Milk

Wow. The best news is Gus Van Sant might be back from experimental film school. I’d read something similar after he made the little-seen Paranoid Park, but I guess I was still numb from the shell shocked loneliness of Gerry and, to a lesser degree, the softcore slaughter porn of Elephant, which actually kind of hooked me in the same way it’s hard to turn away from roadside car crash aftermath, and finally that Kurt Cobain meditation, Last Days, by which time I’d thrown up my hands.

But those films made it easier to forget Van Sant was the same career-making fever dreamer who blew it up with Drugstore Cowboy, which might be the underappreciated James Legros’ (best) biggest picture (try out Living in Oblivion if you’re interested), which begat My Own Private Idaho and featured the still interesting pre-Speed Keanu Reeves (come on: River’s Edge, Parenthood, I Love You to Death), which begat To Die For and made Nicole Kidman, which begat Good Will Hunting and made a couple of B-listers you probably wouldn’t recognize, and which, coupled with Finding Forrester, might have been the mainstream material that sent our boy into the wild. I could go on, but time’s up.

Though I’ll say this, Sean Penn won this year’s game of pretend for a reason.