Sean Penn Milking it

Compared to the last cinematic experience, Milk was immensely more pleasurable, but that was on its own strengths, wll directed by Gus van Sant, rather than the weakness of Zack Snyder's offering. Milk is the eight-year tale of how Harvey Milk rose through political activism to becoming the first openly-gay elected politician in the USA. In the film, he is quoted as saying that he would never reach 50 years old and he was assasinated aged 48 - an echo of Martin Luther King, who said he would never reach 40 and was murdered aged 39.
But gay cavorting is not what the film is about - it does show homosexuals having passionate times, but it is not explicit and just presented as part of their lives. The story is about the fight for the rights of man - that everyone deserves to be treated like a human being. It also displays the strain on any family and friends - straight or gay - that electioneering places. Harvey isn't presented as a saint either, though he's better than most people. At the end, the power is starting to go to his head, which proves its corrupting effect on even those most opposed to 'the machine'. Sean Penn fully won his Oscar for Best Actor, portraying Milk as camp, but not fruity - and this one of the hard men of Hollywood. Josh Brolin and James Franco and no less the full cast were very convincing too.
Milk is an unplifting film, despite the sad ending (foreshadowed with a real news broadcast at the start). It confirms the basic decency in human beings.