Daily Plastic: Milk

Movie	Our Take	Other Takes
Milk Trailer . IMDB	In some ways, Van Sant has been making this uncommonly graceful biopic for decades. Milk is certainly Van Sant's most conventional film in years, but it benefits from the long, slow ramp-up that began with Elephant. Robert Davis Paste Magazine	... Milk is a natural outgrowth of Van Sant’s wandering in the experimental woods, though it strikes out in significant ways... Suspense forgone, what remains for the viewer of these movies is an engagement with the experience of dying, an intellectual and sensory involvement with the process of demise. Nathan Lee Film Comment and yet 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.... 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.... James Rocchi Cinematical On Penn: If Milk occasionally feels obvious, the same cannot be said of Penn: He gives the film a heartbreaking human center. Chris Wisniewski Reverse Shot The story of Harvey Milk is a tragedy, but not since Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High has Sean Penn played such a serenely happy individual. Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune While not up there in the annals of transformation with Robert De Niro’s poundage or Daniel Day-Lewis’s palsy, Sean Penn’s smile lines in Milk are a wonder. They’re not crinkles, they’re furrows; they seem to stretch all the way down to his soul. David Edelstein New York Magazine Context and strangeness: Milk is so immediate that it's impossible to separate the movie's moment from this one. J. Hoberman Village Voice There's certainly no question that Milk is, by absolute design, Van Sant's most straightforwardly constructed piece of cinema in years. Of course, there are random bits of strangeness no one seems to be mentioning, in all the "standard biopic" hullabaloo. Not just the gaybashing scene reflected in an extreme close-up of a dropped silver whistle (kind of hard to miss). How about Jeff Koons cameoing as Art Agnos? Michael Sicinski Academic Hack

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