Holiday Weekend Movie Forecast: Milk, Four Christmases

It's a holiday weekend, so Hollywood studios are releasing everything today in hopes you'll give them your business when you've had enough of your family 48 hours from now. After reading our interview with Alison Pill and our report from Sean Penn's press conference, you're now pretty well-informed about Milk, Gus Van Sant's stirring biopic about assassinated gay rights advocate Harvey Milk. Today A.O. Scott's review drops in the Times; he says "it manages to evade many of the traps and compromises of the period biopic with a grace and tenacity worthy of its title character... That power lies in its uncanny balancing of nuance and scale, its ability to be about nearly everything — love, death, politics, sex, modernity — without losing sight of the intimate particulars of its story. Harvey Milk was an intriguing, inspiring figure. Milk is a marvel." And Sean Penn is, of course, stunning. Go see it. (Phil Bray/Focus Features.)