "Bond Film" elements in Quantam of Solace are characters named James Bond and M and a quasi-sexist title sequence. This film is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Bond films like Moonraker and Octopussy, movies so cheesy and over-the-top as to be bordering on satire. The writers and director of the next Bond film need to find a happy medium.

Wade: 3 stars
Kinsey: 2 stars

Drive Home Review: Quantam of Solace

Click on the title of this post to listen to our Drive Home Review of the new James Bond film, Quantam of Solace.

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York (which is a mouthful, so I'm going to call it S, NY from here on out) is the directorial debut of acclaimed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, scribe of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation. S, NY stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard, a dejected, hypochondriacal theatre director who, after winning a MacArhur "genius" grant, decides to "do something important while" he's "still here." This "important" thing he decides to do is create a enormous stage play about his life.

S, NY is the type of film that caters to a certain crowd. More specifically, to the type of crowd that enjoys thinking about a film experience long after its over. S, NY does not offer up a beginning, middle, end or even a very plotcentric story. What it does offer up is layers, layers of information and insight into vast ideas of life and death, reality and truth. Now, that being said, I can't say that I always understood any of these layers or if they're all even meant to be understood. Take, for instance, Hazel's burning house. Hazel is a character, played by Samantha Morton, who serves as an on-again, off-again love interest and theatre assistant to Caden. Hazel's house is always on fire and smoky, yet she still lives in it, still has visitors, without anyone mentioning the fire happening around them. What does the fire mean, symbolically? Is it a representation of the passion that Caden only felt toward Hazel? Is it a sign of the danger of constantly falling in love with a person like Caden Cotard? The movie gives you no solution to this symbol and, unless you could crawl inside of Charlie Kaufman's head, I don't think you could ever find it's true meaning. The film of situations like this, situations that leave you scratching your head, trying to make the connection.

Another example of S, NY's depth came up when I reread the NY Times review of the film. In the review, Mahnola Dargis (who I'm not a big fan of, but that's neither here nor there) brought up the significance of the main characters last name. So I googled Cotard and it leads me to Jules Cotard, French neurologist who is best known for first describing the Cotard delusion, a patient's delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist or do not have bodily organs. In the film, Caden Cotard seems to suffer from his delusional namesake, at least in reference to the existence part. But, like I said before, I could by mistaken by this significance as well; the film never even mentions the connection.

The acting, on the whole, was very well done. PS Hoffman does a great job as usual, although Kinsey mentioned that he seems to be stuck in a rut of playing overly pathetic characters. The cast is filled with actor's actors, like the beforementioned Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest (she of Edward Scissorhands fame), Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Hope Davis. It's hard to go wrong with a cast like that.

Overall, I would recommended seeing it, but only if you're in the mood to think and ponder. If you want a "comfort" movie, you should probably go see the Madgascar sequel.

Kinsey: 2 stars

Wade: 2.5 stars

Drive Home Review: Synecdoche, New York

Click on the title of this post to hear our Drive Home Review of Synecdoche, New York.

Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky, the most recent film from director Mike Leigh, stars Sally Hawkins as Poppy Cross, overly cheerful, single primary school teacher. The film follows Poppy through several days in her life, observing her relations with her friends and family, taking driving lessons, learning how to flamenco, and bringing new love into her life.

Your perception of this film will probably depend on how you feel about character studies. Because that's what this film is. It's an in-depth look at the character of Pauline 'Poppy' Cross ... and that's it. Poppy is in almost every scene in the film. All the other characters in the movie exist to provide development for Poppy's character. Family problems are viewed, but only so Poppy can gloss over them (and maybe show the origin of her happiness as a coping mechanism). If you like plot, then this movie is probably not for you. There's really not any conflict to speak of until about 2/3 into the movie. Does that mean it's not an interesting movie? Not necessarily. Mainly because Poppy is such a strange character to follow.

Watching the trailer, you might think that Poppy is portrayed as over-the-top. But the film is able to set up a character that is utterly happy about life and uber-optimistic but isn't naive or irritating. Leigh is able to accomplish this by introducing darkness into Poppy's life but not bruising her spirit. Judging from what I know about Leigh's previous films, it wouldn't have surprised me if Poppy would have been crushed into oblivion at the end of movie. I'm glad that didn't happened.

Happy-Go-Lucky does provide it's fair share of laughs. The early scenes with her hot-tempered driving instructor, who really is the polar opposite of Poppy's character, are quite funny, as well as the few scenes with the over-the-top flamenco dancer. But like I said before, the funny parts of the movie are tempered with enough strong doses of real life conflict to ground both the film and Poppy in reality.

Overall, it was an enjoyable movie experience. This might be a film where a second viewing would be helpful, just to get around all that British slang and style of talking. Kinsey said she needed subtitles.

Kinsey: 3 stars
Wade: 3 stars

Drive Home Review: Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky