Milk is a well-intentioned film, but it's also well-made, and it never confuses nobility of purpose with narrative direction. It's full of inspiration and aspiration, but at the same time, it never kids itself -- or us -- about the tricky, twisty ways of modern American urban politics. It's a sincere plea for equality that doesn't ignore the challenges of prejudice and fear. It celebrates past victories and speaks to current struggles; it mourns devastating losses and is still a hymn to hope. It commemorates a man and spotlights a movement; it avoids cliché feel-good moments but still wrings richness out of moments that feel good. It has a heart, and a brain; it's tender and loving while also being sexy and hot; it features a brilliant performance from Sean Penn but surrounds him with other talented actors doing superb work. Milk is adult and intelligent in ways many films are not, and it's rousing and enthralling in a way few films are. It's a minor miracle of sheer film making joy and determination, and one of the best American films of 2008.
Directed by Gus Van Sant (Elephant, My Own Private Idaho), Milk is radically conventional; it's also subtly, gracefully, innovative and sharp. Best of all, Milk shows us a man who may have been a martyr, but who was most assuredly not a saint -- and makes us respect his accomplishments all the more by showing us the public work and private deals it took to make them happen. Sean Penn stars as Harvey Milk, a New York white collar worker who, at 40, came out of the closet, moved to San Francisco in 1972 with his lover Scott Smith (James Franco) and opened a business and got active -- first as a community organizer, then as a political candidate and ultimately a San Francisco City Supervisor in 1977, the first openly gay elected official in California. Milk was killed in 1978, when his fellow Supervisor, Dan White (Josh Brolin) shot and killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Milk in the wake of White's resignation. It's hard to imagine an audience member not knowing this going into Milk, and yet Van Sant wisely puts it up front, to contextualize Milk's work and to let the film -- and the audience -- commemorate a life instead of merely chronicling a death.
By now we all know that Michael Moore doesn't make documentaries like our grandfathers did. He's a master of polemics, using his films to rail against corporations, guns, governments, insurance companies, and whatever else riles up his David vs. Goliath sensibility. When his most recent project was announced in May, it was described as a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 that would "tackle what's going on in the world and America's place in it," as pointed out by The Hollywood Reporter. Now, however, THR says the film will focus on "the global financial crisis and the U.S. economy."
Moore is still "feverishly shooting" and it's hoped the film will be ready for release next spring. At first blush, though, it sounds like he decided to make the mid-project adjustment in reaction to (or in anticipation of) the Democrats' victory. Without Bush to bash, and without the Republican Party in control of Congress, how much mileage could he get out of criticizing U.S. foreign policy with a new President steering a (presumably) different course?
Unlike many documentary filmmakers, Moore appears to start with a conclusion on his projects and then search for footage to back it up. Documentarians often say they don't really 'find' their film, or discover the story, until they're knee-deep in editing, but it doesn't sound like Moore works that way. Which doesn't mean his films lack meaning or substance or entertainment value, just that they're more like personal essays than traditional docs.
After the historic election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, naturally everyone's mind turned to the next logical step: Does this mean a black man could play James Bond, too?
At least that's where current Bond Daniel Craig's mind went. At a Rome press conference for Quantum of Solace, which opens in the U.S. on Friday, Craig said, "After Barack Obama's victory I think we might have reached the moment for a [black]* 007. I think the role could easily be played by a black actor, because the character created by Ian Fleming in the '50s has undergone a great deal of evolution and continues to be updated."
He also joked that the idea of a black 007 might have Fleming spinning in his grave. Fleming was considered by many to be racist -- just Google the words Ian Fleming racist to find plenty of people making that assertion -- and the U.K. Telegraph observes that his Bond novels "were laced with the racial prejudices of his era."
Surely there's nothing specific about the Bond character that couldn't just as easily apply to a black actor. There have been a few black Bond Girls romanced by white Bonds. Race doesn't generally play a part in the stories, at least not in the last several films. Then again, some people freaked out when Daniel Craig was cast solely because he was blond (if you can imagine the heresy). Would a complete makeover totally ruin it for the purists? What do you think? And if they did go with a black 007, who should play him?
*The word he actually used was "coloured," which apparently isn't quite as offensive and outdated in Europe as it is in America, as none of the news outlets covering the press conference expressed surprise over Craig's usage of it. He obviously didn't mean it with racist intent, anyway, so let's not dwell on it, mmkay?
The madness of Election Day is over -- and I certainly hope you have your I Voted! sticker to prove you were there! No matter what your politics, you can't deny that we saw one of the most exciting and historic elections in history. And whether today finds you ecstatic or despondent in our next President, you have to appreciate what we saw happen in 2008, and what a fantastic country we live in. We have the right to vote our conscience! We have the right to speak our minds without fear of repercussions! We live in a country where anyone can become president, where men and women are created equal, and we all pursue happiness with the freedom and means to do so. We can agree on that whether we're Democrat or Republican. And you know what? At the end of the day, whatever way you vote, we're not that different. And what better way to illustrate that than to have a nice chat about movies? Because whoever your candidate and whatever your affiliation and beliefs, you're here on Cinematical because you love movies.
