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“Lion” sneaks up on you as it proceeds to pluck your heart strings with its little cat feet. Then, before you know it, tear ducts will be brimming and your entire being will be awash with incredible joy but also a splash of bittersweet sorrow. At least that is what happened to those around me during the course of this incredible true story about a five-year-old Indian boy named Saroo, whose life is changed in 1986 after being separated from his idolized older brother, ending up more than a thousand miles from his home and family.

It's little wonder that “Lion” has collected quite a few audience awards at festivals since premiering in Toronto in September. Truly intelligent crowd-pleasers that avoid blatant manipulation are a rarity, but director Garth Davis (TV’s “Top of the Lake”) and screenwriter Luke Davies mostly keep any sentimental overload at bay until the very end—and, by that time, it is exactly what the audience needs and the film deserves.

Emotional triggers might arrive at several points during this decades-spanning tale of longing and loss that is also a mystery about an unknown past. For me, the killer moment was when the adult Saroo—in the form of a beefed-up Dev Patel , whose 2008 breakout film “ Slumdog Millionaire ” serves as a sort of companion piece to “Lion”—finally and somewhat guiltily confesses to his Australian adoptive mother, Sue, that he has been spending countless days doing research while seeking out his birth family via Google Earth.

The reason for his secrecy? He did not want to hurt the two incredibly generous and supportive people who rescued him from a Dickensian existence filled with poverty, hunger and potential abuse after being taken to a big-city facility for homeless street children. Being adopted as an infant myself, I know that feeling all too well, which is why I still refer to my mother and father who raised me simply as “my parents,” with no qualifier.

But that is topped soon after by a revelation shared by Sue, a tower of maternal tenderness and immense devotion embodied by Nicole Kidman , who is excellent despite a distractingly awful curly red wig. She uses the occasion to finally explain to Saroo exactly why she and his father, John ( David Wenham , best known as Faramir in “The Lord of Rings”), decided to adopt him. Kidman, herself an adoptive mother of two, delivers her words with such nakedly honest emotion, all the Kleenex in the world won’t stop the ensuing flood.

Not that you need to be adopted to be so touched. After all, the primal fear of suddenly becoming lost and separated from those you care about most is a universal one. The first 40 minutes or so of “Lion” preys upon such anxiety, heightened by its visually poetic boy’s-eye-view camera work by Greig Fraser , in a way that anyone can relate.

What is truly amazing is that the lion’s share of the acting during this early stage is by a untrained newcomer, Mumbai native Sunny Pawar, who won the part after thousands of children were screen-tested. The kid is a natural, equal parts waif and rascal with an expressive face that perfectly reflects his state of mind from scene to scene while often not saying word. Nothing against Patel, who has grown immensely as a performer, but without the groundwork laid by little Sunny, “Lion’s ” onscreen roar would definitely be more than a bit muted.

In fact, the key relationship is the one the young Saroo shares with his adored older brother, Guddu (an engaging Abhishek Bharate), that is established right off the bat. While their hard-working single mother watches over their sister, the pair goes off to steal coal from trains to trade for milk. One night, Saroo begs Guddu to take him on his rounds as he sneaks onto empty trains for dropped money and other lost items. But they become separated after Saroo falls asleep on a station-platform bench. When he awakes, he panics after finding himself alone and boards a locomotive that suddenly begins to move and doesn’t stop until it arrives in the bustling city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).

Saroo can’t speak the local language—Bengali as opposed to Hindi—and he can’t even pronounce the name of his village correctly. Eventually, he is reduced to sleeping in tunnels and stealing food from public shrines. But somehow his innate street smarts kick in, allowing Saroo to survive long enough to be happily rescued from a potentially dire fate.

The later portion of the film that unfolds after Saroo is adopted can’t compete with such a compelling opening, but by then we are fully invested in what will happen to this now grown man. As Patel takes over the role, we see a bright and confident Saroo enroll in a hospitality course in Melbourne and fall for a fellow classmate (a mostly wasted Rooney Mara in supportive girlfriend mode). The one downside is when his parents also adopt a much more traumatized and distant Indian lad to be his new brother, a stark contrast to his deep trusting bond with Guddu. All it takes is a run-in with an Indian fried-dough treat known as jalebis served at a party to eventually ignite Saroo’s hunger to reconnect with his roots.

That search requires Patel to brood, stroke his beard and obsessively sit in front of a computer as his apartment walls increasingly look like a detective’s patchwork paper-trail of photos and other clues to a puzzle—not exactly high drama. But all is forgiven when his memory clicks in and his hard work pays off beautifully. Let’s just say if you are human, there is no way that “Lion” won’t move you.

Susan Wloszczyna

Susan Wloszczyna spent much of her nearly thirty years at USA TODAY as a senior entertainment reporter. Now unchained from the grind of daily journalism, she is ready to view the world of movies with fresh eyes.

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Lion (2016)

Rated PG-13 for thematic material and some sensuality.

129 minutes

Dev Patel as Saroo Brierley

Rooney Mara as Lucy

Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley

David Wenham as John Brierley

Pallavi Sharda as Prama

Benjamin Rigby as Waiter

Eamon Farren as Luke

Lucy Moir as Lucy's Friend

Garth Davis

Written (based on the novel by)

Saroo Brierley

Writer (based on the novel by)

Larry Buttrose
Luke Davies

Cinematographer

Greig Fraser
Alexandre de Franceschi
Volker Bertelmann
Dustin O'Halloran

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Review: ‘Lion’ Brings Tears for a Lost Boy, Wiped Dry by Google

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By A.O. Scott

Nov. 24, 2016

The first part of “Lion,” Garth Davis’s unabashedly tear-jerking movie about a remarkable real-world incident, has some of the scary, wondrous feeling of a fairy tale. The audience is invited to imagine a long-ago time — 1986, to be precise — before social media or smartphones or Google. In those days, a person could get lost, which is just what happens to a little boy named Saroo (Sunny Pawar), who accidentally travels more than 1,000 miles from his home in central India to the streets of Calcutta.

Saroo’s mother (Priyanka Bose) is a laborer in a poor village. He and his beloved older brother, Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), supplement her meager wages with whatever casual work they can find. In the first scene, they are scavenging lumps of coal to exchange for milk at the market. Later, Saroo follows Guddu to a railroad station, where the younger boy accidentally boards an out-of-service train that takes him to a city full of strangers who speak a different language.

