Millions (2005)
Directed by Danny Boyle
Two boys, still grieving the death of their mother, find themselves the unwitting benefactors of a bag of bank robbery loot in the week before the United Kingdom switches its official currency to the Euro. What's a kid to do?
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What critics compared Millions to
Danny Boyle, who impressed us immensely with the spiritual riches of Millions, has made another extraordinary movie that takes us to places we have never been.
No doubt someone's already formulated the argument that it's just a harmless allegory of one illiterate urchin's predestined rise (Boyle reprises his own repugnant Millions in that sense), but a closing credits sequence that hijacks Bollywood's musical extravaganza with the entire cast of extras suggests otherwise.
Slumdog Millionaire combines (and outdoes) the style and energy of Boyle’s Trainspotting with the tenderness, sentimentality and accessibility of his overlooked family film, Millions.
Danny Boyle ("Millions," "Sunshine"), who codirects with Loveleen Tandan, gives us a harsh dose of just what Jamal's life has been like when his unproven cheating on a game show results in questioning administered with waterboarding, electric shocks and stress positioning(!).
Directed by Danny Boyle, who once again ("Millions") goes straight to the heart, "Slumdog Millionaire" is a moving journey of life and love.
Directed by Danny Boyle (Millions, Sunshine), Slumdog Millionaire uses the questions and answers of Jamal’s game-show appearance as a hook to illuminate the tribulations of his hardscrabble life and the teeming, tumultuous city he lives in, but also to set the stage for a turning point that’s less about money than about love.
Cousin Martha (Daisy Donovan, "Millions") and her patriarchically loathed fiance Simon (Alan Tudyk, "Serenity," "Knocked Up") stop to pick up Martha's brother Troy (Kris Marshall, "Love Actually") whose apartment is strewn with mislabelled pill bottles (wow, I cannot see where this is going...and going...and going).
Directed by Danny Boyle ("T2: Trainspotting," "127 Hours," "Millions," "28 Days Later..." "Trainspotting," "Shallow Grave").
Not only is this Boyle's gentlest film since the under-seen and underrated Millions (2004), it's also his most improbable, imperfect, and delightful work.
Boyle is a great filmmaker who is hardly afraid of sentiment (just watch his magnificent family drama Millions ), but even in his lesser efforts like Trance or The Beach his imprint upon the material is always noticeable.
Like another of his films, Millions , Yesterday uses moments of magical realism (the blackout and a touching visit at the end) to underscore that life is full of wonders and surprises, and on the long and winding road, all you need is love.
A chastened Jack decides to give up music, but Yesterday has the kind of follow-your-dreams instincts that will not allow that to happen, and it’s also the kind of romantic fable wherein in love can alter the known universe — it’s by the writer of Love, Actually, and directed by Danny Boyle, leaning full-on Millions mode, a movie I love.
…as he shown with Slumdog Millionaire and Millions.
Usually, though, the plot rationalization for the woozy subjectivity of his cinematography is more universal, and easier to accept: drugs in Trainspotting; madness in Shallow Grave, The Beach, and 28 Days Later; the outsized imagination of childhood in Millions; extreme physical privation in 127 Hours; and so forth.
Within little more than the last decade, an apocalyptic zombie movie (2003's " 28 Days Later ") was followed by an innovative family fable (2005's " Millions "), then an outer space-set sci-fi/thriller (2007's " Sunshine ").
Prone to delivering grit, even with family fare like “Millions,” his newest opus is something of a surreal and mind bending thriller that constantly shifts between plains of consciousness and vision that often fools the viewer in to trying to figure out what’s reality and what’s pure dream.
An art-world adventure like no other (think The Thomas Crown Affair in a pressure cooker with a strobe light), Trance gives Boyle yet another canvas on which he can paint, the hypnosis scenes stepping in for a child's imaginings in Millions , or a hiker's delusions in 127 Hours , as that which takes the reins off of logic and breaks the bonds of stylistic restraint.
The inimitable director Danny Boyle ( Slumdog Millionaire , Millions ) has made the most of his immense skills as a filmmaker in this bold and multidimensional film that shifts gears and roars into our consciousness as a heist flick; a psychological thriller about loss of memory and the powers of hypnotism; and a provocative parable about human desire, greed, sexuality, paranoia, and betrayal.
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Like many Danny Boyle movies, including 28 Days Later, Millions and Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours is an against-all-odds survival saga.
Boyle’s “Trainspotting,” “28 Days Later” and “Millions” are among the most energetic and visually inventive films of the last 20 years.
The director of “Trainspotting,’’ “Millions,’’ and “Slumdog Millionaire’’ has taken as his latest project a true story about a man stuck in a hole in the ground.
The genre-jumping director of such varied projects as " Slumdog Millionaire ", " Sunshine ", "Millions" and "Trainspotting" has proven that he can make virtually any kind of story exciting.
The films in which he minimalised the whiz-bangery in favour of precise, flavoursome storytelling – Shallow Grave (1994) and Millions (2004) – are, in fact, his most satisfying works.
People loved “Millions,” but no one went to see it, and after the disappointing sci-fi freakout “ Sunshine ,” it looked as though “ 28 Days Later ” was just a fluke hit in a string of post-“Trainspotting” misfires.