Milk review

 Number 624 on the top 1000 films of all time is Gus Van Zandt's biopic Milk.

Milk tells the story of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) the first openly gay publicly elected official in California. Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna and James Franco co-star.

As a rule, I'm generally not interested in biopics especially when I have no interest in the person being portrayed. I thought that would be the case when Harvey Milk, but I was proven wrong. Clever narrative framing and an Oscar-winning performance from Sean Penn was enough to change my mind.

A problem I have with biopics is generally they're just boring and try to include too much. You sometimes need a corkboard and a mile of string to keep track of everybody. However, Gus Van Zandt employed the clever framing device of Milk transcribing a letter that should only be read in the wake of his assassination (considering this is stated in the first few minutes I don't think that it's a spoiler to say that Milk was indeed assassinated.)

But this letter was a great way to frame the narrative and keep the audience grounded in the real. Of course, it helped that you had seen Sean Penn in the lead role. He rightly won his second of three Oscars for his portrayal. This is saying a lot as he was up against some stiff competition like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler and Richard Jenkins in the Visitor. However, it was Penn's ability to give a performance that was funny, serious but also inspirational to the right people that netted him acting gold.

I also really enjoyed James Franco. As a comedy actor, he can often be over-the-top, but as Milk's boyfriend and later campaign manager Scott Smith, I thought he had excellent chemistry with Sean Penn. Alas I cannot say the same for Diego Luna who played a later flame of Harvey Milk: Jack Lira. Lira was less formed as character and he felt more extraneous to the plot.

However, I think the film was initially missing a tangible villain. Sure you had Milk fighting an anti-gay system, but this isn't manifested in any one character. Not at first anyway. Sure you had the evangelist Anita Bryant who ran a rival political campaign on an anti-LGBTQ message, but she always felt too peripheral to be a true villain.

The film's true villain was Dan White (Josh Brolin) a fellow conservative city supervisor who often butted heads with Milk. Yet he doesn't appear until almost halfway throughout the film. Sure, Josh Brolin is always good, but it would have been better if he had appeared earlier in the film.

All that, notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed Milk. Considering it was a biopic, I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. 

Philadelphia review

 Number 611 on the top 1000 films of all time is the legal drama 'Philadelphia.'

Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) is an up-and-coming lawyer in Philadelphia. He is dismissed from his law firm. When it is revealed that he is gay and has aids, he is fired from his law firm. Believing he has been the victim of anti-gay discrimination, he sues his previous employer enlisting the help of fellow lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington.)

This was a brave film about, even now, a sensitive subject matter. In the 90's, there was a huge stigma around being gay and an even bigger one around aids. Homosexual discrimination, like what Beckett suffers from, was never far away.

Tom Hanks played the part well. He treated it with the utmost sensitivity. He also acknowledged that in today's world, he as a straight man would never be cast in such a role, but he still did it justice. He was well-deserving of his Oscar win. And that's saying something as he was up against Daniel Day-Lewis in Name of the Father and Liam Neeson in Schindler's List. Beckett's humanity is most evident when he is seen enjoying his famous opera - a scene so touching that it makes Miller question his own prejudices.

Miller freely admits that he doesn't like gay people, but he slowly realises that he shouldn't be so quick to judge people. Denzel Washington played the conflicted Miller well. This type of deep character work is what Washington does best like in Glory. He's far better here than in any big blockbuster.

Ultimately, the legal scenes is what let the film down. And this was strange considering it is a legal drama. But many of the courtroom scenes, particularly near the end, felt rushed and under-developed.

That notwithstanding, I did very much enjoy Philadelphia. It was a brave film with great performances from its two leads.