Number 3: Milk
Speaking of inspirational, just as you shouldn't trust anyone who's not smiling at the end of Slumdog Millionaire, stay away from anyone unmoved by the best film of Gus Van Sant's career and the best performance of Sean Penn's. Milk is a masterpiece. It's easy to write a movie about a martyr and, in lesser hands, that's exactly what Milk would have been. But Harvey himself would hate a movie that turned him into a martyr, so Van Sant and should-be-Oscar-winning writer Dustin Lance Black did something a lot more complicated and made a movie about a movement. Milk is a movie about the painful steps that the homosexual community has had to make just to be seen as equal. Black and Van Sant film every element of Harvey Milk's life in that context. So, we see the impact of his drive for gay rights on his lovers, most notably in performances by James Franco and Diego Luna. We see him run repeatedly for office, picking himself up and trying again when he loses. And we see the impact of Milk's movement on the damaged soul that would take this inspirational man's life because he couldn't get a grip on his own in Josh Brolin's incredible portrayal of Dan White. As 2008 has painfully taught us, the gay rights movement is far from over, but no film has ever captured the importance of the continued struggle as vibrantly or brilliantly as Milk.
Speaking of inspirational, just as you shouldn't trust anyone who's not smiling at the end of Slumdog Millionaire, stay away from anyone unmoved by the best film of Gus Van Sant's career and the best performance of Sean Penn's. Milk is a masterpiece. It's easy to write a movie about a martyr and, in lesser hands, that's exactly what Milk would have been. But Harvey himself would hate a movie that turned him into a martyr, so Van Sant and should-be-Oscar-winning writer Dustin Lance Black did something a lot more complicated and made a movie about a movement. Milk is a movie about the painful steps that the homosexual community has had to make just to be seen as equal. Black and Van Sant film every element of Harvey Milk's life in that context. So, we see the impact of his drive for gay rights on his lovers, most notably in performances by James Franco and Diego Luna. We see him run repeatedly for office, picking himself up and trying again when he loses. And we see the impact of Milk's movement on the damaged soul that would take this inspirational man's life because he couldn't get a grip on his own in Josh Brolin's incredible portrayal of Dan White. As 2008 has painfully taught us, the gay rights movement is far from over, but no film has ever captured the importance of the continued struggle as vibrantly or brilliantly as Milk.