Recommend a new or newish film you've seen fairly recently.

OK, Slumdog Millionare now. (I must be the last person ton the planet to see this one!)

I liked it...probably not as much as you though, because it spoke so much to your experience.

I'll be interested to see what you think of Slumdog.

About a quarter of the way through Slumdog, & I'm afraid I'm not exactly engrossed by it. I've seen far better Indian films. It feels a little like a made for TV drama.

I don't know why I 'm not enjoying it all that much. I received great reviews.:

http://au.rottentomatoes.com/m/slumdog_millionaire/

It did, very much so. I have taught in schools very similar to that. I've experienced many of the same things, the same frustrations & dilemmas. I've taught kids very much like that, though different nationalities. It felt uncannily real, authentic.

I'm sorry to say I've given up on it.

nope, i've not seen it and have no interest in seeing it

So many people raved, djjd!
I'm wondering what's the matter with me?

I had the same reaction as you, msolga. I thought I would love it, or at least enjoy it, but I found my interest waning early on and never picked up. I think I fell asleep for a few minutes at some point. It went on too long and in the end I was not particularly uplifted, rather the opposite.

I feel asleep, too, Green Witch!

Now, Monsoon Wedding, that was a terrific Indian movie! Just loved it!

It's a great film, isn't it? Both encouraging and heartbreaking, funny and tragic in the same film.

Not the best film I seen that year but Danny Boyle and gang did deserve the Best Picture award that year.

Booo! Booo! Hiss! Hiss!

Slumdog Millionaire-I loved it - but then I don't think I've ever watched another Indian-made movie, so I have nothing to compare it to in terms of the culture from which it comes and is trying to depict. I just really loved watching the little kids (actors). I thought they were beautiful and entrancing.
I also really liked the music and the cinematography- the colors in themselves were worth the price of admission.

I saw 'The Blind Side' last week. Loved it. The young man who played Big Mike was killer - I have to say that I haven't seen very many people communicate the sadness, isolation and utter inability to particpate and communicate that his sort of circumstances bring to a life as well as he did.

It was formulaic at times, but in the end, two hours well-spent. And I was even more amazed and uplifted to find it was based on a true story. Miracles can happen-even in 2009.

Let me recommend the deeply heartbreaking film by Water (2005/I) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240200/ by Indian director Deepa Mehta, a female director in which I believe if Kathryn Bigelow doesn't win the Best Director Award this year for The Hurt Locker (a first for female directors), Deepa Mehta will eventually grab it.

Plus Sarala the child actor who plays the lead character which the film revolves around should have gotten a Oscar nomination that year it was eligible. It did get a nomination for best foreign film in 2007 but lost to another great heartwrenching film, the German film The Lives of Others.

Thank you tsarstepan. So: Water- along with The Hurt Locker and The Lives of Others, which is one I've had on my list to watch so long that I forgot about it until you just reminded me of it.

The late Ulrich Mühe, The Lives of Others, was robbed of the Best Actor award nomination and win that year, one of many egregious mistakes the Academy had made that year.

Tell me what you liked about it, tsar.

I tried, but I honestly couldn't get into it at all ... & fell asleep 1/2 way through.

Yes. A big fan of Deepa Meera here, aidan. As well as Water, I loved Earth & Fire, too.

Robbed?

It was a great film.

The Lives of Others was brilliant & moving, I agree star.

Somewhere (can't find it now) it's on my list, on your top 10 films thread. Deepa Meera, too. (I think)