movies: gran torino, milk, kenny
I saw a few movies in the last few weeks.
Gran Torino I’m a big fan of later-era Clint Eastwood films, especially Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, and Unforgiven. They tend to have these great conflicted characters. Gran Torino is no different. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker and a Vietnam veteran living in a Detroit neighborhood that is becoming a Hmong neighborhood. Kowalski is set in his ways and doesn’t like his new neighbors. Hilarity ensues! Not really–but what unfolds as he gradually becomes involved in their lives (and they in his) is a pretty great story. It has still got me thinking.
Milk I’ve done my civic duty as a citizen of San Francisco and seen this movie. Sean Penn is good (of course) as Harvey Milk in this biopic. Gus Van Sant tells the story well. What stuck with me is that I didn’t know that Milk reluctantly got into politics and it was fairly late in life–he was already into his 40s.
Kenny This is an Australian movie about a guy who rents and services portable toilets. I got it because they had the following quote on the back of the box: “The Citizen Kane of romantic comedies about sewage.” Everyone puts hyperbolic quotes on the back of movie boxes but I thought I’d want to see a film whose makers were willing to put that quote on the back of the box. It was hilarious. Besides being laugh-out-loud funny for much of the film, the characters were also pretty endearing.
Here’s the trailer: