Most Wanted
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Il Grido
(Antonioni, 1957)

The Fortune
(Nichols, 1975)

-30-
(Webb, 1959)

Betrayal
(Jones, 1983)

Play It As It Lays
(Perry, 1972)

The Outfit
(Flynn, 1973)

Alex in Wonderland
(Mazursky, 1969)

The Legend of Lylah Clare
(Aldrich, 1968)

In The Cool of the Day
(Stevens, 1963)

That Cold Day in the Park
(Altman, 1969)

The Fox
(Rydell, 1967)

Thumb Trippin'
(Masters, 1972)

Midas Run
(Kjellin, 1969)

At Long Last Love
(Bogdanovich, 1973)

Brewster McCloud
(Altman, 1972)

Outcast of the Islands
(Reed, 1951)

Mike's Murder
(Bridges, 1984)

Reader Submissions

1930's-1950's
The Moon's Our Home
(Seiter, 1936)
Sh! The Octopus
(McGann, 1937)
The Mating Season
(Leisen, 1951)
Bad for Each Other
(Rapper, 1953)
The Phenix City Story
(Karlson, 1955)
Run of the Arrow
(Fuller, 1956)
House of Secrets
(Green, 1956)
Saint Joan
(Preminger, 1957)
Macabre
(Castle, 1958)
The Fiend Who Walked the West
(G. Douglas, 1958
Five Gates to Hell
(Clavell, 1959)
1960's
Key Witness
(Karlson, 1960)
Summer and Smoke
(Glenville, 1961)
The Chapman Report
(Cukor,1962)
Bachelor Flat
(Tashlin, 1962) [on Hulu]
The L Shaped Room
(Forbes, 1963)
The Chalk Garden
(Neame, 1964)
A Thousand Clowns
(Coe, 1965)
You're a Big Boy Now
(Coppola, 1966)
The Whisperers
(Forbes, 1967)
Dark of the Sun
(Cardiff, 1968)
Skidoo
(Preminger, 1968)
Last Summer
(Perry, 1969)
The Comic
(C. Reiner, 1969)
1970-1974
The Revolutionary
(Williams, 1970)
The Landlord
(Ashby, 1970)
Diary of a Mad Housewife
(Perry, 1970)
Tropic of Cancer
(Strick, 1970)
I Never Sang for My Father
(Cates, 1970)
Sometimes a Great Notion
(Newman, 1971)
Marriage of a Young Stockbroker
(Turman, 1971)
'Doc'
(Perry, 1971)
The Music Lovers
(Russell, 1971)
Drive, He Said
(Nicholson, 1971)
The Steagle
(Sylbert, 1971)
The Last Movie
(Hopper, 1971)
Made For Each Other
(Bean, 1971)
The Day the Clown Cried
(Lewis, 1972)
Hickey & Boggs
(Culp, 1972)
The Carey Treatment
(Edwards, 1972)
Pete 'n' Tillie
(Ritt, 1972)
Slither
(Zieff, 1973)
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing
(Pakula, 1973)
Man on a Swing
(Perry, 1974)
Open Season
(Collinson, 1974)
The Tamarind Seed
(Edwards, 1974)
Law and Disorder
(Passer, 1974)
Homebodies
(Yust, 1974)
Stardust
(Apted, 1974)
Celine and Julie Go Boating
(Rivette, 1974)
1975-1979
Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins
(Richards, 1975
At Long Last Love
(Bogdanovich, 1975)
Hearts of the West
(Zieff, 1975)
Welcome to L.A.
(Rudolph, 1976)
W.C. Fields and Me
(Hiller, 1976)
Citizens Band
(Demme, 1977)
Twilight's Last Gleaming
(Aldrich, 1977)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
(Brooks, 1977)
Girlfriends
(Weill, 1978)
Movie Movie
(Donen, 1978)
The Medusa Touch
(Gold, 1978)
American Hot Wax
(Mutrux, 1978)
Hot Stuff
(DeLuise, 1979)
Scavenger Hunt
(Schultz , 1979)
Players
(Harvey, 1979)
Rich Kids
(Young, 1979)
Nightwing
(Hiller, 1979)
Screams of a Winter's Night
(Wilson, 1979
When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?
(Katselas, 1979
1980's
Resurrection
(Petrie, 1980)
The Awakening
(Newell, 1980)
Simon
(Brickman, 1980)
God's Angry Man
(Herzog, 1980)
Fast-Walking
(Harris, 1982)
Twice Upon a Time
(Korty & Swenson, 1983)
Trouble in Mind
(Rudolph, 1985)
When the Wind Blows
(Murikami, 1986)
Housekeeping
(Forsyth, 1987)
The Glass Menagerie
(Newman, 1987)
Patty Hearst
(Schrader, 1988)
Running on Empty
(Lumet, 1988)
Drowning by Numbers
(Greenaway, 1988)
Haunted Summer
(Passer, 1988)
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
(Spheeris, 1988)
1990's
Men Don't Leave
(Brickman, 1990)
Old Times
(Curtis, 1991)
Prospero's Books
(Greenaway, 1991)
City of Hope
(Sayles, 1991)
The Baby of Macon
(Greenaway, 1993)
King of the Hill
(Soderbergh, 1993)
Dadetown
(Hexter, 1995)
SubUrbia
(Linklater, 1997)

Upcoming

June 11

Tetro

June 12

Call of the Wild 3D

Food, Inc.

Imagine That

Moon

Sex Positive

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love

June 16

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

June 19

$9.99

Dead Snow

The Proposal

Whatever Works

Year One

June 24

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

June 26

Cheri

Fireflies in the Garden

The Hurt Locker

My Sister's Keeper

The Stoning of Soraya M. 