With minimal dialogue and graceful editing, Mr. Davis and the screenwriter Luke Davies convey the Dickensian dimensions of Saroo’s situation. He is small and vulnerable, but also smart and resourceful, and even as he is exposed to horrifying cruelty, he is also a hero on an adventure. The enormous pain of his loss is sometimes mitigated by the excitement of discovery. You fear for him, and also root for him, and mostly you are captivated by his story and the sophisticated simplicity of its telling.

What happens in the second part of the movie is a little more complicated. Saroo (now played by Dev Patel ) has grown to manhood as the adopted son of an Australian couple, John and Sue Brierley (David Wenham and Nicole Kidman). He has a brother, Mantosh (Divian Ladwa), who was also adopted from India and has mental health and substance-abuse problems. Despite that, Saroo seems to be living in the happily-ever-after stage of the fairy tale. He moves to Melbourne to study hotel management and falls in love with a fellow student, Lucy (Rooney Mara), from America.

But memories of his long-ago life haunt him, and the arrival of new technology raises the tantalizing possibility of a return to his first home. Using Google Earth, Saroo sets out to retrace, on the computer screen and on sheets of paper tacked to his bedroom wall, his accidental journey. It’s not a fast or easy process, and the effort takes an emotional toll on him, on his parents and on Lucy. But you know, even if you’re not familiar with the true story behind “Lion,” that the fairy tale will come true.

Mr. Davis, with strong assistance from a cast of dignified, charismatic criers and the music of Hauschka and Dustin O’Halloran, floods the viewer with big feelings. If you have ever been a child, raised a child, lost a child or met a child — or a mother — this movie will wreck you. As a purely emotional experience it succeeds without feeling too manipulative or maudlin. I mean, it is manipulative and maudlin, but in a way that seems fair and transparent.

Still, it isn’t quite satisfying. The transition from the young to the grown-up Saroo demands a shift in tone and genre that “Lion” doesn’t quite achieve. What felt in the first part like wonderful, Spielbergian simplicity feels, in the latter sections, like simplification. There isn’t enough of the rough texture of family life or the complications of young love to give the older Saroo a full identity. The movie hovers on the edge of going deeper into his psychological predicament but holds itself back.

At the end, the focus shifts from the agonies of Saroo to the glories of Google. I can’t complain too much about that; for all I know, Google brought you to this review. But I also can’t help feeling a dystopian chill amid all the warm don’t-be-evil fuzzies, a hint of corporate propaganda behind the fable. It is indeed remarkable how small the world has become, how many problems data can solve, how connected we all are to one another. But we’ve lost something, too, and we can’t even see what it is.

“Lion” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for sex and profanity. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes.

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Great performances in emotional, intense biographical drama.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Positive messages about the power of family bonds,

Saroo's adoptive parents are loving, generous, and

Brief but unsettling scenes of endangered, homeles

Passionate kissing and scenes of a couple in bed (

Infrequent strong language includes "s--t," "ass,"

Google Earth is prominently displayed and a big pa

Adults drink at parties and dinners, as well as at

Positive Messages

Positive messages about the power of family bonds, how finding and understanding your past can be the key to move toward your future, and the impact of a loving family on a child. Themes include compassion, gratitude, and perseverance.

Positive Role Models

Saroo's adoptive parents are loving, generous, and supportive. They understand his need to find his birth mother. Saroo himself is persistent, compassionate, and intelligent. Saroo's biological brother was protective and caring. Lucy is an encouraging, loving girlfriend.

Violence & Scariness

Brief but unsettling scenes of endangered, homeless, presumably orphaned street children in India. In one scene, a group of kids sleeping on cardboard boxes in a public transport station is ambushed by men who take several of them away, presumably to unsafe situations. In another scene, a man inspects and touches young Saroo in an uncomfortable but not outright inappropriate way. Implied violence against children, but the disturbing consequences the children have to face isn't explored, whether it's human trafficking, sexual slavery, or something else.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Passionate kissing and scenes of a couple in bed (shirtless man, bare-shouldered woman) after implied sex. Flirting/kissing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent strong language includes "s--t," "ass," and "damn."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Google Earth is prominently displayed and a big part of the story.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults drink at parties and dinners, as well as at home. Some cigarette smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Lion is an emotional biographical drama about Saroo Brierley, who was lost to his family in India at age 5 after ending up on a train bound more than 1,000 kilometers away from his hometown. Based on Brierley's memoir A Long Way Home , the movie chronicles how Saroo ( Dev Patel ) used Google Earth to track down his birth family after a 25-year separation. Children are shown in danger -- including a disturbing scene in which homeless children are abducted as they sleep, one in which young Saroo is physically inspected in a creepy manner, and others in which he's forced to live on the streets with no shelter or food. When the action switches to Saroo's adulthood, there are scenes of implied sex (he and his girlfriend are in bed, half dressed) and passionate kissing. Adults (twentysomethings) drink at dinner parties, restaurants, and at home; there's also cigarette smoking and infrequent strong language ("s--t," "ass," etc.). And underlying everything are powerful lessons about perseverance, gratitude, family bonds, and the power of technology. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (12)
Kids say (34)

Based on 12 parent reviews

Excellent but harrowing movie

Movie good/book better, what's the story.

LION is an incredible story based on Saroo Brierley's memoir A Long Way Home. Born in India to a poor but loving family, Saroo was lost to them at age 5 when he ended up on a train that took him more than 1,000 kilometers away from his modest hometown to the bustling streets of Calcutta. Young Saroo (Sunny Pawar) has no idea how to return to his mother and siblings, so he wanders around, homeless, skirting one tragic close call after another until he's placed into an orphanage and adopted by a loving Australian couple: John ( David Wenham ) and Sue ( Nicole Kidman ) Brierley. More than 20 years later, Saroo (now played by Dev Patel ) shares his improbable story with new friends who encourage him to use Google Earth to track down all the possible towns he might have come from. From that point on, Saroo isolates himself from his family and girlfriend, Lucy ( Rooney Mara ), to focus solely on the slim possibility of finding his biological mother and siblings.

Is It Any Good?

