Slumdog Millionaire - Review

Slumdog Millionaire moves with the lickety-split pace of the city in which it's set, Mumbai, where slums become high-rises within a decade and even the smallest children are out to make a buck. Danny Boyle, always a lively director, has found his match here, and he, his enormously talented cast and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle plunge headfirst into their story of love, poverty, ambition and always, energy.

But even more importantly, there's also Boyle's continuing sense of good humor and decency, which buoys both the moments of darkness and the eventual fairy tale ending. Scotsman Boyle has not traveled all the way to India to expose the horrors of the slums or seek some half-baked spiritual awakening. He's here to tell a fantastic, fantastical story, one that could only happen in ever-changing, ever-alive India. The conventional story may not have gone far in an English-language or more familiar setting, but with Boyle's kinetic energy and the wonders of another culture, Slumdog turns sparky and vibrant.

At 18, Jamal (Patel) is an average menial laborer in Mumbai, but he's poised to win a fortune on India's homegrown version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The host (Anil Kapoor) is suspicious of how this slumdog could know all the answers, and during an overnight lull in production, Jamal is taken into custody and tortured by some tough cops (among them Indian legend Irfan Khan) to find out how he cheated. Turns out he knows the answers, all of which lie in a series of flashbacks to his past, from the race riot that left him and his brother Samir orphans to their childhood spent as street hustlers, organized by a Fagin type who is willing to burn out the eyes of the best singers so they'll earn double.

Thankfully, Simon Beaufoy's satisfying and twisty script is smarter than the strict Q&A format-- questions posed early in the film aren't answered until the end, and the story movies fluidly between past and present and locations all over India. It's aided by the zippy camera, a Boyle trademark, which turns the tight corners of the slums and flies at the speed of the train on which Jamal and Salim hitchhike. Jamal and Salim's story intersects early on with Latika's, a fellow orphan who meets up with them at various points in their lives. As maturity brings out the violent and ambitious side of Salim, and Latika's beauty drafts her as a kind of courtesan to the wealthiest gangsters, Jamal is left alone to pursue a more mainstream life. But Latika, and to a lesser extent Salim, never fully leave him, and Jamal's TV appearance is his last-ditch chance to bring them all together.

The movie ends so happily there's actually a dance sequence involved, but everything before it has been so consistent that the brief dip into fantasy isn't a problem. The performances are uniformly exceptional, from veterans Kapoor and Khan to the seven-year-old children, speaking only Hindi, who play the young Jamal, Latika and Salim. The actors' enthusiasm, couple with Boyle's energy behind the screen, make magic out of Slumdog Millionaire's songs and sorrow, its bursts of energy and carefully selected moments of reflection. A story of coincidences and luck and eventually fate, it's a classic, perhaps cliched tale-- but one that has rarely felt or looked so alive.

The Secret Life of Bees - Review

The Secret Life of Bees belongs in part to the troubled genre of “magical Negro” stories, in which a white protagonist is somehow enlightened or rescued by a particularly special black person (Jim in Huck Finn is an early example). But happily, Sue Monk Kidd's novel and its adaptation by Gina Prince-Bythewood avoids stereotyping and easy answers, presenting a coming-of-age story that goes easy on the life lessons and forced moments of racial understanding. Crowded with vibrant characters and a wealth of talent, Secret Life of Bees is cuddly enough for Oprah but never cloying, a refreshing take on the more standard, calculated stories of female empowerment.

Dakota Fanning stars as Lily, a 14-year-old who grew up only with her abusive father, T. Ray (Paul Bettany, a surprisingly convincing Southerner), after she accidentally shot her mother at the age of four. When Lily's nanny Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) is beaten by a white mob one her way to register to vote, Lily takes the opportunity to run away from home. She and Rosaleen make their way to the nearby town of Tiburon, South Carolina, where Lily's only remaining mementoes of her mother suggest she'll find a home.

That's precisely what Lily finds at the Pepto Bismol-pink home of the Boatwright sisters, a trio of black women who run a beekeeping business on their property. The oldest, August (Queen Latifah), immediately accepts Lily into her maternal embrace, while youngest sister June (Alicia Keys), a burgeoning Black Power activist, is more skeptical of the white runaway. Also in the house is May (Sophie Okonedo), emotionally damaged by the death of her twin sister some years earlier, who forms an immediate bond with Rosaleen.

