Slumdog Millionaire

A great film can do more than just tell a wonderful story: it can take you to another world, let you see life through a different set of eyes. Slumdog Millionaire may not have the most original story, but damn does it transport you. Shot on location in Mumbai, India, we are able to witness the harsh realities and stunning perseverance of a people and place we most likely would never otherwise visit. It's not always the most pretty experience, but it is an enveloping and enlightening one.

I fear that people are going to go to see this expecting one thing while getting another, and being put off because of it. The premise is that Jamal (Dev Patel), a young man who grew up in the slums with no real education, has found himself on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, within grasp of winning the top prize. When the show breaks for the night, he is snatched by the authorities and tortured, under the assumption that a guy like him could never possibly know all these answers. From there we learn that each question on the show has a connection to a major point in his life, told through extensive flashbacks. I fear people are going to be more interested in the present day game show aspect of the movie - which is the more immediately thrilling aspect of the film - and less so in the back story. That is a huge mistake. The game show is simply a way to frame Jamal's life story, which is the true heart of the film. Remember that a picture frame is vital to the painting, but no matter how great a frame it is, it's not the reason you look at the painting. And it is through Jamal's life that we begin to grasp what an awesome achievement this film really is.

The mere fact that a film like this exists and stands a good chance of major Oscar consideration come year's end is a miracle in itself. Director Danny Boyle, a filmmaker I've admired but never loved, shot much of the film undercover on location in the slums. As a result, what we see surrounding the story is almost a documentary of the real Mumbai. Those are real slums, real starving people - an honest-to-God living and breathing world in every frame. I think that this film works in a more powerful way than a documentary would simply because it uses the fictional story of Jamal as a way to give us an entry point to this world.

I mentioned before that the story itself is not especially inventive or original. The characters are fairly archetypal, but they all feel so fully lived in that you completely forgive the film that transgression. I honestly felt like I'd experienced Jamal's life by the end of the film. So many movies these days feel rushed, unexplored, not totally realized. Not here. Slumdog has this quality about it that makes you feel like you've been enveloped, and by the end you are completely satisfied. Not enough films get credit for taking an idea or a world and exploring it to the last detail. Charlie Kaufman is one of those few who get that concept, and while I would not compare Slumdog Millionaire to any of Kaufman's narratives, they both do share this idea of a world fully realized.

At times this film can get quite dark, which may come as a shock at first. It opens with our hero being brutally tortured. The majority of his life leading up to the game show is dreary and gritty. But at the same time, it is filled with moments of great hope and honesty, and those moments of triumph are made all the more powerful for having been rooted in such a murky world. Boyle aids these moments with some great visual flairs and musical cues. Perhaps the most inspiring moment comes during the credits, of all times, as the cast breaks out into a Bollywood style song and dance number. It's like the visual embodiment of the happiness Jamal feels by the film's end, also reflecting how you will likely feel as you leave this deeply affecting film.

Sunshine

Sunshine is a movie that presents an intriguing premise - what if our sun were dying? Unfortunately, director Danny Boyle isn't able to capitalize on that premise in order to make an original film. Instead he has cobbled together elements from 2001, Alien, and Event Horizon (among others) in order to make what feels like a Sci-fi's Greatest Hits movie. If you're a fan of science fiction, you'll have seen this all before. Yet I must confess: in spite of how familiar it felt, I still enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

The movie follows a team of eight astronauts aboard the Icarus II as they travel to the sun with a bomb large enough to reignite the dying sun. They leave behind an Earth nearly frozen and on its last legs. If they fail, everyone is doomed. The pressure is even more intense as they are following in the footsteps of the lost Icarus I, the ship sent years earlier to restart the sun that mysteriously vanished. The crew is made up of your typical archetypes, like the stoic captain (Hiroyuki Sanada), the uncertain science officer (Cillian Murphy), the hot head engineer (Chris Evans), and the shifty doctor (Cliff Curtis). To give away what happens on their trip would be unfair (although not too hard to predict on your own), but suffice it to say, things go awry.

I suppose why I was so engrossed by this movie had to do with the visuals and sound. For such a small budget movie, it looks very impressive. That may be because, unlike Transformers, the visuals aren't the center attraction, but simply used to enhance the film. You appreciate them more because they aren't on screen all the time. The sound is also unusual and intense, creating a feeling of really being on a space ship. All these elements combined to provide a great example of why seeing some movies in a theater is still the best way to watch something.

One thing this movie lacked was a sense of urgency. We're told the world is on its last legs, that these eight people are humanity's last hope. By not seeing Earth during its darkest hour, we have a hard time getting invested in its fate. I got the impression that Boyle wanted this to be Children of Men in space, but it simply lacked that human edge that the other film had. That said, there were little moments of wonder sprinkled throughout that attempted to make things more relatable. Perhaps my favorite of these moments was when the crew flew past Mercury, all wide-eyed with awe. It made me realize that we tend to forget about that planet closest to the sun.

I realize now that many people reading a synopsis of this film might immediately think of The Core, a film with a very similar premise but pointed inward instead of upwards, so to speak. Thinking of that movie might bring to mind images of cheesy disaster flicks, something this is most decidedly not. Boyle made a very strong attempt at creating a scientifically believable film, and I pretty much went along with everything that was sold to me. Indeed, this is a smart movie for the most part, and were it not for the final half hour, it might have been able to overcome its familiar plot points to be a fairly transcendent experience.

Again, I don't want to give away too much, but the film basically presents us with an hour long tense, but thoughtful, movie. Yet the final third becomes something so different from what we've been presented so far that it almost runs the thing off the rails. It's not that the final direction is bad, just that had it been that movie from the start it wouldn't have felt so jarring. Thankfully the movie is able to overcome this plot twist in the final minutes and present a surprisingly resonant ending.

There were moments where I thought that Sunshine could end up among the year's best movies. It may still. I really had a great time with it, and while I felt like I'd seen much of it before, Boyle was able to present familiar scenes and conventions in an exciting way. Were it not for the drastic tonal change in the climax, this would have been a great movie. As it stands, it is simply a fun time at the movies.

*On a side note, I've found that Fox Searchlight has done some of the worst advertising for this movie I've ever seen. In many ways it would be better to not advertise at all than what they're doing. In essence, they've placed ads all over the Internet showing who dies in the movie and how. Please avoid these if at all possible. You may want to see this movie, you may not, you may be undecided. Whatever your stance, seeing how the characters die isn't going to make you want to go if you didn't already, and it ruins much of the impact if you do want to see it.