With that unifying spirit in mind, I'd like to know what films you think best capture the American spirit. Are they John Wayne westerns? The feel good films of Frank Capra? The sacrifices of Saving Private Ryan? Maybe it's less obvious or more personal -- for you, there's no one more American than John McClane, or nothing that says family values more than E.T.
And while I would be quite tempted to pick E.T., I have to go with the one pictured above: To Kill a Mockingbird. To me, there's no one or nothing that embodies the promise of America more than Atticus Finch. Everything you need to know and want to believe of our country is embodied in his quiet fight for justice, and the deep love he has for his young family. It doesn't get any better than that. But of course, that's my opinion -- and it's time for you to have yours.
Tonight (we hope), the longest and hardest-fought Presidential campaign in recent memory finally comes to a close. To celebrate, we've assembled a list of the seven most memorable political campaign workers in the past 50 years of movies. We've got office staff members, campaign managers, and the candidates themselves, each one giving their all in the most important campaign of their lives.
Redford plays activist and staunch idealist Bill McKay, son of the former governor of California, who reluctantly enters the race for Senator with little chance of winning, all so he can speak out honestly on "the issues." As his popularity and support grows, so do the temptations and pressures to compromise his beliefs. My favorite scene comes deep in the campaign when McKay goes a little nuts in the back seat of a car speeding to a TV station. Repeating his slogan over and over, he's so exhausted that all he can do is laugh hysterically. Peter Boyle and Allan Garfield play his equally memorable political operatives.
What is it about California that makes Senators go nuts? Up for re-election, California Senator Jay Bulworth (Beatty), no longer wishing to live, decides he can finally speak the truth instead of campaign rhetoric, making for a racous series of politically incorrect adventures. Beatty, of course, had previously made Shampoo, in which he spent Election Day in 1968 running around Los Angeles putting out romantic and business fires, but he outdid himself with Bulworth.
I gotta keep this short because you shouldn't be in front of a computer right now unless you've already voted. And I haven't yet. But since we pride ourselves on being oh-so-timely and up-to-date with what's going on in the world, I offer this obvious discussion topic and then say "Go Truman."
So who are your favorite movie presidents? If you're stuck, here's a little game:
Eddie Albert, Jeff Bridges, Lloyd Bridges, Josh Brolin, James Caan, Ronny Cox, James Cromwell, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, James Garner, Kelsey Grammer, Bruce Greenwood, Gene Hackman, Dan Hedaya, Hal Holbrook, William Hurt, Perry King, Kevin Kline, Tiny Lister, Bob Newhart, Jack Nicholson, James Earl Jones, Leslie Nielsen, Donald Pleasance, Bill Pullman, Dennis Quaid, David Rasche, John Ritter, Tim Robbins, Cliff Robertson, Martin Sheen, Billy Bob Thornton, Jack Warden, Robin Williams
Name the movie in which those actors played the U.S. President. And there are no prizes, so cheating is kinda silly.
You might remember the big shocker last month that Terrence Howard wouldn't be returning as Rhodes in Iron Man 2 because he got replaced by Don Cheadle. The actor said he found out through the trades like the rest of us, and rumors began to run rampant. Now EW is trying to get to the bottom of things and got an interesting bit of news from insiders who say that two things were to blame for the recasting -- money and Howard's performance. The latter isn't too interesting -- apparently Favs wasn't happy with the footage.
But the former -- it appears that Mr. Howard was the highest paid actor on set. Oh yes, he signed first for some hefty sum, and no one else, not even the Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. got as much. So the story goes -- Howard got a drastically reduced offer for #2 unsurprisingly, balked, and Cheadle was tapped. It all sounds fishy to me. Who let the pay get so out of whack, and why are the powers that be upset with his performance when everyone else likes it!?
Meanwhile, the Bruno shenanigans continue in a rather appropriate forum. Yahoo reports that Sacha Baron Cohen's character crashed a rally supporting Proposition 8 -- the bill trying to ban gay marriage in California. I wonder what his poster said...
Finally, I'd like to make a request. In a world where we get movies-musicals-movies, and slews of adaptations, I want to see the latest Waiting for Godot production get its own feature film. Variety reports that a British production is gearing up with -- get this -- Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Professor X and Magneto. Doing Samuel Beckett!! McKellen will play Estragon, while Stewart plays Vladimir. Now this is worthy of the big screen. Kevin Kline got to follow Pirates of Penzance to the big screen, so it's possible ... I hope.
