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Another day, : this time for Sean Penn's performance as Harvey Milk. Last week I interviewed director Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black about their film and asked them how it had been received. We had been talking about the contemporary situation for gay rights in the US and I was interested in what the reaction had been from the gay community and whether there had been any backlash from opposing groups. Both Van Sant and Black took my question as being about critical reaction to the film and they talked animatedly about . They even made the point that one major newspaper had published a negative (or lukewarm) review of the film but had then re-reviewed it.

I don't think they will have exactly the same reaction from the . I was struck by just how conventional, and at times contrived and sentimental, Milk is. Van Sant is a highly skilled director, but he seems to make two distinct sorts of films: art house projects like Elephant and Last Days, and mainstream movies like Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester. In Elephant and Last Days Gus Van Sant seemed to consider how the media produces a version of particular events, respectively the Columbine shootings and Kurt Cobain's death. These films combined visual panache with a disregard for conventional narrative. The story of Milk is gripping, but as Mark Kermode said on the show, it's as if Van Sant thought, "The story is so extraordinary that I'm going to make a very, very ordinary film of it." Coming from a director who has engaged intelligently with questions of how events are represented, Milk feels like an enjoyable and well made, but uninspiring film. What are your thoughts?

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