Slumdog millionaire and Second chance Harvey

Once again, a pair of movies. No relationship between the two, save that I saw them in the same week.

The first, an Oscar nominee: “Slumdog millionaire”, is a powerful movie. It is set in India and the photography is superb. The story is original…and the treatment very effective. It IS extremely violent and I did close my eyes at times, but that did not take away from my appreciation of this film. The actors are fascinating….When the movie was over, I was exhausted from sitting at the edge of my seat, holding my breath… In a nutshell, a young man ends up in a “who wants to be a millionaire” TV game. He is a street kid who never went to school, so he should not know all the answers…yet he does… so the police take him in for questioning to find out how he is cheating… and through flashbacks we are taken back through his life, to explain how he learnt what he needed to answer each of those question…his life is punctuated by so many  betrayals that you wonder how he can still go on … there is also a romantic subplot with  a gorgeous girl…

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/slumdogmillionaire/

The second film is: ” Second chance Harvey”, with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Two “mature” people, he,  down on his luck and in town to attend his daughter’s wedding, (who has asked her step father to give her away) and she, single and dealing with her aging mother, meet in an airport and… eventually fall in love…(that’s simplifying it)…… I am glad I saw it alone because, once again, Hoffman made cry like a baby…Both actors are amazing…I am sure for most people it is a sweet romantic comedy…

http://www.straight.com/article-194069/last-chance-harvey

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