Latest screening: Milk

Yet another case of performance over film here. Milk, like Doubt, is elevated as a film by uniformly excellent performances but the film itself is not great. Comparably to something like Monster or Capote, it is not that the film is bad per se, but that it is fairly forgettable. I challenge people that say it is a great film to remember much of the actual style and delivery of the film itself a month on. I'll bet they will remember little beyond the performances.

Of course such cases and dominating the awards season this year and an ensemble film like this could elevate it to best picture and best director status simply because there isn't a weak link in the actors on screen. See Crash for a recent example of this - the acting and the issue at its core drove its nominations and eventual win not it's actually being the best film of the year (which it plainly wasn't). With the recent hoopla over Prop 8 in California this is incredibly timely and so it does have the issue-ensemble angle that Crash had - it's also a better film.

It's not a great film though. The contrived way around of delivering narration Van Sant uses grated on me from the first instances and some of it was too laudatory i felt. I like me biopics with a sense of perspective and Milk was unashamedly in awe of its God-like (movie portrayal not opinion) subject. No doubt this will go down great in the US but i just didn't buy it, i wanted more from it.

Awards chances: It has the pedigree for Best Picture and Director noms in a slow year (which this is) but Sean Penn is electrifying and completely deserves the Best Actor nomination so is assured. It truly is a fantastic year for Best Actor possibilities this year (the one really hard to call category) and many deserving performances are going to miss out.

I am officially retracting my Josh Brolin prediction though. He's good here but he's just not in it enough. If he had already lost for a robbed central role (like Judi Dench) then it could happen, but his presence at the core of No Country and great turn in W. won't be enough for this.