Milk, Dark Knight and the Year's Best Films

Movie love fills every frame of this rowdy beauty from director Danny Boyle. An illiterate slum kid (Dev Patel) from India goes on the local TV version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire not to win rupees but to find his lost sweetheart. This love story laced with poverty, violence and sexual abuse somehow manages to offer nonstop cinematic excitement. Boyle makes Mumbai (the scene of recent terrorist attacks) a symbol of teeming life against the invading darkness. Slumdog defies glib comparisons — there's simply nothing anywhere like it.