The story then follows a series of episodes with each character, as Lily tentatively falls for August's godson Zach (Tristan Wilds), June repeatedly turns down proposals from her boyfriend Neil (Nate Parker, as charming here as he was in his breakout Great Debaters role), and Lily slowly decides to tell August the real reason she's arrived on her doorstep. There's tragedy and a racially-motivated mob attack, but for the most part Secret Life of Bees brings more tears of joy than sadness.

The bees of the title don't amount to much more than a story gimmick-- the Boatwrights could just as easily have been jelly makers or tomato farmers-- and you get the feeling that some characters, May and Rosaleen in particular, were better fleshed out in the book. But each of the actresses stake out their characters as defined individuals, aided greatly by Prince-Bythewood's unwillingness to take the easy way out and make the whole thing about one white girl's coming-of-age. Okonedo is plainly transformed as the childlike May, and even Hudson, who hadn't really demonstrated acting talent to this point, holds her own. Fanning has grown well into adolescent roles, even if she's still over-reliant on wide-eyed stares, and Keys is fierce and funny as the modern June. Latifah, in a role that leans dangerously close to the stereotypical Mammy, brings unusual warmth and intelligence to August.

In fact, it's unusual warmth and intelligence overall that makes Bees such a pleasure, a cut above the sappiness and schmaltz so many directors think women demand in their movies. Filmed beautifully on location in rural North Carolina, Secret Life of Bees captures a South that contains kindness and beauty even in a time of hate, moving beyond some of the usual preconceptions about the Jim Crow era. As a coming-of-age story, the movie is mostly the usual stuff, but it's a rare opportunity to see a group of fantastic actresses in a story that, for once, doesn't revolve entirely around men.

Street Kings - Review

Los Angeles police officers are corrupt. Really corrupt. We get it Hollywood. Here’s yet another in a long line of films about corruption in the LAPD. Don’t believe the film’s misleading trailers. Street Kings is not a movie about cops cleaning up the streets. This is a movie about cops cleaning up after themselves.

Take Training Day and cross it with the FX television series The Shield, and you have Street Kings. Keanu Reeves plays Detective Tom Ludlow, a dirty cop who works with a team of dirty cops. The difference between Tom and the rest of his squad is that he doesn’t seem to realize he’s a sleaze. His commander describes him as “the point of the spear”, and they use him whenever they want to abuse their badges to have a bunch of bad guys executed quickly, cleanly, and without the reading of Miranda rights. Tom is pretty good when it comes to killing and his commander is even better when it comes to covering up for his wanton slaughter.

Things change for Tom when his ex-partner is murdered in what appears to be a random act of gang violence. Ludlow may be a point and shoot killing machine, but he’s also loyal to his brothers in blue. He’s rocked by the death of his partner, and when the department inexplicably refuses to investigate his killing, Tom takes it on himself to figure out what the hell is going on. For Keanu Reeves, that means a lot of looking bewilderingly constipated, something he’s pretty good at.

Making fun of Keanu Reeves’ limited acting range is kind of like throwing rocks at a retarded kid though, and I’ve always been a big supporter of his. Sure he has only a scant a few facial expressions at his disposal, but they’re good expressions, and when he’s put in the right situation Keanu Reeves really works on screen. Unfortunately, he’s not give much to work with here. He guzzles vodka from tiny airplane-sized bottles, but it’s more of an affectation than a genuine character flaw. Tom and Street Kings are both standard stuff. Another convoluted cop corruption movie filled with unlikable characters and a dubious anti-hero who is only a hero because he seems to think he is, or because he shoots first.

Some of the action is good, and Chris Evans is interesting as a minor character who doesn’t get a lot of play. Forest Whitaker huffs and puffs his way through the movie like a walking corpse, he’s good at looking like he’s about to drop dead from a heart attack. Unfortunately there’s not enough originality here to deliver anything better than a few cheap shootouts, and there aren’t enough action sequences to qualify Street Kings as a serious shoot-em-up movie. Director David Ayer seems to be trying to put together some sort of commentary on our violence soaked culture, but if he has a message it never quite comes through. Street Kings isn’t a bad movie, it’s just that it’s also not a very new one.