So watching Milk the second time confirmed that I disagree with what everyone is saying about it. I liked Sean Penn less the second time, and liked the movie more. And I would like to bake James Franco a cake, he's so pretty and talented. I think Sean Penn is Just Fine, not Completely Amazing.* And I think the movie itself is fascinating in ways nobody is talking about. e.g. that thing where the imagined conversations are explicitly undermined. There is a framing scene, with Harvey and Scott (Penn and Franco) in bed eating cake on Harvey's birthday. We see it very near the beginning and again right at the end, but the two versions are different, as if to remind us that while parts of the story are heavily documented, other parts are necessarily made up. I think Milk is the most honest biopic I've seen, because it's explicit about its failures. Or something. I can't stop talking about it!* A discussion point: I wonder if playing a celebrity of recent memory is nearly impossible to do perfectly, but it is easy to do well. That is, anyone could play Bob Dylan and get a "wow, she really sounded like a dude" reaction. But almost no one can play Katherine Hepburn in a way that is both like KH and interestingly textured on its own.
* Another discussion point: Rated R for language, some sexual content and brief violence. Milk has a brief but traumatic scene of violence (no blood), a fair amount of foul language, and a teeny tiny bit of sex, aka "some sexual content." Does the sexual content get mentioned by the MPAA only because it's boy-on-boy?
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