Be prepared to cry -- a lot -- at this wonderfully cast tearjerker about a man who searched for his birth family across a continent, with only decades-old memories to guide him. Director Garth Davis' adaptation of Brierley's memoir starts off strong, with the charming, big-eyed Pawar playing adorable young Saroo. Audiences will audibly gasp at the circumstances that lead to his separation from his family, and there will be (many) tears as he narrowly escapes the grips of people who would surely do him harm. Once Saroo is an adult, Patel takes over as a well-adjusted adoptive son who's flourished in his new family and country but then becomes obsessed with finding out where he's from and what happened to the family who must have assumed he was gone forever.

Although the beginning and the end of Lion are emotional and compelling, there's a period in the middle of the second act when all Saroo seems to do is hang out in front of his computer, searching countless train stations within a 1,000-mile radius of Calcutta. He also pushes away the people who love him -- most frustratingly, his devoted girlfriend (played beautifully by Mara). This is definitely the movie's low point, and it lasts a bit too long, but eventually everything picks up again. Wenham has little to do, but Kidman gives a fantastic supporting performance as the mother of two adopted Indian sons, one of whom (Saroo's brother) has special needs. Without completely spoiling the ending, let's just say you can expect the tears to flow freely as you witness Saroo's complicated joy, relief, and sadness at the end of his long journey.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what makes Lion such an emotional story? Do you enjoy tearjerkers? Why do you think we sometimes seek out movies that will make us cry?

How do the characters demonstrate compassion , gratitude , and perseverance? Why are those important character strengths ?

What is the movie's message about adoption? Does it offer a positive representation of an adoptive family?

Does the inclusion of Google Earth feel artificial or vital to the story? Why is it different than a random product placement?

Movie Details

In theaters : November 25, 2016
On DVD or streaming : April 11, 2017
Cast : Dev Patel , Rooney Mara , Nicole Kidman
Director : Garth Davis
Inclusion Information : Indian/South Asian actors, Female actors
Studio : The Weinstein Company
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters , Brothers and Sisters , Friendship
Character Strengths : Compassion , Gratitude , Perseverance
Run time : 129 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : thematic material and some sensuality
Award : Common Sense Selection
Last updated : April 5, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Lion is an inspirational true story even a film snob could love

Saroo Brierley’s story is almost unbelievable, and the movie does it justice.

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Saroo Brierley’s story is exhibit A for "you can’t make this stuff up": As a 5-year-old born in a small village in India, Saroo was accidentally separated from his family and, eventually, brought to an orphanage in Calcutta, from which he was adopted by an Australian couple. As an adult, he found them again, partly with the help of Google Earth .

It sounds like the machinations of a product-placement genius, but it actually happened. Brierley wrote about his life story in his memoir, A Long Way Home , and now it’s been turned into Lion.

The Hollywood temptation in adapting material like Brierley’s life for the screen is to make a fairly standard inspirational movie about the power of the human spirit. Lion has all those things, but director Garth Davis , working with a screenplay by Luke Davies , pulls off something much better. Lion is moving, beautifully shot, and clear-eyed about its aims. It’s the kind of inspirational movie even a film snob could love.

Lion is based on a true, incredible story

As the film opens, tiny Saroo (the outstanding Sunny Pawar ) lives with his beloved mother, younger sister, and older brother Guddu ( Abhishek Bharate ), whom he idolizes. His mother is a day laborer, and the family subsists near the edge of poverty.

Sunny Pawar and Abhishek Bharate in Lion

One day, after much begging from Saroo, Guddu brings him along on a trek to find work and tells him to stay on a bench at a railway station while he sorts out some details. Saroo drops off to sleep, but when he wakes up, Guddu has not returned. While looking for his brother, Saroo accidentally ends up on an empty passenger train that begins moving, and goes on for days.

Saroo, who only speaks Hindi, ends up in a part of India where the dominant language is Bengali. Lost, alone, and vulnerable, he navigates the city, trying to find his way back — but of course he has no idea how, and nobody recognizes the name he gives for his home village.

Eventually, after dodging a number of people with bad designs on him, Saroo ends up in an orphanage in Calcutta. The Brierleys, a kind couple from Australia ( Nicole Kidman and David Wenham ), adopt him and, a year later, another boy named Mantosh. Saroo adjusts well to his new life; Mantosh, who is more emotionally disturbed, does not.

The movie then jumps forward 20 years to 2008, and Saroo (now played by Dev Patel ), all grown up, embarks on a course of study in hospitality management. He meets and falls in love with an American girl, Lucy ( Rooney Mara ), who is also in the program. The course attracts a number of international students, including Indians, and while at dinner with them one night, Saroo has an experience that resurfaces feelings he’s long buried about his lost family.

That sends him on a quest to find his mother and siblings — but because he doesn’t even know the name of his home village, and because his mother was illiterate and thus left no paper trail, it’s virtually impossible. He takes to Google Earth to see if he can find a railway station that matches his memory. The search becomes an obsession.

Lion eventually becomes a conventional inspirational drama, but it earns it

The stickiest narrative point that Lion has to navigate is the matter of international adoption, especially white families adopting brown children, which brings with it a whole wicket of ethical issues, from white savior complexes to families unprepared for their children’s emotional challenges to kidnappings .

But Lion handles it well. The Brierleys are kind, patient, and committed to their children, but the movie doesn’t shy away from the challenges both Saroo and Mantosh face, even as adults. Trauma isn’t something that just goes away because a child is removed from its source.

Lion is interested in how cultural identities — especially in a globalized world — shape us in indelible ways, getting into our bones even when we think we’ve shed them. But it’s also about bonds of love that stretch across time and mental space. Saroo’s search for his family is motivated by the feeling that they’re searching for him, and love that won’t let go. (Thus, it’s a perfect film for teens and adults to see together during the holidays.)

However, the movie’s best section is its first act, in which 5-year-old Saroo is alone and defenseless. For long stretches, Saroo is quiet and disconnected, unable to even understand the people around him. Shot with restraint and beauty (but without either aestheticizing or fetishizing poverty), it’s effective because it puts us in Saroo’s shoes, understanding the dangers through a 5-year-old’s perspective. Playing young Saroo, Pawar’s face is full of expression, both innocent and, eventually, streetwise.

This section has more in common with neorealism than anything else — it’s almost impressionistic. That impressionism resurfaces later, when as an adult, Saroo begins to dream of his family, and the film works hard, and effectively, to convey his mental and emotional state. So when the film inevitably dips into the swelling music and emotion that belongs to a more conventional "inspirational" drama, it doesn’t feel overblown. We’ve been there with Saroo, and we’re as hungry to come home as he is.