I'm still reeling from Body of Lies' remarkable box office flameout. The $70-million, Ridley Scott-directed, heavily-advertised spy thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe opened three weekends ago to third place and 12.8 million dollars, and will struggle to get to $35 million domestic by the end of its theatrical run. What the hell happened? A B-grade Jack Ryan movie with Ben Affleck can make almost four times that, and a film with this sort of pedigree winds up dead on arrival?
The answer, of course, is that The Sum of All Fears isn't the proper point of comparison. Because it turns out that Body of Lies isn't much of a "spy thriller" after all. Writing Part One of this column back in the summer, I mused that Scott and screenwriter William Monahan were going to have a tough time making author David Ignatius's ultra-realistic depiction of CIA grunt work into compelling pop cinema. I was probably right, because they didn't really bother. They responded to the problem by making the film less crackerjack and more political; less exciting, perhaps, but smarter, sadder. In doing so, they threw their lot in with the sorry batch of Iraq War films rather than Jack Ryan. It was a bold choice that resulted in one of the best movies of the year – and a resounding commercial failure.
Politically, Ignatius' novel more or less kept its head down. There was certainly a sense that Roger Ferris, the protagonist played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film, was frustrated with constant, counterproductive interference by his US-stationed superior Ed Hoffman (Crowe), but the subtext of this, if any, was soft: the problem wasn't any systemic defect but rather just that Hoffman was an insufferable micromanager. The book mostly concentrated on the fascinating (albeit not terribly cinematic) nitty-gritty of CIA field work in the Middle East.
Oliver Stone's docudrama W. opened last week to mixed critical response (including our own review) and a modest box office take of just over $10 million. Now, as Stone has promised in interview after interview, a rather thorough fact guide has been posted online, a bibliography with which one can corroborate several facts in a film admittedly filled with all manner of re-enactment and artistic license.
For those much more inclined than I, there are over eighty pages to delve into regarding where dialogue was lifted from actual quotes and where inference was otherwise made, like an exhaustive scene-by-scene commentary or (I'm guessing) a similar supplement for the eventual DVD release.
To quote Stone off his MySpace profile: "I am not trying to be a historian; I'm a dramatist -- and sometimes one who does a dramatic interpretation of history." Even those who enjoyed the film can't deny that statement as being just as accurate -- if not more so -- than anything in the film, and as for those who didn't, they might now struggle to say it was for lack of research.
This one was sent in to us yesterday by Cinematical reader Jared N. and I wasn't going to post it because I guess it could kinda sorta be anti-McCain (and I know how much our readers love to call me out whenever I post something even remotely left-ish), but in my heart of hearts I feel this makes more fun of directors John Woo, Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson than it does John McCain. It's rather harmless in my opinion, but feel free to once again call me all sorts of racist, disgusting, hateful names in the comments section.
With that out of the way, a group of funny blokes from LandlineTV put together the above video which shows what it would look like if John Woo, Kevin Smith and Wes Anderson directed an attack ad for John McCain. I found the Wes Anderson bit to be rather brilliant and hysterical -- so much so that I desperately wanted more -- and the Woo and Smith bits aren't too bad either (except the former goes on a tad too long). "Check it out and enjoy," said the movie blogger right before buckets full of virtual tomatoes were thrown at him.
Which directors would you like to see direct an attack ad next? (I vote for Michael Bay.)
After starting off his career balancing comedy with the likes of Reality Bites and Permanent Midnight, Ben Stiller ripped the variety right out of him and ensconced himself in rom-coms and goofy laughs. Sure, Derek Zoolander, Gaylord Focker, White Goodman, and Tugg Speedman have been fun, but I kept wishing for the time to come when he'd balance it with either drama or something a little less funny. Now that I was finally resigning myself to the fact that it would never happen, the unbelievable might be upon us.
I'm so surprised by this latest bit of news that I actually read it a few times, convinced I was halucinating. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Stiller is in talks to take on The Trial of The Chicago 7at DreamWorks. Right now, the talks are only in the "exploratory stage," and both the studio and director are trying to find out if the pairing will work. Take it, Stiller! Hire him, DreamWorks! No, Stiller hasn't taken on political drama before, but I'll take anything that allows him to once again show us his range. Greengrass and Spielberg, and then Stiller. I love it!
If you haven't been following the project: Last we heard, Paul Greengrass had opted out of the film, which will showcase the trial of the Chicago 7 -- the eight (I know) people arrested (like Abbie Hoffman and Bobby Seale) during the '68 Democratic convention for inciting a riot and conspiracy.
Well! Here I had my question already written to submit to Parade Magazine -- "I love Naomi Watts. Can you tell me what's coming up next for this talented actress?" -- and now I've stumbled across the answer myself. Thanks anyway, Walter Scott's Personality Parade!
