Gus Van SantCritiques

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A movie worth all the praise it gets.

1926

Eighteen short films about love of various kinds in Paris (and by extension, love for the city itself). Some are much quirkier than others but which you prefer is likely to be a matter of personal taste. Some are quite thort-provoking and none are juist tourist stauff. The shortness of the films (max 10 minutes, some less) keeps the pace up and even if you don't care for some segments, it's never boring.

La vera storia di Harvey Milk, omosessuale che, nella San Francisco degli anni Settanta, decide di candidarsi come consigliere comunale. Dalla sua lotta per i diritti civili deriverà l'abolizione al divieto per i gay di insegnare nelle scuole californiane. (fonte: Wikipedia)

Extremely put off by this film, puerile & disrespectful of most stuff I respect. Phoenix is a hambone, as is Mara I fear; sort of fun watching Jack Black and Jonah Hill, but not worth suffering through the rest.

A great film about a reluctant author who wants to be left alone.

Connery plays an author, William Forrester, who at one time won the Pulitzer. A young black high school teenager, Jamal Wallace, is pressured to break into Forrester's apartment which he succeeds in doing, but Forrester was there to keep him from stealing anything by shouting at the intruder. Wallace accidentally leaves his back pack full of his journals. Forrester, in response, "edits" all his journals.

Wallace was ashamed of what he did and attempts to apologize to Forrester. Forrester respond that Wallace should write about what Wallace had done. They develop a relationship concerning writing, ultimately leading to a confrontation with a lesser writer & instructor (Robert Crawford) at a local preparatory school.

In the end Forrester dies, thanking Wallace for his friendship which encouraged Forrester to see his home country of Scotland.

Harvey Milk, el primer político abiertamente homosexual elegido para ocupar un cargo público en Estados Unidos, fue asesinado un año después. A los cuarenta años, cansado de huir de sí mismo, Milk decide salir del armario e irse a vivir a California con Scott Smith. Una vez allí, abre un negocio que no tarda en convertirse en el punto de encuentro de los homosexuales del barrio. Milk se convierte en su portavoz y, para defender sus derechos, no duda en enfrentarse con empresarios, sindicatos y políticos. Su valentía anima a otros a seguir sus pasos. Sin embargo, en su vida privada, mantiene una relación sentimental destructiva con Jack Lira, un joven inestable que se aferra a él para sobrevivir.

A math genius doesn't want to do anything.

I guess I just don't care. There are a couple very good scenes, but much of the rest (and even some of the good bits) is hackneyed.

Concept: C
Story: C
Characters: C
Dialog: A
Pacing: C
Cinematography: C
Special effects/design: C
Acting: B
Music: C

Enjoyment: C plus

GPA: 2.3/4

"An American Classic!"

His life changed history, his courage changed lives. Harvey Milk is a middle-aged New Yorker who, after moving to San Francisco, becomes a Gay Rights activist and city politician. On his third attempt, he is elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1977, the first openly-gay man to be elected to public office in the United States. The following year, both he and the city's mayor, George Moscone, are shot to death by former city supervisor, Dan White, who blames his former colleagues for denying White's attempt to rescind his resignation from the board. Based on the true story of Harvey Milk.

This book is a glorious waste of time. Scratch that: it's not fucking glorious, it's lame. It's Van Sant's love-letter-ish/ homoerotic time traveling middle-aged fantasy of his late Muse, River Pheonix. Seriously, Van Sant is one of my longtime fave directors. Particularly for that reason, this is a major disappointment. SKIP IT.

A lot of people can't stand Sean Penn. He's anathema to them, both as a person (they claim he's got an arrogant sneer and can't act) and for his robust political outspokenness on controversial social issues he should just shut his trap about, since he's, after all, just an actor with nothing better to do.

The Penn-haters (I work with a few; I'm personally Penn-neutral, like Switzerland) won't even consider watching a movie if Sean Penn's name is associated with it in any way. They've missed some good movies: Dead Man Walking and The Assassination of Richard Nixon, to name a couple. And if the movie is already left-leaning politically, as it is in Milk, the haters might even get angry with me, when I assert (as is my God-given, American right!) what a wonderful (no joke, excellent movie) cinematic experience and acting performance it was.

