Thirty years after the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly-gay elected official, Focus Pictures has released Milk, an effective, if long overdue biopic of the slain official. The new film stars Sean Penn in the title role, and the Oscar buzz started long before its release.

For those who aren’t familiar with the story, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, and led the gay rights movement in that city. He was a business owner, running a small camera store in the Castro district, which is still a major American gay mecca. He served in his post for eleven months before being gunned down by a fellow former Supervisor who had just killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone moments earlier.

The film succeeds on many levels, most notably with Penn’s performance. He is so absorbed by the character, that it’s easy to forget that we’re watching an actor, not the real man. What’s more, the supporting actors were all at their best, each one taking on a special role in the film. Read more »

Walt Disney’s Bolt fills the need for a fun family film over the Thanksgiving holiday perfectly, and manages to provide solid entertainment for young and old. Imagine a film that’s a mix of The Truman Show (1998), Underdog (2007), and a little bit of Cats & Dogs (2001), and you pretty much have the plot for this new pound of pixelated puppy pleasure.

Bolt, directed by the dual team of Byron Howard and Chris Williams, tells the story of the title pooch who lives in a world where he actually believes that he is a super-powered dog with a constantly endangered master named Penny (Miley Cyrus), a girl whose father is kidnapped by the deliciously evil Dr. Calico (love those evil kitty references, especially when they’re voiced by Malcolm McDowell).

In true Disney style, all of the animals can talk when they’re not around humans, so Bolt ( voiced by John Travolta) is able to share verbal jabs with his feline nemeses (who are in on the act — they love to taunt their co-star, even though it’s all a TV show). Read more »

For the Bible Tells Me So, a film by Daniel Karslake, chronicles the story of six Christian families who have all wrestled with having gay or lesbian children. As the film’s marketing material says, it questions why the Bible is used to justify hate.

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating homosexuals and Christianity too wide to cross? How can the Bible be used to justify hate? These are the questions at the heart of Daniel Karslake’s For the Bible Tells Me So.

As such, at first glance it seems to “preach to the converted” since the film is often screened in more “liberal” or progressive environments. However, after viewing this film, I’m convinced that its audience should be much larger. Read more »

Every once in a while, a film about teen angst actually gets it. With a genre that has multiple entries that are built to copy (often badly) the format of the legendary Fast Times of Ridgemont High, teen comedies are often far better at replication than in actually capturing what it’s like to be a frustrated dweeb who’s two weeks away from graduating. Teen comedies are often replete with awkward sex jokes, potty-mouth characters, and an attempt to “get the girl.”

Superbad has all of this, but it works. The brilliance of the script by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is that it presents the greatest reality of teen life: friendship. There’s only one thing more important to high school geeks, and that’s their best friends. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) are the dynamic dweeb duo of the film who must wrestle with the fact that they’ll finally be separated when they go to different colleges in the fall. Read more »

When the original Die Hard was released back in 1988, I was seventeen, and thanks to Tennessee’s antiquated obscenity law, I had to sneak into the theatre to see it. I was already weary of these action heroes who were invulnerable and one-liners which were peppered amidst the frequent explosions that were common in Reagan-era films of that genre.

Willis’ John McClane was a refreshing twist of the action hero who was as vulnerable as he was heroic. The one-liners weren’t bad puns, and “the” classic line from that film (Yippe-ki-yay, motherf***er), became an instant addition to the vocabulary of teenagers and adults everywhere.

Now, 19 years and three movies later, Willis again dons the NYPD badge that made him a hero. Of course, during that time, Die Hard became the epitome of action films. It would be used in pitch after pitch for movies ever since. “Die Hard on a boat” became Stephen Segal’s Under Siege. “Die Hard on a plane” became Air Force One for Harrison Ford. Read more »