Lion opens in theaters on November 25.

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Lion is a well-made melodrama with a rather disturbing message

Lecturer in Media Studies, University of Notre Dame Australia

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Lion is a well-made film starring Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman and David Wenham. An Australian production written by Luke Davies ( Candy ) and adapted from Saroo Brierly’s memoir A Long Way Home (2013), it follows the remarkable true story of an Indian boy who, lost in Calcutta, is adopted by an Australian couple and grows up in Tasmania. 25 years later, he uses Google Earth to locate his home village and is reunited with his birth mother.

The film is split evenly in two. The first half follows the imperiled Saroo as a young boy (Sunny Pawar) who finds himself lost in the urban nightmare of Calcutta, thousands of kilometres from home. Not speaking the common language of Bengali, he’s unable to converse with anyone.

He ekes out a living as a beggar, narrowly avoiding enslavement as a child prostitute, before winding up in an orphanage, whence he is adopted by Australian couple Sue (Nicole Kidman) and John (David Wenham). In the second half of the film we follow adult Saroo (Dev Patel) as he sets off on his obsessive quest to find his family. On the way he falls in love with Lucy (Rooney Mara).

The technical elements of the film are perfectly realised. The photography balances beautiful, epic shots of the Indian and Tasmanian landscapes with pathos-laden close-ups of the main characters. The score by Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O'Halloran is emotively symphonic without a surplus of schmaltz. Despite the length of the film, the construction of the story is economic enough to maintain the viewer’s interest throughout.

It is an effective, pleasurably melodramatic film – I challenge anyone to see it without reaching for the tissue box. The performances are excellent, with 8-year old Pawar, lighting every scene with his delightful smile, the standout.

Unfortunately, like most commercial films, Lion doesn’t say anything particularly meaningful about the world. In film terms, this is called burbanking: reducing the political problems that form its contextual backdrop to matters of individual psychology and morality.

The opening sequences, with overhead shots of the Indian countryside contrasting with images of a train cutting into it, gesture towards the dialectical relationship between rural poverty and urban development.

However, instead of following this through to its logical conclusion – that is, a critique of capitalist globalisation and its attendant economic inequality – it veers towards sentimentalism, sticking to the saccharine path paved by hundreds of Hollywood “overcoming the odds” pics before it.

A film that is underpinned by the contrast between India’s urban and rural poverty and Australia’s affluence cannot help but be about the processes of capitalist modernity and urbanisation that underpin contemporary consumer culture. Yet Lion eschews any genuine political engagement.

In a sense, this is hardly surprising. But it is particularly notable in Lion because of the film’s ultimate posturing regarding the perilous situation for children in India.

It ends with captions telling us that “Over 80,000 children go missing in India each year”, before pointing towards the virtues of Western adoption of Indian children. It’s certainly one of the more explicitly Orientalist visions I’ve seen on the big screen this year.

The film approaches consciousness of this in one particularly bizarre scene in which Sue tells adult Saroo about the “vision” she had as a twelve year old girl that made her determined to, one day, “have two brown-skinned boys.” She’s in tears, and Saroo hugs her, with the emotional charge of the scene negating its critical potential. What should appear creepy – a 12-year old girl’s bio-colonial fantasy – is transformed into a tender familial moment.

Of course, a commercial, mainstream film like Lion is hardly going to undermine its own basis by critiquing global capitalism, and, as a romantic melodrama, it is very effective. But as a film about what is a political issue (which its final “message” seems to indicate it thinks it is) it falls hopelessly short.

It is, in fact, rather hypocritical in its depiction of poverty as the result of some kind of amorphous “evil” and not as the necessary product of capitalist development. There is, moreover, something profoundly Dickensian in its explicit celebration of bourgeois sympathy for the poor – and its solution: physical appropriation of the poor by the rich.

Lion opens in Australia on January 19.

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‘lion’: film review | tiff 2016.

Dev Patel plays a real-life figure separated from his family in central India at age five and reunited with them a quarter-century later in Garth Davis' uplifting drama, which also stars Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara.

By David Rooney

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Lion Reviews

The story of the film begins in 1986, and some time later, after several events, an indian boy is adopted by an Australian couple. From here it is inevitable not to establish a point of contact with the 2005 film "Va, vis et deviens".

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 14, 2024

“Lion” is an uplifting real-life story about a young man’s search for his identity. It features gorgeous cinematography, touching performances, and an emotionally satisfying (and most likely tearful) climax that never feels manipulative, nor overwrought.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 22, 2023

Aside from one slightly underserved relationship and the film drifting a tad in the second half, “Lion” eloquently handles this incredible multi-layered story. Patel’s leading man star has never shown brighter.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 23, 2022

A picture that comes by its emotions honestly.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 10, 2022

When it's not obviously vying for Oscar gold or propagandizing for the Google machine, Lion happens to be tender in its consideration of home and family as concepts.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 5, 2022

The India scenes, the India cast, everyone involved is spot on, especially young Sunny Pawar.

Full Review | Nov 19, 2021

Feels like a two-and-a-half-hour version of ... the kind of spot that should end with the words 'Happy Holidays from All of Us at Google.'

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Aug 10, 2021

Each development is unadorned and plain. This, you could get from a plot summary.

Full Review | Jan 4, 2021

"Lion" will most likely go down in history as the patron-saint movie of all people who've been lovingly adopted. It captures the horror, danger, loneliness, and vast existential meaningless encountered by lost children.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 10, 2020

It has good performances from Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar and Nicole Kidman, as well as there is a photographic beauty that reflects indigence with kaleidoscopic persuasion, but luckily I don't have to Google it to know it bores. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 27, 2020

There are some structural problems with Lion, but the undeniably emotive pulse of the narrative is hard to deny in its final moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 23, 2020

Lion is certainly a well-made film, but it was tough to get over the feeling of being poked and prodded by the filmmakers, looking for that one spot on your heart that will flood your eyes.

