First up: MILK, with Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, James Franco and Emile Hirsch. Like another of the movies I saw today (which I'll get to in a minute), Gus Van Sant chose to over-make his movie. The script is good, the performances excellent (especially Brolin, Hirsch and -- to a lesser extent -- Penn). But the constant changing of film stocks, mainly done to make the integration of TV broadcasts and historical footage less jarring), really started to grate on my nerves. And while Penn is generally excellent, and perhaps true to Milk's own personality, the flashes of queeniness and flamboyance seemed more offputting than "real". I never got a good sense of the purpose behind Milk's relationship with Jack Lira; was his loneliness that severe that he'd choose a destructive, paralyzing relationship over none at all? Why not explain that further? And poor Josh Brolin, while terrific with what he's given, really should have been fleshed out more; the brief paranoid glimpse we're given of him at home just left me wanting more. I just got the impression that Van Sant wanted to make a 2 1/2 hour or 3 hour movie, and was forced to chop major sections to get it closer to 2 hours....and that's a shame. Still, worth seeing if only for the performances. I'd give it a B+.
The second part of my day at the movies was spent in the company of a British fop and a former US President. Ron Howard's FROST/NIXON was, without a doubt, my favorite of the three movies I saw today. Like the other two movies, it's got its flaws, but far fewer, IMHO. Michael Sheen, so good as Tony Blair in "The Queen," is excellent as David Frost (partially because he's been living this part in London's West End and Broadway for the last couple of years), but he's overshadowed completely by Frank Langella's tour-de-force performance as Richard Nixon. Langella pulls no punches, choosing not to imitate Nixon (although there's a flash or two of that), but to INHABIT him. Equal parts smarm and charm, ooze and schmooze, he is absolutely perfect (and again, since he's played the part in London and on Broadway, he's also had plenty of practice). Howard's direction is less in-your-face than stay-out-of-their-way, and it works. The final interview session has tension so palpable, you can almost feel it. Give this one a solid A.
Then there's the third (which I mentioned briefly in the thread named for the movie), SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Very good story (although heavily contrived in parts), good if unspectacular acting (especially by the older Jamal), but director Danny Boyle insists on punctuating every point with an EXCLAMATION POINT instead of a period, or a comma, or even the occasional ellipsis. While the movie's conceit of having the questions lead to flashbacks is hardly original, it does work well here. And Boyle succeeds in, if nothing else, portraying the poverty and difficulty of the underpriveleged in India, but the love-story construct just didn't work for me. I'd give it a B-, and it would have been a C+ had they used anything other than WWTBAM.
I wanted to make it a four-fer, and see DOUBT,too, but I just couldn't pull it off. Maybe next weekend.
