Fletch's Film Review Blitz: Milk, Nobel Son, The Day the Earth Stood Still and Doubt

Yeah...so I'm four reviews behind. With holiday season here, and a number of potential "sees" coming in the next 10 days, it's high time I catch up.

Let's start with the one I saw longest ago, and the reason I've been sitting on my hands for 3 weeks. I have no idea what to say about Milk. It's expertly made, full of terrific acting, a hip cast, and what appears to be a historically accurate portrayal of an important man in an important time in civil rights and California history, all without seeming to be too much of an angelic portrait of a deceased man. No small feat, though the bigger feat is making a film that features Sean Penn smiling for 90 minutes. A strong film that will likely nestle into the year's top ten right around seven or eight, though it's final fate is yet to be determined.

Overwrought, overthought, overcooked, overacted mess of a family crime caper comedy (and perhaps a few other genres, too) starring Alan Rickman as a sleazeball, Nobel-winning college professor whose son gets kidnapped...by his other son, only the first son didn't know that the guy that kidnapped him was really his brother. Oh what a tangled web we weave when we try to make a clever film an end up with a too-hip-for-its-own-good movie filled with wink-wink quirky characters and set to a never-stopping pulse-pounding soundtrack by legendary DJ Paul Oakenfold. People, club hits do not a soundtrack to every life situation make. The Mini Cooper sequence is pretty good, though, if completely unbelievable.

Here's the best thing I can say about Day: this is the best match of character to actor that Keanu Reeves has ever been involved with. That might sound like an insult, as his Klaatu is practically robotic, but it's not. Unlike so many, I'm not a Keanu hater - I think he's a perfectly adequate actor that's been cursed with an awful yet distinctive voice more than anything else. Still, the man takes advantage of that emotional-void voice here in a way that no one short of Leonard Nimoy could. If only the rest of the film had anything at all to offer its viewers outside of eye-roll-inducing plot points and characters and the exposed, poor acting by Jaden Smith. It might normally sound like a good thing to feel as though you'd just seen two films when walking out of the theater, but that's not the case when the unseen film that you felt like you saw was The Happening. We get it - humans suck. Now shut up and stop insulting our intelligence.

Like Milk, an actors showcase, but this one, adapted by John Patrick Shanley from his own play, feels less like a great film and more like a long episode of Law & Order: Parochial Victims Unit. While the fashion and high glamour looks of The Devil Wears Prada might have gotten Meryl Streep more attention, the better bitch is on display here, as her Sister Aloysius has no such veneer to hide behind, decked out only in habit and bonnet. A tactful handling of a delicate topic (or two), but lacks narrative, leaving you with little to care about other than the awfully big "did he or didn't he" tactic, which you should be able to figure out before the film starts anyhow. Nonetheless, a worthwhile acting clinic.

Grades:
Milk

"It's in the hole!


Nobel Son

"Whatever."


The Day the Earth Stood Still

"I want you to punch me as hard as you can."


Doubt

"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."