Slumdog Millionaire

You know all those people you know who insist on how much they want to go to India? Based on this movie, those people are nuts. Or maybe it's not a place full of violence, evil-doers, wretched poverty and gangsters. Someone, on one side or the other, has bad information. As for this as a work of cinema, it is certainly a strong effort, and probably deserved its Best Picture win, especially in relation to its competition (you could argue for Benjamin Button, probably not the others). The strength here comes from Dev Patel's performance; he made an interesting choice to go calm in a role that often seemed to call for frenetic, and that comes across as a wise decision. Director Boyle's signature visual flair helps sew together what might have otherwise been a distractingly discontinuous narrative. And the climax definitely pays off the long, complicated trip to get there. The only quibble: fact-checking those quiz show questions would have been nice; at least one was dead wrong, and another was debatable. All in all, though, a good film well worth one's attention.

The Darjeeling Limited

A whole lotta smirkin’ going on. The absurd tone is set very early on, and it never really lets up throughout the proceedings (with the exception of one tragic sequence in the middle). That translates into a mostly enjoyable movie about three alleged brothers--part of the humor comes from the preposterous claim that disparate stars Brody, Wilson and Schwarzmann could possibly be related--trying to find themselves as a family again, against the backdrop of exotic India. Buy a ticket; you’ll be happy you went along on this ride. Posted

Life of Pi

That PURR is slightly more tenuous than I would have suspected, given this movie’s source material and the high esteem granted to both the book and this film itself by many readers and viewers. The storytelling is not a problem here; in fact, the actual storytelling part of the film, personified by the performance of Irrfan Khan, is one of the best parts of the movie. But the weaknesses of the source story are magnified in this version, and much of what comes across as interesting, even arresting, in the book can seem a little silly when viewed on a big screen. I guess this film is worth seeing for the technical marvels that were achieved, and the actual story is not so much a dumpster fire as it is a near miss--or, perhaps, it is more like a circus trick that almost succeeds.