How Milk Made Me Angry

Milk made me really angry when I finally got around to seeing it this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I loved the film and Sean Penn easily deserved the Oscar for best actor, but the fact that this is an "important movie" says something really embarrassing about America.

It's plain ridiculous that gays and lesbians still don't have the same rights as everyone else. The movie's screenwriter movingly said at the Aacademy Awards that this film will help turn corners, but apparently there are still plenty of Anita Bryant's out there. Just when it looked like civil right were being accomplished, Bryant and the conservative Christian movement took aim with, according to the movie, their first major social campaign. Since the late '70s, when San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk made a real difference by organizing a powerful base of activism, the conservative Christians have been building more and more scary capital in various backwards campaigns. 

And because of that capital, this movie was indeed and unfortunately socially important. Let's hope it spurs lots of action, like Al Gore's movie did for global warming. 

Milk was the best movie I've seen in the past year (other than Slumdog Millionaire).

***** out of ***** stars