Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Before I saw it, I thought this would be easy to write. It was supposed to be a feel-good crowd pleaser about Jamal (Dev Patel), a kid from the slums of Mumbai, who played the Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire to get a girl. The good news: he survived his awful life. The bad news: there was some ugly stuff. The movie was very, very good, but not always easy to take. And, even though much of it showed Jamal and his brother as children (those actors are wonderful, too), and they had some good times, this is definitely not for kids. The ending was great, including the final credit sequence, and director Danny Boyle is piling up awards and nominations. The screenwriter Simon Beaufoy based his script on a novel with a clever premise (Q & A by Vikas Swarup) and Boyle came on because he loved Beaufoy's The Full Monty (1997). Irrfan Khan, who was so good in The Namesake (2006), played the Police Inspector and was the only actor I had ever seen before. Nonetheless, it's easy to write that you should definitely see this.