And the haters will argue also that Sean Penn's nomination for best actor for Milk was just a shady backdoor political maneuver by the Academy to spotlight the gay rights movement (yesterday the Academy's pet social-gospel was global warming, today it's gay rights, right?), hot on the heels of the failed gay marriage initiative here in California. While I'll counter that the nomination, based solely on Penn's sensitive portrayal (Sean Penn, sensitive?) of the charismatic, Harvey Milk, was justified by his acting ability and by his acting ability alone.

I think it took a complicated cat like a Sean Penn, able to shed his standard, bristling machismo and attitude and anger and angst and woodenness he brings to so many of his roles to embody instead, the sensitive and empathic and nurturing (but strong) trimmings of an openly and flamboyantly gay man - a complicated cat in his own right - like Harvey Milk. That role took guts, love Penn, or hate Penn's guts.

How did Penn get that goofy grin of Milk's down just so? And that awful late-70s hairdo! Shouldn't the hair-stylist for Sean Penn been nominated for an Oscar too? And that's just to name but a few perfect personifications of Harvey Milk that Penn pulled off. I'm not sure I could adequately describe the subtler, more nuanced components of Penn's performance/impersonation, not having seen much of Harvey Milk in person on the tube.

I remember my Dad telling me about the "Twinkie Defense" way back when, him being upset about it, describing to me how a disturbed San Francisco city supervisor, Dan White, (played chillingly by Josh Brolin) essentially got away with murder, having, in cold blood, shot both Milk and San Francisco mayor, George Moscone, execution style, for the dubious rationale (what a genius creep of a defense attorney Dan White had) of having gone on a junk food binge the night before; ergo, an acute, temporary sugar high compelled Dan White to pull the trigger...over half a dozen times. Ridiculous defense arguments, but sadly (and absurdly) true. Dan White served only five years in prison for what today would've been criminally classified a hate crime: murdering a homosexual because of their homosexuality. A year-and-a-half after his release, Dan White committed suicide.

I also remember seeing from that dark time what now's become the iconic television clip of a shaken Diane Feinstein, literally being held up by the police chief of San Francisco, as she made the horrible announcement that Milk and Moscone had just been shot and murdered (Feinstein was first on the scene to witness the murder's aftermath of gore), and her voice, once she made the announcement, became barely audible over the anguished outcry of disbelief among city government staffers and reporters, as she stated that the suspect was her colleague, Dan White. Left a deep impression on me, to say the least.

And so when the movie came out of course I had to go see it (and have since recently bought it) and it never fails to take me high and take me low. The highs are Milk's political risings through Castro Street. Namely, how in the mid-70s, he brilliantly wheeled-and-dealed with the Teamsters (the Teamsters union!), at the time an organization as rednecked as The Dukes of Hazard, to hire gay drivers for beer transport ops, in exchange for the gay bars in the area boycotting Coors Beer (the Teamsters at the time were on strike against Coors). And the grass roots activism Milk led worked! And that's just one of Milk's earliest successes on his journey into San Francisco politics.

Later, as the movie progressively depicts, Milk ran and won a seat on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors from Dist. 5, thus becoming the first openly gay, major political figure in California (this was January 1978), a position he held for eleven months until his senseless, bizarre death, later that year on November 27th.

Was Milk perfect? No. And Milk shoots straight with Harvey's early political losses and roadblocks and personal foibles and self-destructive tendencies, his self-doubt and control-freakishness, and ruined relationships along his way to power. But did one imperfect, passionate, individual, Harvey Milk, with a big heart for politically downtrodden and oppressed people of all orientations, change (and this is not a blurb or propaganda or hyperbole, but historical fact corroborated by the gay/civil rights legislative changes he implemented and which have remained in effect since his all-too-short tenure in office) politics in California, and by extension, the United States, forever? Indeed Harvey Milk did.

Whether you're gay or straight, bisexual or asexual, I think the movie's great.

