Rating: 3.5 stars

When Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) moved to San Francisco’s Castro district in the early ’70s, he had no desire to become a politician. He had just come out of the closet, had a dishy new boyfriend (James Franco), and was simply content to open a modest camera store and live a quiet life. Politics found him—first when the neighborhood business association refused his membership because he was gay, and later, when his camera shop became an ad hoc gathering place for the neighborhood’s young gay men, many of whom had been kicked out of their own homes.
Milk had an antic charisma, a deeply honed sense of justice, and a way of making all people—gay or straight—feel at ease in his presence. He was also smart enough to recognize the power of numbers. If the gay men organized,  their buying and voting power could not be denied. He would be their organizer.
Gus Van Sant is the perfect man to direct the story of Milk’s ascension. As he proved in such films as Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, he excels at depicting the grungy, makeshift, but vital communities created...

Rating: 2.5 stars

The vampire myth is, of course, about sex and death and the forbidden intermingling of the two. Unless, that is, you’re talking about Twilight, a vampire story for tweens, as written by a Mormon, in which case it’s essentially a vampire-as-dreamboat fantasy, with our fanged hero Edward about as dangerous as a kitten. But he is, as the book tells us many, many times, like, totally gorgeous.
So the primary challenge for the talented director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), in adapting the first in this series of much-read and loved and obsessed over teen romances, was finding a cast that satisfied the book’s ardent fans.
She scores, brilliantly I might add, in casting British actor Robert Pattinson as Edward. He is beautiful, in an unearthly sort of way, with an aquiline nose and high cheekbones and a thatch of rustled, Heathcliffian hair. (You don’t see many of his type at the mall.)
Next, she had to find the perfect Bella, the young woman who moves to suburban Washington to live with her police chief dad and...

Rating: 2.5 stars

It occurs to me that there may be one perfect audience member for a Kevin Smith film and that person is. . . Kevin Smith. Who else besides Smith would have such a taste for extreme raunch and mushy, chick-flick style romance?
But Smith’s cinematic schizophrenia may actually work to his advantage. You see, he’s not the best director of romantic comedies (although Chasing Amy had a certain shaggy charm) and he’s certainly not the best director at raunch (he tends to go too far, and isn’t quite funny enough to get away with it). But put the two sides of Smith together and you’ve got something resembling a good movie.
Which leads us to Zack and Miri Make a Porno. The title gets points for literal-mindedness (although it loses points for accessibility—when I review it on WBAL, I’ll be shortening it to the more kid-friendly Zack and Miri).
Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are best friends and roommates—no nookie—and they’re positively broke. So they get the bright idea to make a porno film...

Rating: 2 stars

Outrage is a completely legitimate feeling for a film to evoke. Indeed, collective self-righteousness and indignation can be very cathartic for an audience. But Changeling spoon-feeds us our outrage. It’s outrage for idiots.
Angelina Jolie—sporting flapper attire and alarmingly red lipstick—plays Christine Collins, a single mother in 1920s Los Angeles. One night, she comes home late from work—she manages telephone operators (in a nifty period detail, she glides from station to station on roller skates)—and is horrified to discover that her 10 year old, Walter, is nowhere to be found. She calls the cops, but they patronizingly tell her that she should sit tight—boys will be boys; he’ll be back before night’s end. He never returns.
It so happens that just as the LAPD are launching their investigation into Walter’s whereabouts, they’re under fire by a local pastor and radio personality (John Malkovich), who aims to publicly expose the department’s greed and corruption. The LAPD needs a feel-good story—so they invent one. They reunite Christine with her son...