Two Movie Recommendations and a Short Rant on Sean Penn's Oscar

Gran Torino, starring Clint Eastwood in what may be his last role, was released on video yesterday. I highly recommend the film, and once I get a little further down my Netflix queue, it is likely to be at or near the top of my list of 2008's best movies. Andrew Breitbart wrote the following about the film for National Review earlier this year:

Clint Eastwood directs and stars in the ultimate family movie unsuitable for the family. He plays Walt Kowalski, a caricature of an old-school, dying-breed, Polish-American racist male, replete with post-traumatic stress disorder from having served in the Korean War. Kowalski comes to realize that his exotic Hmong neighbors embody traditional social values more than his own disaster of a Caucasian nuclear family. Dirty Harry blows away political correctness, takes on the bad guys, and turns a boy into a man in the process. He even encourages the cultural assimilation of immigrants. It feels so good, you knew the Academy would ignore it.

The Academy not only ignored the film for Best Picture, but also ignored Clint Eastwood's performance, which I thought was also worthy of recognition. Perhaps Clint's portrayal of an old, white, bigoted, self-reliant, gun-owning, man, was not as appealing to the Academy as Sean Penn's portrayal of gay activist from San Francisco.

Yes, there is a lot to admire about Harvey Milk, but if it was up to me, I would ask the Academy to go back and watch footage of the real Harvey Milk and then let them decide whether or not Mr. Penn was really worthy of the Oscar for Best Actor. I recently watched the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (another Academy Award winner), a film that included plenty of footage of Milk being interviewed and making speeches, and it quickly became obvious to me that Sean Penn did a terrible job of portraying Milk, and did a wonderful job playing a caricature of a gay man from San Francisco.

Another film that deserves to be watched is the gut-wrenching documentary Dear Zachary, about a filmmaker's quest to memorialize the life of his best friend Andrew Bagby after he was murdered by a psychotic ex-girlfriend. It is a true story that features perhaps one of the most evil villains in film history, as well as two of the most heroic. Rent it.