“For the first time in the 81-year history of the Academy Awards,” said Lawrence Toppman in the Charlotte Observer, “the winner of the Best Picture Oscar will speak with a foreign tongue.” Slumdog Millionaire (watch the trailer here), about life in Mumbai, seems like a shoo-in—“after its blitz through the preliminary rounds of national awards,” it would be hard for the movie to lose.
Slumdog Millionaire probably will win, said Jay Stone in Canada.com. But the movie that should take the Oscar is Gus Van Sant’s Milk (watch the trailer here): The “biopic about the life and death of gay politician Harvey Milk is not only astute, it presents a believable re-creation of the 1970s and populates it with a cast of characters who—more than any other American film this year—teem with authentic life.”
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