Classic Movie Review Sleepless in Seattle

Sleepless in Seattle (2023) 

Directed by Nora Ephron 

Written by Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, Jeff Arch 

Starring Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Rita Wilson, Victor Garber, Rosie O'Donnell, Bill Pullman 

Release Date June 25th, 1993

Published June 26th, 2023 

Losing my mother in 2013 was the hardest thing that I have ever endured. My mom was awesome. She worked three retail jobs, 80 to 90 hours per week, when I was a kid, just to make sure that myself and my sister had food and a good home. All that time, she remained unsinkable in her spirit and love. She was a human teddy bear, soft and comforting. Her worst quality was that when someone she loved was suffering, she would make that suffering her own, as if she could take our pain away by making it her pain. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had a mom who was so loving and empathetic. 

My mom fostered my love of movies. I have a distinct memory from my childhood of my mother swooning over Cary Grant. I'd make fun of her for her reaction to Cary Grant movies and she would lean into it by talking about how handsome and charming he was in effusive terms. I can recall the first time I saw my mom cry was the day she was supposed to go see Cary Grant's one man show in Davenport, Iowa. That show never happened as Grant died the night before the show was to take place. My mom showed me that para-social relationships with celebrity weren't a bad thing, they were a human thing. 

The movie Sleepless in Seattle, which features prominent references to Cary Grant, became a favorite movie for my mom. She would watch it any chance she got. She didn't love Tom Hanks as she did Cary Grant, but her heart leapt seeing him fall for Meg Ryan at the last minute. She felt the same rush of emotion every time she watched the movie, even as she'd seen it a dozen times and was fully aware that the happy ending was coming. She always got teary when Meg Ryan took Tom Hanks' hand at the end of the movie. It showed me that being emotional about movies was not just okay, but something that just happens when you witness something beautiful. 

Sleepless in Seattle is a beautiful film. It's a celebration of magical romance and believing in something beyond yourself, the notion of fate. The characters of Sam Baldwin and Annie Reed were fated to be together. The universe conspires to unite them. Through the audacity and resolute stubbornness of Sam's son, Jonah, and the good luck that he has a best friend, played by Gaby Hoffman, whose parents are travel agents, Sam and Annie are brought dramatically together on the most romantic day of the year in one of the most romantic spots on the planet. 

Read my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Milk

Milk (2008) 

Directed by Gus Van Sant

Written by Dustin Lance Black 

Starring Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Diego Luna

Release Date November 26th, 2008 

Published November 25th, 2008 

The life of Harvey Milk is an inspiration. The first openly gay elected official in the country was a bold, brave and brilliant man. He was a fighter and a politician and a flawed soul. A movie about his life needs to capture these aspects of Harvey Milk and the Gus Van Sant movie Milk comes up just short. It's not that Milk is poorly made or even that it fails to honor the man. It's just that such an atypical hero deserves something far more than a very typical biopic.

Sean Penn takes on the role of Harvey Milk picking up his life story in the early 1970's when a fully closeted Harvey cruised a young gay man in a New York subway. That young man was Scott Smith (James Franco) and he drew Harvey out of the closet and into the life he had always longed for. The two moved to San Francisco and opened a camera shop in the Castro District. That area of San Francisco is now a famously gay enclave but when Harvey and Scott arrived that wasn't the case. Milk slowly but surely ingratiated himself in the community, he drew people to him and eventually as the community changed with him, he became its leader.

His rise from community organizer to politician was filled with potholes and roadblocks but eventually Harvey was elected to the City Board of Supervisors where an alliance with Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) would make history and repeated run-ins with fellow supervisor Dan White (Brolin) would lead to tragedy. To tell the story of Harvey Milk's life Gus Van Sant has Harvey narrate his own story in flashback. As he sits at a table alone in his apartment Sean Penn as Harvey recalls the incidents of his life into a tape recorder. The device frames the film but it's one of many signs of just how typical the movie is.

The flashbacks unfold in predictable fashion recalling all of the well known moments of Harvey's life that shine a positive light on him. Leaving out a few of the less flattering moments, generally celebrating the things that Harvey Milk accomplished in the all too short time he was in public service. There is nothing terribly devastatingly wrong with Milk. It just shouldn't be so typical. This is the same biographical formula applied to every life from Ray Charles to Johnny Cash to any famous person you can think of whose life has been brought to film in the last decade.

The movie suffers from what I like to call Van Sant-itis. This is a malady that affects movies directed by but not written by Gus Van Sant. Movies like Finding Forrester, Good Will Hunting and To Die For are all enjoyable movies but each lacks the director's full engagement. Watch Elephant, Gerry, Last Days or Paranoid Park and you can see a fiercely committed director dedicated to bringing his vision to the screen. There is an almost visceral difference in the directors engagement with his filmmaking in these films, especially when compared to the often soft focused laziness of his non-writing credited films.

Milk is as close as Van Sant has come to committing to another writer's vision, he seems to really care about Dustin Lance Black's work, but as the film goes along you sense the drift in Van Sant's attention. As the movie goes on, after brief early love scenes, the film drifts into conventional biopic mode and rolls to its tragic finish on a wave of typicality. The only truly outstanding thing about Milk is Sean Penn. He embodies Harvey Milk mind, body and soul and his commitment almost overcomes the strict adherence to biographical formula. Penn's performance is as brave and bold as the man he plays but he is hemmed in by the numbers biopic recipe.

Milk is a disappointment only because I was expecting something more from it. The film suffers from building expectations. It suffers from our expectation of something better than your average Hollywood biopic.