Milking It For All It's Worth

Here's a link to another review of Milk which, unlike that which I cited on a blog yesterday from the Gospel and Culture Project, begs the truly interesting questions of how and why Sean Penn decided to portray Milk the way he did etc. -- the obvious questions, one would have thought, for a cultural critic to ask.   I hate (no, I lie -- I love it really) to lecture postmodern culture vultures on how to do their postmoderny culturey-vulturey thing, but aren't the manipulative nature of media, the fact that films are not mirrors of nature, that they create mythologies, that they have agendas, that they transform the outlook of the audience etc etc. the very first things you're supposed to learn in "How To Write A Film Review 101"?