Slumdog Millionaire

December 12 2008, 7:20pm

A tour de force of moving camera work, varied cinematographic styles, super-saturated color, and child-POV shooting & editing. I found myself far more interested in & sympathetic to the really little kids in the first 45 minutes than in their older counterparts in the 2nd half of the movie. The plot conceit -- the protagonist is on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and through various coincidences each question corresponds to a moment in his life (in correct chronological order, no less) -- gets tiresome after about the third round. It's a fun movie, really tightly paced and well edited. But it's fluff. In retrospect (I'm writing this 3 weeks later), I'd probably drop it down to 7.