Full Review | Apr 30, 2020

Natural and real. Those are the words to describe Lion.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2020

Overall, while it boasts credible performances, Lion suffers from a poor infrastructure that unfortunately lessens its emotional power.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 13, 2019

Lion is at once a heartbreaker, a journey for the soul and the senses, and ultimately the life-affirming experience you need it to be.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 31, 2019

It is far from being a perfect movie. However, it is a completely delightful watch that will stay with you past the last frames. Even the most cynical won't be able to resist the charm of Lion.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2019

Lion is a mild success, one that will warm the heart but won't offer much food for thought.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 20, 2019

A well made tear-jerker that manages to transcend the typical Oscar-bait material, even if its Google Earth sequences come off as a bit contrived.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 4, 2019

Much hinges on the performance coaxed from Pawar, the year's littlest big star, who is ridiculously adorable and natural in the role.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 17, 2019

The film's final scenes might feel a little predictable, but overall Lion is an admirable example of the way a personal story can shed light on broader issues such as identity, poverty and global inequality.

Full Review | Mar 19, 2019

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Brings his A-game … Dev Patel as Saroo in Lion.

Lion review – Dev Patel excels in incredible postmodern odyssey

The true story of a foundling Indian boy who locates his mother years later via Google Maps is given the treatment it deserves in this intelligent, heartfelt film

E veryone says that modern GPS and digital technology are wiping out jeopardy and making storytelling impossible. Well, that is very much not the case with Lion , the extraordinary true story of how a foundling Indian boy, estranged from his home village by the cruellest of fate and growing to adulthood far from home, used Google Maps to find his mother.

Screenwriter Luke Davies and first-time feature director Garth Davis (known before this for Jane Campion’s TV drama Top of the Lake ) have responded to this incredible situation with a heartfelt film combining intelligent attention to detail with a necessary sense of their story’s simplicity and strength. Dev Patel brings his A-game to the leading role, newcomer Sunny Pawar is wonderful as his character’s younger self and Nicole Kidman gives a very decent performance as the adoptive mother.

Pawar plays Saroo, a little Indian kid who roams the streets with his brother; they get split up at the railway station as night falls; not knowing his way back, Saroo decides to get some sleep on a stationary train. He wakes up to find to his horror the train has started up and is now thousands of miles away in Calcutta, where he cannot speak the language and cannot remember the official grownup name for his village. He is placed with kindly adoptive parents in Tasmania (Kidman and David Wenham) but is haunted by the need to find his mother, and finally discovers that his laptop can help him.

This big-hearted film does full justice to the horror, the pathos and the drama of his postmodern odyssey.

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DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

December 25, 2016
Dev Patel as Saroo; Rooney Mara as Lucy; Sunny Pawar as young Saroo; Abhishek Bharate as Guddu; Priyanka Bose as Kamla; Nicole Kidman as Sue Brierley; David Wenham as John Brierley; Divian Ladwa as Mantosh

Home Release Date

April 11, 2017
Garth Davis

Distributor

The Weinstein Company

Movie Review

Home is more than four walls and a roof. It’s more than where you sleep, eat, wash your hair. There’s something spiritual about home, something impossible to define yet impossible to replace. And even when you leave that home, a bit of it follows you wherever you go.

For 5-year-old Saroo, home isn’t so much a place as a collection of people. His mother. His older brother, Guddu. His tiny baby sister. They make up Saroo’s whole life, part of everything he knows. Every day he and Guddu dive into a broader world beyond, that of rural India, stealing bits of coal to sell for bits of milk. Every night he comes home for a smile, a laugh, a bit of hurried dinner before his mother and brother dive back into the dark, working to provide for the family.

One night, like most nights, Saroo begs his brother to let him come along. Guddu, like most nights, refuses.

“You’re too small to lift bales,”

“I can lift anything ,” Saroo protests. He hoists a bicycle off the ground to prove it, his tiny biceps straining at the effort.

Guddu relents. “OK, fine,” he says. And so they tromp off into the night. Before long, Guddu’s carrying little Saroo in his arms, the little boy too tired to stay awake. When the two boys arrive at their town’s small train depot, Guddu gently places the boy on a bench, realizing that it was a mistake to bring him along. Guddu will go on alone.

“You wait here,” Guddu tells Saroo, the little boy’s eyelids weighted with sleep. “You don’t go anywhere.”

Saroo sleeps. When he wakes up, it’s the dead of night and the depot is deserted. “Guddu!” Saroo calls. He begins to wander. He slinks onto a train, where long years of poverty have taught him to hunt under seats for loose change, crusts of bread, anything that might be of use. But the work is tiring and tedious. Soon, Saroo slumps into another seat and dozes off again.

When he wakes up, the little boy feels the train move and rock beneath him. He looks out the window, sees the green and brown of India zipping past.

Panic. Terror. Saroo screams for Guddu, for Mum. They don’t answer. No one does. The train is decommissioned, deserted. He’s alone. And this huge, metallic snake slithers through the countryside, carrying him farther and farther away from home.

Finally, the snake slides into Calcutta. Saroo’s a thousand miles from where he started, though he can’t know that. He begins asking for help. But when people ask him his mother’s name, he only knows “Mum.” When he tells them where he thinks he’s from— Ganestalay —no one has ever heard of it. He doesn’t even know what direction he came from, what train he took. Saroo is lost, hopelessly lost, in a land of strangers who care very little about the fate of a 5-year-old boy.

Home is more than a place. It’s people , and Saroo has lost all that home is.

Positive Elements

Saroo may not be able to, as he brags, lift everything . But what he lacks in stature and toughness, he more than makes up in emotional durability. Saroo survives his first night in Calcutta … and many, many nights afterward. Along the way, he gets a bit of help to find a better place—first from a kindly man at a café, who notices the urchin mimicking his every move; then from a skilled care worker, who goes on to place Saroo with Australians John and Sue Brierley.

The Brierleys adopt Saroo and give him a new home, one filled with televisions and refrigerators and even a boat. They care deeply for Saroo as well as their other adopted child, Mantosh. But While Mantosh is a troubled boy (who grows into a troubled man), Saroo returns his new family’s love and becomes a source of constant pride.

“From the moment you came into our lives, you were all that we could’ve hoped for,” says Sue.

But when a now-adult Saroo goes off to a multinational hotel management school, he begins to feel the insistent, unquenchable pull of his birth home—to find his mother and brother again. And given the circumstances in which he left them, Saroo’s search is completely understandable.

[ Spoiler Warning ] But Saroo keeps his search secret from his adoptive parents. He later says he hid it from them because he didn’t want them to feel as though he was “ungrateful,” or that he didn’t love them as much as his birth family. But when he does eventually tell them, they’re incredibly supportive. “I really hope she’s there,” Sue tells Saroo. “She needs to see how beautiful you are.”