Surveillance 

July 1

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

Public Enemies

July 3

The Girl from Monaco

I Hate Valentine's Day

July 10

Bruno

I Love You, Beth Cooper

Soul Power

July 15

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

July 17

(500) Days of Summer

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

July 24

All Good Things

The Answer Man

G-Force

In the Loop

Orphan

The Ugly Truth

July 29

Adam

July 31

The Cove

Funny People

Lorna's Silence

They Came from Upstairs

August 7

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Julie & Julia

Paper Heart

Shorts

When in Rome

August 14

A Perfect Getaway

Bandslam

District 9

The Goods: The Don Ready Story

I Sell the Dead

Ponyo

Pool Boys

Spread

Taking Woodstock

The Time Traveler's Wife

August 21

Five Minutes of Heaven

Goose on the Loose!

Inglorious Bastards

It Might Get Loud

Post Grad

World's Greatest Dad

August 28

The Boat that Rocked

Final Destination: Death Trip

H2

September 4

All About Steve

Amreeka

Black Dynamite

Carriers

Citizen Game

Extract

Pandorum

Shanghai

September 9

9

September 11

The Red Canvas

Tyler Perrys: I Can Do It All Myself

Whiteout

September 17

The Burning Plain

September 18

Armored

Brand New Day

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Jennifer's Body

Splice

September 25

Fame

The Invention of Lying

Surrogates

October 2

A Serious Man

More Than a Game

Sorority Row

Toy Story/Toy Story 2

Aftermath

A friend who had heard and passed along some less-than-ecstatic reactions to Milk a while back wrote me last night to ask what I really meant when I wrote that "those who've been spreading the iffy stuff are, I have to conclude, by and large mean-spirited and overly demanding."


What I was trying to convey, I answered, is that anyone who would come out of this film and call it hagiography and a bronzed martyr construction and declare that there's no lump-in-the-throat at the end wouldn't necessarily be "wrong" but they would fit my definition of unfairly dismissive and would therefore be, in line with this, somewhat mean-spirited.

I mean this in the sense that Milk has a good and honest heart, it tries and largely succeeds at telling Harvey Milk's story the way it seems to have happened (to go by Rob Epstein's 1983 doc), and that while it's not a great film it's a very honorable one -- I gave it an 8.5 -- that has no flaws so glaring as to deserve being trashed.

I'm not saying the naysayers are wrong. I'm saying they don't seem to have much compassion for a very decently layered and fully considered and honest effort. They didn't 'let it in' because it didn't meet certain standards they they have, fine, but generally speaking Milk isn't, by any fair standard, a 'problem movie.'

My first idea way back when was that Van Sant might make something in the vein of Elephant and Last Days -- cal it Harvey Milk's Last Day -- that would forego conventional narrative, but his decision to go semi-conventional here works surprisingly well as far as it goes, in part because of the raw and naturalistic vibe contained in Harris Savides' photography, in part because of the performances, in part because it creates a late '70s spherical wholeness that's fairly easy to buy into.

It's not, I'll agree, quite as moving as the Oscar-wining doc -- watching and listening to the real people tell it, and particularly to get to know and love the real Harvey carries a special realism and organic chemistry that can't be duplicated by actors -- but what is? Gus shows the real Harvey at the very end, and this brief exposure to the kindness and generosity of spirit in his features made me melt.

The friend mentioned that some who were at the Castro screening tonight were mixed on it as well, and that In Contention's KrisTapley is somewhere in there, clearly. "Could this be a gay biopic that perhaps plays better for some bizarre reason to straight guys like you and Poland?," he asked. That's conceivable, I answered. Maybe. It's a topic for further review.

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on October 29, 2008 at 8:23 AM

comment #1

Marcello Author Profile Page says ...

I love that you're challenging the integrity of anyone who might not like this movie. Mean spirited? It sounds to me like a defensive reaction on your part, since -- reading between the lines of your quick review -- you seem to know that the film isn't anything special, but feel compelled not to be regarding as cynical or "overly demanding" yourself. I'm confident that six months from now you'll be remembering the movie as a 6.5, not an 8.5. Which is fine.

Posted by Marcello Author Profile Page at October 29, 2008 9:08 AM

comment #2

Sean Author Profile Page says ...

I haven't seen the movie and have no dog in the hunt, but an analysis like

They didn't 'let it in' because it didn't meet certain standards they they have, fine, but generally speaking Milk isn't, by any fair standard, a 'problem movie.'

is basically the epitome of what Jeff provides. It's a somewhat dispassionate gadfly analysis that requires him to exercise both movie critic and movie business skills. Now, for it to be a valuable statement, he has to be right, and who knows, but it's a valuable kind of expert opinion.

Posted by Sean Author Profile Page at October 29, 2008 9:35 AM

comment #3

mtgilchrist Author Profile Page says ...

I agree with Marcello to the extent that suggesting that people not have expectations, or not expect "too much" from the film (which I haven't seen) is a bad way to champion its virtues. The movie's either good or it isn't, so this kind of post comes across more as giving a pass to your buddy's movie rather than an honest, singular assessment of the film's merits without regard to what other people are thinking or saying about it. Ultimately I recognize that this particular post may be irrelevant to your eventual review, but "this is what they think/ this is was I think": posturing does not qualify as film criticism since it's a reaction to a reaction, not the film itself. In other words, if someone said to you "High School Musical 3 or Transformers is pretty good if you are only looking for _______," you would take them apart for potentially peddling a less than sound work, so it undermines your credibility to write based on other colleagues or critics' points of view rather than just your own.

Posted by mtgilchrist Author Profile Page at October 29, 2008 11:03 AM

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