Will Hunting (Matt Damon) é um jovem brilhante mas, tal como os seus amigos, passa os dias de trabalho entre o bar local e a esquadra de polícia mais próxima.
Ele nunca entrou numa universidade, a não ser como empregado de limpeza do M.I.T.
No entanto, tem uma memória fotográfica e uma capacidade inacreditável de resolver problemas matemáticos mais complicados.
Com apenas 20 anos, este carismático rebelde não consegue evitar uma sentença de prisão pendente.
Só um professor (Robin Williams), admirador do seu talento é capaz de sentir a sua revolta emocional, pode ajudá-lo a compreender e aproveitar as suas excelentes capacidades.

Det var ikke enkelt å være homofil noen steder i verden på 70-tallet, men i Vesten var nok USA et av de mest intolerante landene. Harvey Milk "flyktet" på begynnelsen av 70-tallet til San Francisco, etter hvert kjent som homsebyen i USA. Han sto i bresjen for å få flere homofile til å komme til en spesiell bydel, og sammen gikk de inn for å ta over denne. Det klarte de med stort hell - til svært manges store forargelse.

De homofile i San Francisco ble utover i 70-årene en pressgruppe man måtte regne med. Harvey Milks fremste visjon var å få flere til å stå frem og erkjenne sin legning i full offentlighet. Kun på denne måten mente han det var mulig å vekke det amerikanske folk. Først når folk erfarte at den hyggelige naboen, den fantastiske læreren eller den dyktige advokaten var homofil, ville de skjønne at de homofile som gruppe ikke var en gjeng med perverterte mennesker.

I offentligheten på denne tiden ble homofile sammenlignet med pedofile - en gruppe mennesker det var all grunn til å frykte. Sakte men sikkert lyktes det imidlertid de homofile med Milk i spissen å vinne terreng. Da Milk blir stemt inn i San Francisco Board of Supervisors i 1977, var han den første åpne homofile som noen gang hadde blitt folkevalgt inn i et politisk verv i USA.

Som folkevalgt kjempet Milk for de homofiles rettigheter. I dag kan det virke utrolig at de måtte kjempe for å få like rettigheter som andre borgere - som retten til ikke å bli diskriminert eller miste jobben sin dersom det kom frem at de var homofile - men den gangen, dvs. på slutten av 70-tallet, var dette en kamp om liv og død. De homofile kunne ikke kjenne seg trygge på gata, og politiet var deres verste fiende. Så endte også MIlk opp med å bli skutt. Da var han imidlertid allerede blitt et ikon for mange amerikanere, som takket være Milk hadde begynt å få noe som kunne ligne på et anstendig og trygt liv som åpen homofil.

Sean Penn fikk en velfortjent Oscar for sin rolletolkning av Harvey Milk, og i tillegg ble filmen tildelt Oscar for beste manus. Sean Penn spiller fantastisk godt i denne filmen! I tillegg var det interessant å få innblikk i hva som gjorde at San Francisco ble de homofiles by.½

His life changed history. His courage changed lives. Academy Award winner Sean Penn stars in this stirring celebration of Hervey Milk, a true man of the people. Milk is based on the inspiring true story of the first openly gay man elected to a major public office. This compelling film follows Milk's powerful journey to inspire hope for equal rights.

Actually, this book was interesting in that the author was obviously writing a book - in that he used the footnotes to communicate directly with the reader, interupting the flow of the story. It was interesting, as was the tiny drawing on the bottom of each page.

River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves star in this haunting tale from Gus Van Sant about two young street hustlers: Mike Waters, a sensitive narcoleptic who dreams of the mother who abandoned him, and Scott Favor, the wayward son of the mayor of Portland and the object of Mike’s desire. Navigating a volatile world of junkies, thieves, and johns, Mike takes Scott on a quest along the grungy streets and open highways of the Pacific Northwest, in search of an elusive place called home. Visually dazzling and thematically groundbreaking, My Own Private Idaho is a deeply moving look at unrequited love and life on society’s margins.
(source: Criterion)

Region 1 (NTSC) Short films from 18 directors or directoral teams.

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk

126 minutos

81 minutos