In this issue we'll take a look at the 2008 Oscar winner for Best Picture and a film that should have been nominated for the award.

Slumdog Millionaire

(R, Avail. 3/31)

Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is one question away from winning 20 million rupees (about $400,000) on India's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Before time ran out for the night he correctly answered the penultimate question, but instead of spending his day sharpening his trivia knowledge, he's in another kind of hot seat.

Suspected of cheating, Jamal is at the police station. No one believes that this poor, uneducated "slumdog" could know all of the answers to these very difficult questions. Certainly not the show's host (Anil Kapoor), who smugly mocks young Jamal throughout the game. He sees an insignificant simpleton with a lousy job. So do those questioning him.

The inspector (Irfan Khan) goes through each question on tape with Jamal and each one has a story behind it. It is as if the poor, stark, brutal existence Jamal has experienced from childhood has been preparing him for this moment.

Through flashbacks we see Jamal's life and his many struggles. He barely survives childhood in Mumbai, sometimes thanks to his brother Salim, but often in spite of him. Along the way, Jamal finds and loses Latika from his life. She is the girl he cannot forget and whom he never gives up on finding, even in a city of 19 million people.

Based upon the novel Q and A, and with a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy ("Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day"), "Slumdog" has a sense of magic to it, even through its darker patches. Jamal, Salim, and Latika are all played by three different actors at different stages of life and all of them are terrific. Three actors successfully creating one character takes a certain amount of talent from everyone involved. In this film it happens three times.

Director Danny Boyle ("Shallow Grave," "Millions") has always had a knack for blending style with substance, but this is his most heartfelt, if not his best, film (that would be "Trainspotting"). By the end he has the audience eating out of the palm of his hand. As Jamal went to the chair to answer his final question I felt the kind of excitement that only a skillful filmmaker at the top of his game can create.

"Slumdog Millionaire" is a terrific and uplifting film with one of the most thrilling climaxes in recent memory. 9/10.

Doubt

(PG-13, Avail. 4/7)

From kindergarten through second grade I attended a Catholic school. The stereotypes so often imagined were nowhere in sight. I did wear a uniform every day, but it never struck me as strange. After all, I didn't know any different. Like me, John Patrick Shanley attended Catholic school, though in a decidedly different time.

"Doubt," which Shanley wrote and directed, shows a New York Catholic school in 1964, just as things there were beginning to change. It is appropriate that when we meet Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), he is delivering a sermon about the assassination of President Kennedy, an event that sparked everlasting change. Flynn speaks of how it bonded Americans together and how it might have led some to doubt things about their faith, but that "doubt can be a bond as powerful as certainty."

As he delivers these words, Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is keeping kids in line, slapping heads down the row. As principal of the school, she has authority over everyone and everything, except Flynn. She doesn't care for his gentle nature or his long fingernails.

Young and caring Sister James (Amy Adams) teaches eighth grade history, a class that includes the school's first black student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster). James becomes suspicious when Father Flynn calls Donald to the rectory one afternoon, and when Sister Aloysius hears of it she becomes convinced the worst has happened. She has no proof of anything, but insists she has her "certainty."

From beginning to end, "Doubt" is as absorbing as a film can be. As Sister Aloysius embarks on her campaign against Flynn, we start to ask serious questions. We question not only Flynn's guilt or innocence, but the methods taken by Aloysius. Like Sister James we don't want to believe it's true, but there is a part of us that believes Aloysius may be correct after all, while her despicable nature makes us want to see the priest proven innocent.

I have not so loathed a character since, ironically, Streep's in "The Devil Wears Prada." "Doubt" is obviously a more serious-minded film, and she pours herself into this character just as fully. It is yet another powerful performance from arguably the greatest actress in film history.

Hoffman's performance is the key to the whole film. We like Flynn, we want him to be cleared, yet he keeps those around him, and thus the audience, at a distance. In each expression and gesture he gives us reasons to believe and doubt him at the same time. Without this, "Doubt" would not work.

Sister James, meanwhile, struggles with being the kind of teacher and person she wants to be, and what the experienced Aloysius demands. The question of Flynn's guilt or innocence is at the very heart of this struggle. In many ways she has more riding on this than anyone. Adams embodies this struggle with incredible subtlety.

As Donald's mother, Viola Davis only has a few scenes but she more than holds her own with Streep.

Every performance in this film is outstanding, right down to the kids who only have a single line. We see them as real people, three-dimensional in an instant. This is heavily due to Shanley's writing. Based on his play, each character in "Doubt" is fully formed, and the film contains arguably the best dialogue of 2008.

As a Catholic I'm pleased to say I don't see a negative view of faith from "Doubt." I saw a highly engaging and intelligent look into the world of these characters. 10/10.

Also coming to DVD:

3/31: Ricky Gervais: Out of England - The Stand-Up Special (The funniest person on the planet)

Marley and Me (PG)

Seven Pounds (PG-13)

Tell No One (NR)

The IT Crowd (Season 1)



4/7: The Tale of Despereaux (G)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (PG-13)

Bedtime Stories (PG)

Yes Man (PG-13)