Spiritual Elements

India is a place of incredibly diverse spiritual beliefs. In Saroo’s hometown, we hear what sounds like an Islamic call to prayer. In Calcutta, we see evidence of Hinduism.

Little Saroo stumbles across a Hindu idol surrounded by offerings. He clasps his hands in front of the idol, as if asking for pre-emptive forgiveness, and takes a bit of food left before the idol. People pray in temples, and Saroo runs across what almost seems like a religiously tinged opium den, where men surrounded by candles seem to be either in a stupor or asleep. He’s introduced to a man named Rama, who clarifies that he’s “not the god.” (Rama is revered as the seventh avatar, or incarnation, of the Hindu god Vishnu.)

While the religious affiliation of the Brierleys is never explicitly detailed, there are occasional hints that Saroo’s adoptive parents are Christians. Sue talks about how “blessed” their family has been. And she talks about a “vision” of seeing a “brown-skinned child” across a field when she was 12. “That was the first time in my life that I felt something good,” she says. “I felt good. And I knew it was guiding me, and I knew it was going to be fine.”

A deceased Indian child is said to be “with God.”

Sexual Content

As an adult, Saroo meets a fellow hotel-management student named Lucy, with whom he has a sexual relationship. They’re shown kissing and in bed together, clearly in a prelude to sex. It’s suggested that they’re both unclothed in their bedtime interludes, though nothing critical is shown. Saroo and Lucy appear to live together for a time, and he takes her home to meet his parents.

The disturbing threat of sexual trafficking lurks throughout Saroo’s childhood. After he gets lost, he’s seemingly befriended by a young woman who tells him she’s going to introduce him to Rama. “He is a very good man,” the woman assures him. “He helps everyone. He will help you, too.” When Rama comes, he seems nice enough, even as he stares at the boy and asks him to lie down with him for a moment. “I want to take you to a really nice place,” he promises, “And from there we’re going to look for your Mum.” But when he’s alone with the woman, Rama says instead, “You’ve done well. He’s exactly what they’re looking for.” Saroo becomes suspicious and runs away.

In an orphanage later, a mentally ill boy, who’s terrified, gets dragged away by guards in the middle of the night. Why? It’s unclear, but the boy seems to know and fear what’s coming, and I wonder whether perhaps his troubles stem from what happens during these midnight abductions.

Violent Content

We sometimes see people, both adults and children, try to harm themselves, hitting their own heads against walls or on tables or with their own fists. Saroo’s adoptive brother, Mantosh, throws a violent fit his first day with the Brierleys. And we get a sense that Mantosh’s childhood was filled with similar tantrums, perhaps brought on by his own past demons.

Street urchins are roughly rounded up by security guards. Saroo almost gets hit by a bus. We hear about a child who was struck by a train.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear one misuse of God’s name.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Mantosh appears to be a drug addict. Sue frets at one point that after finishing a temporary job, Mantosh will be “flush with cash” and “back on the hard stuff.”

People smoke cigarettes. Characters drink wine, champagne and beer in various scenes. We learn that Sue’s father was an alcoholic.

Other Negative Elements

Little Saroo and Guddu steal to help feed their family.

There are also some difficult, conflicting messages offered about the adoption of people like Saroo—messages that may bother some viewers. But those messages are used to illustrate the much more positive message that Lion eventually lands on, which I’ll unpack more below.

What is home? What is family? These are questions that nearly tear Saroo apart. He loves his Australian parents, and he’s deeply grateful for everything they’ve given him. But memories of his past—the mother and brother that he mistakenly, unwillingly left—pull at him incessantly.

Saroo imagines the fear and horror they must’ve felt when he disappeared, the sadness that perhaps they experienced every day he wasn’t with them. He wonders whether that home—the home he left in India—might be his real home after all. He wonders if Guddu, not the troubled Mantosh, is his real brother. And as much as he loves his Australian mother and father, as grateful he feels toward them for all they’ve given him, he wonders whether his relationship with them is simply a substitute for the bond Sue and John longed for with the biological children they didn’t have.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t have your own kids,” Saroo one day blurts.

“What are you saying?” Sue asks, in disbelief and perhaps a hint of horror.

“We weren’t blank pages, were we?” Saroo says. “You weren’t just adopting us, but our pasts as well. I feel like we’re killing you.”

“I could’ve had kids,” Sue reveals. “We chose not to have kids. … We wanted the two of you. That’s what we wanted. We wanted the two of you in our lives.”

Saroo woefully, almost tragically, misunderstands the nature of adoption—the beautiful bond between mother and child, biological or adopted. Saroo thinks Sue and John saw him as a bargain-basement substitute for a “real” son. And for a while, he sees Sue and John as substitutes—gracious, wonderful substitutes, perhaps, but substitutes all the same—for his “real” mother.

But the concept of home and family isn’t something solely based on blood, Lion shows us. It’s about care and memory and intentionality and, most of all, love. And love is something that the Brierelys shower upon Saroo—even though he doesn’t fully comprehend their motive for doing so.

Though the film doesn’t connect the dots between the Brierleys’ affection-filled adoption of Saroo and God, the jump isn’t a big one to make. Whether parents are able to have their own children or not is beside the point: Adoption is never a backup plan. Rather, adoption is God’s plan—a plan to bring people together in a sacred collection … a collection we call home .

Lion is a gripping, moving, inspiring film that’s high in heart and relatively low in content. While there are moments of sexuality, tension and sometimes troubling family relations, the movie’s characters find themselves and each other. And, in so doing, they inspire those who watch their stories unfold—especially Saroo’s lionhearted journey.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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We're just days away from the start of Oscar nomination voting, and less than four weeks away from the announcement of the list of official 89th Academy Award nominees. While there are always surprise nominations and unexpected omissions, a few films seem to be locks for nods. And one of what should be shoo-ins for a Best Picture nomination is director Garth Davis' Lion .

Source: The Weinstein Company

A modestly budgeted production, Lion has made just north of $3 million so far in limited release and a slow roll out. It hits theaters in the UK and Australia in January, where it should attract a good audience. Some Oscar nominations will help enhance it's profile as well. At a time when year-end blockbusters and a few other higher-profile Oscar contenders are dominating media and audience attention, Lion is fighting a slightly uphill battle for coverage and viewer eyeballs. But the lower production costs will make it easier to get into the black, and meanwhile this isn't a picture heavily interested in blockbuster success in the first place.

