We have a winner
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/blog/2008/09/toronto_day_3_w.html Email|Link|Comments (0) Posted by Ty Burr September 6, 2008 05:02 PM Advance buzz on "Slumdog Millionaire" is that it's Danny Boyle's best movie since "Trainspotting." Advance buzz is right on the money. Granted, I was running on four hours sleep when I saw it this morning at 9 a.m, but I wasn't alone in my exhiliration as the film came to a close: an auditorium full of cranky, hard-to-please press and industry types burst into ecstatic applause. This epic fable in a harshly realistic setting is easily one of the best movies I've seen all year, a story of a Mumbai slum kid (Dev Patel, above left) poised to win 20 million rupees on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Is he a cheat? Is he a genius? Is it written? That's what the movie explores as it cuts back and forth from young Jamal's brutal childhood in the worst sinkholes of poverty and his slow progress on the gameshow, paralleling modern India's rise to economic power as it goes. Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle film the tale in brilliant colors, and Chris Dickens' editing moves the two-hour movie along like a bullet train-- it's a film to lose yourself in while occasionally losing your breath. "Slumdog Millionaire" feels like Dickens, it feels like reality TV, it feels like the old-fashioned, big-hearted Hollywood drama that Hollywood doesn't know how to make anymore. People loved the film at Telluride and they seem to love it here, so I guess we should expect the backlash to begin any moment. I don't care -- this one swept me up in a way few movies do. It gets a release in the states on November 28 and deserves to bust out of the arthouse in search of the biggest word-of-mouth audience it can find.