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Watts is in negotiations to star in My Name Is Jody Williams, a biopic about the anti-land-mine activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Williams, a Vermont-born schoolteacher and aid worker, shared the Nobel with the group she worked for, the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, whose efforts paid off in 1997 with the Ottawa Treaty, which has been signed by more than 150 countries pledging not to make or use anti-personnel land mines.
Williams is apparently a feisty character, famous for calling Pres. Bill Clinton a "weenie" for not signing the treaty (and surely not the only time that word has been used in conjunction with Clinton). What's more, Princess Diana was a high-profile supporter of the Ottawa Treaty (some believe her death was the final urge the British government needed to sign it), which means there's a chance she'll be a character in the movie. Yay!
The film was written by Audrey Wells, who will also direct. Wells' screenplay credits have tended toward the silly (Disney's The Kid, Shall We Dance), but her two directorial efforts, Under the Tuscan Sun and Guinevere, were a little more serious and dealt with strong female protagonists. Still, My Name Is Jody Williams sounds like a different animal altogether, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
Naomi Watts already has The International finished and is appearing in King Lear next, which is supposed to start shooting in early 2009. Jody Williams will presumably come after that.
We've got two portrayals of U.S. Presidents vying for Oscars this year: Josh Brolin as W in W. and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon. I've yet to see either one, though I did see Langella in the Broadway play, which I hear the movie faithfully replicates. On the eve of W.'s release, it seemed like a good time to get a discussion going on Best Screen Presidents, real or fictional. Here's my list, which is surely missing some obvious choices -- but that's part of the fun.
1. President Jackson Evans (Jeff Bridges) - The Contender For the past couple of elections, pollsters have asked people which of the two presidential candidates they would rather "have a beer with." Inevitably it is pointed out that the person you would rather have a beer with is frequently not the person you would want to run the country. Jeff Bridges's President Jackson Evans, though, wins at life: he's the guy I'd want to have a beer with, and the guy I'd want running the country. Seriously, I would vote for Jackson Evans over either John McCain or Barack Obama. He's charming, and funny, and a bit of a jerk when called for, but he stands up for what's right and gives the best Rod Lurie Speech to date. My favorite movie president -- though for the record, I think The Contender is only pretty good.
After seeing Oliver Stone'sW., I found myself wishing I had a little more time to think it over before writing a review; then again, I'm sure there are some involved with the film who found themselves wishing they had a little more time to think over the Bush administration before making it. Distance grants perspective, or so we're told; what could a film about the life and presidency of George W. Bush released while he's still in office really have to say about his life and times? If distance grants perspective, though, you could also argue that proximity grants immediacy, and argue that Stone's W. is not meant as a somber, serious look back but rather a cautious, nervy attempt to peer into the recent past, a film with, in the words another Presidential candidate recently borrowed, "the fierce urgency of now."
But W. has plenty of urgency; you could argue that what it lacks is a point of view, or rather a point of view other than Freudian family psychodrama, with George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) fighting for the presidency and fighting in Iraq as a way to earn the respect and love of his distant, driven father George H. W. Bush (James Cromwell). But to many, examining the inner life of George W. Bush is like asking yourself about the source of the lumber when you're being hit in the head with a baseball bat. We get a lot of dialogue in W. about the difference between the external and the internal, between ideology and identity; Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks) offers that "I don't think politics should define a human being ..." while George H.W. notes that "I've always believed in leaving personal feelings out of politics." But in W., it feels like Stone doesn't even want to let politics define politics, and leaving the politics out of the personal feelings he's exploring.
What are you doing for tonight's debate? Will you be watching? And did you know the very super awesome Hofstra University was hosting it (and I'm not just saying that because I went there or anything). Over on Fark, they're hosting a pretty hilarious photoshop contest in which folks are taking existing movie posters and re-tooling them to include John McCain and Barack Obama. One of my favorites has to go to the above poster for Dude, Where's My Car-- and if you look closely at those girls in the background, you'll notice a familiar face (and so what if I've been crushin' on the gal -- she's purty and stuff). Very funny nonpartisan humor.
Check out a group of these posters in the gallery below (the first one is nutty and freaky), then tell us your favorites. Additionally, feel free to send us your own creations and we'll post them at a later date. Get creative people!
This is why we have imaginations!
By now we all know that 
After the historic election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, naturally everyone's mind turned to the next logical step: Does this mean a black man could play James Bond, too?
I gotta keep this short because you shouldn't be in front of a computer right now unless you've already voted. And I haven't yet. But since we pride ourselves on being oh-so-timely and up-to-date with what's going on in the world, I offer this obvious discussion topic and then say "Go Truman."
You might remember the 
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Oliver Stone's docudrama .jpg)
After starting off his career balancing comedy with the likes of Reality Bites and Permanent Midnight, 
Well! Here I had my question already written to submit to Parade Magazine -- "I love 
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