Now, just what makes Lion one of the year's best films? Read on for my full review!

Lion is one of the year's finest achievements and a top contender for Best Picture and Best Director. It's stunning that this is Davis' first feature film, even though we know he received widespread acclaim for his work on the television series Top of the Lake . There is much to admire in his approach and in his ability to draw out such compelling performances, trusting the truth of the human experiences to resonate and guide us through the story without need for unnecessary exposition or easy visual cues.

You could watch the entire film without sound, and the images alone would be enough for you to follow, understand, and relate to the story. It is one of those rare films that feels like somehow watching great literature, and it's exactly right to refer to it as visual poetry.

People often compliment a film by saying still frames of the picture could be framed and hung on a wall. Lion , which has Oscar-worthy cinematography by Greig Fraser, doesn't lend itself to that sort of single-frame dissection, because you'd have to hang every frame together, in order, on your wall to do it proper justice. The scenes speak to one another effortlessly yet full of layers of complication and humanity, turning the simplicity of its tale into an opportunity to mine emotional depths that resonate for all of us.

Lion is a tale of tragedy and loss, of pain and heartbreak -- but also a tale of hope and mercy, of faith and love, and of how sublime moments of grace in our lives can often come from the aftermath of suffering. That balance is so common in the real world, and the relationship between sufferings and blessings so confusing and intricate, that we often don't even perceive its influence in our daily lives. And few films are brave enough or even conscious enough to portray those truths honestly and vividly while not necessarily drawing overt attention to it. It exists, it is powerful and undeniable, and in Lion it is perceptible even as it lives beneath the surface of all things, quiet and delicate and just out of sight if you try to glimpse it in a single individual moment. Speaking again, then, to the visual language of the film and how necessary every isolated scene or shot is to the rest.

The cast work within the simultaneously intimate and limitless potential of human emotion, allowing straightforward familial interactions to serve as heart-wrenching/heart-warming windows into the souls of these people and human nature. The expansive characterizations, awe-inspiring photography, and instant classical nature of the journey make Lion feel large and cinematic in ways transcending its small personal focus and indie roots.

Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, and Rooney Mara all deliver remarkable performances, with Patel in particular having to reveal the flaws and more regrettable moments of Saroo's (whom Patel portrays in adulthood) interactions with family, friends, and loved ones while maintaining our investment in him as the hero of the tale. When he stumbles and even hurts those close to him, we feel sorrow and we sense the pain driving him to these reactions, and it actually helps us relate to him even more. We double down on our desire to see him overcome the obstacles -- both external and internal -- in his path.

But I was most amazed by Sunny Pawar, the five year old actor who portrays Saroo in childhood. Many films rely on our sheer visceral reaction to seeing a sad child or a child in danger, but Lion benefits from a child performance that truly demonstrates a nuanced range of emotions and reactions. As director Garth Davis expressed to me during my interview with him about his film, there was a lot of risk in letting this film rely so heavily on the strength of a five-year-old's performance, but the filmmakers' faith in Sunny Pawar is amply rewarded.

Callbacks are a vital part of cinematic storytelling, but there is something magical happening when a callback becomes a sincere reflection of graceful serendipity in life. Lion is filled with large and small moments of such providence, and I vehemently disagree with the few assessments of the film that insist it is predictable, safe, manipulative, or too crowd-pleasing. Such notions ignore (or simply don't recognize) how the film approaches the question of identity by overlapping the two cultures -- often literally in terms of visual symbolism and set dressing and framing of shots, as when Australia comes to mirror India and locations from Saroo's early life; or other times through the manifestations of immigrant culture that incorporate the past and present in ways bridging the gaps between cultural experiences.

Saroo's displacement and transition between cultures is particularly moving during his childhood, and the film draws us into his perception of the world to such an extent that we too experience his sense of disconnect and awe when confronted with a simple passenger airliner or the contents of a refrigerator. And Pawar's performance could be an actual award contender -- although I'd expect a Supporting Actor nod rather than lead nod, due to Pawar's age and lack of prior feature film experience, plus Dev Patel's likely Best Actor nomination from the same film.

Greig Fraser's cinematography in Lion is the best of is career so far, even exceeding his exceptional work in Zero Dark Thirty and Foxcatcher. And for the record, Lion isn't Fraser's only work worthy of an Oscar nomination this year -- his cinematography in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story made it the most beautifully filmed entry in that series, and should be considered a contender as well.

Lion reminds us that sometimes we struggle between the place from which we came and the place we've made our own (or are trying to make our own), and feeling caught between them is painful and confusing until we learn how to either leave one of them behind, or learn how to bring them both together. It is sensitive, smart, and powerful, and among the best films of 2016.

Box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo , Rentrak , and TheNumbers .

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Film Review: ‘Lion’

Dev Patel stars as an Indian orphan who uses Google Earth to find his way back home in Garth Davis' directorial debut.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Everybody loves a group hug. Next to the freeze-frame of Angela Lansbury grinning after she’s solved another “Murder, She Wrote” case, it’s pretty much the most satisfying ending anyone can hope for. “Lion” ends in a group hug — two, if you count the real-life embrace that follows the reenacted one just before the credits — and that’s fantastic news for the cash-strapped Weinstein Co., which needs a feel-good crowd-pleaser like nobody’s business. After “Lion” makes its millions, someone else can make a movie about how Google Earth saved the struggling indie distributor. And it can end with a shot of Harvey Weinstein, Saroo Brierley (the “Lion” himself), and director Garth Davis giving one another a big group hug at the Oscars.

But let’s get serious: The story of how 5-year-old Saroo was tragically separated from his family, wound up adopted by an Aussie couple on a completely different continent, and managed to find his birth mother 25 years later using Google Earth might be a happy one, but it’s barely meaty enough to wrap the evening news, let alone sustain a two-hour feature. While unique, Saroo’s story is somewhere between the-guy-who-found-a-lottery-scratcher-worth-fifty-bucks and the-farmer-who-prayed-for-rain-and-got-it. Such feel-good yarns are only as interesting as the person they happened to.

Fortunately for Davis, he’s got a terrific cast, chief among them the pair of charismatic actors who split the lead role: First, newcomer Sunny Pawar wins us over as 5-year-old Saroo, who’s so adorable he could set off an Indian adoption craze (which would suit the humanitarian-minded filmmakers just fine), then “Slumdog Millionaire” star Dev Patel steps in to play the less interesting chapter, as the young man turns to the internet to research where he’s from. But the movie surrounds these two with Nicole Kidman as Saroo’s adoptive mother, Rooney Mara as his Indian food-loving girlfriend, and Priyanka Bose as the mum he left behind (her smile so lovely she could pass for Rosario Dawson’s South Asian sister). Meanwhile, Google Earth plays itself.

Davis, a commercials director whose reel includes Toyota’s “Ninja Kittens” spot, would be a natural to boil Saroo’s story down to a tear-jerking 60 seconds (even if this material sounds like an extended promo for the one company that needs it least). In 2013, Davis collaborated with Jane Campion on the miniseries “Top of the Lake,” which suggests that he could probably also stretch Saroo’s narrative across four more hours. “Lion” marks his much-anticipated feature debut, previously pegged to be an adaptation of Gregory David Roberts’ 900-page “Shantaram,” and it’s practically the opposite of that project in every way: “Shantaram” tells of an Australian criminal at large in India, whereas “Lion” describes an Indian kid who discovers his identity Down Under.

With only the leanest wisp of a plot to guide him, screenwriter Luke Davies expands Saroo’s ordeal into a full-blown hero’s journey — like “Life of Pi,” with a flesh-and-blood “lion” in place of a CG tiger. Tagging along with his brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) one night, Saroo falls asleep on a decommissioned train, which travels some 1,600 miles before letting him disembark in Calcutta. There, everyone speaks Bengali, rather than Saroo’s Hindi dialect, making it doubly intimidating for a boy so far-removed from his family. Davis ensures that we understand even less of Saroo’s surroundings than he does, which makes his first impressions of Calcutta — sleeping on cardboard, only to be awakened by a child-snatching mob, or else invited home by a sari-clad woman, who tries to pawn him off to a lecherous middleman — seem as dark and intimidating as Pinocchio’s visit to Pleasure Island. As if there was ever any doubt, Davis clearly wants his audience to appreciate how tough it is to be homeless in India, presenting us with a funeral procession and images of scavenging through garbage dumps for anything to eat.

When a benevolent stranger brings Saroo to the local police station, the boy asks for his mother, but doesn’t know enough — not her name, nor that of the village from which he came — to find his way home, and so he is delivered to an orphanage, and shortly thereafter, shipped out to Tasmania, where he’s adopted by John and Sue Brierley (played by David Wenham, who’d worked with Davis on “Top of the Lake,” and Kidman, looking just about as unglamorous as she can). Considering everything he’s been through, Saroo is an ideal child — a judgment made clear by the arrival of a second Indian boy, the deeply unhappy Mantosh, into the household.

At this point, nearly an hour into the narrative, the film skips forward 20 years, picking up with Saroo’s relocation to Melbourne, where he plans to study hotel management, but instead finds himself distracted with “dead ends” about his identity. He gets emotional support from girlfriend Lucy (Mara), who at one point looks as though she may break out into a Bollywood dance number, but when it comes to answering seemingly impossible questions, that’s what Google is for. And so, like any good stalker, Saroo pins clues to a giant bulletin board and begins crawling the web for clues to his past. Except, anyone going in to “Lion” already knows how Saroo’s predicament turns out, which makes this agonizingly suspense-free process feel as if it’s taking far longer than it should.

It would almost be more interesting to tell his story from the point of view of the Google Earth engineers — say, one who had turned suicidal after months of coding for the Silicon Valley monolith, only to discover what good he was doing in the world — or else from the perspective of Saroo’s birth mother, who didn’t have Google (or even a computer) but spent years searching for her lost son. Davies’ script is noteworthy in its sensitivity, which Davis further enhances through his elegant, deeply empathetic approach (heightened by gorgeous widescreen cinematography, much of it offering hi-res flyover shots clearly designed to evoke the heroic tool), but as a portrait of persistence, it paradoxically suggests that Saroo managed to go two decades without thinking much about his mother, only to become obsessed with finding her at just the moment the technology made that possible. And so, for the feature debut of an acclaimed commercials director, “Lion” seems awfully brazen advertising its deux ex machina right there in its logline, and though the human story is what makes it so compelling, “advertising” remains the operative word. Next up: How Siri helped you find your car keys.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 10, 2016. Running time: 121 MINS.

Production: A Weinstein Company release, presented in association with Screen Australia, of a See-Saw Films production, in association with Aquarius Films, Sunstar Entertainment. Producers: Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Angie Fielder. Executive producers: Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, David C. Glasser, Andrew Fraser, Shahen Mekertichian, Daniel Levin.
Crew: Director: Garth Davis. Screenplay: Luke Davies, based on the book “A Long Way Home” by Saroo Brierley. Camera (color, widescreen): Greig Fraser. Editor: Alexandre de Franceschi.
With: Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Nicole Kidman, Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Priyanka Bose, Deepti Naval, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sunny Pawar. (English, Bengali, Hindi dialogue)

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Movie Review: Lion (2016)

Howard Schumann
Movie Reviews
No responses
--> December 24, 2016

“And I shall rest my head between two worlds, in the Valley of the Vanquished” — Léolo, Jean-Claude Lauzon

Whether Harvey Weinstein’s purpose in producing Lion was to add to his collection of Oscars or just to tell a sweet, heartfelt story about a lost boy searching for his home, the result is that he has probably accomplished both. Directed by Garth Davis (“Top of the Lake,” TV Series) the film tells the moving story of Saroo Brierley, a boy seeking to find his way back to India after having lived for 25 years in Australia, a country 5,000 miles away. Written by Luke Davies (“Life”) and based on Brierley’s memoir, A Long Way Home , young Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is an impoverished 5-year-old boy from the village of Ganesh Talai in the Khandwr Province of India. Insisting that he go to work at night with his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), he falls asleep at the train station and becomes separated from Guddu.

Frightened, he boards an empty train and ends up in Calcutta, almost 1000 miles away from Guddu, his sister Shekila (Khushi Solanki), and his mother Kamla (Priyanka Bose, “Half Ticket”). Saroo is a strong little boy, yet the fact that he cannot remember his mother’s name or the name of his village and cannot speak Bengali makes him prey for predators. Confused and afraid, he seeks the help of strangers, looks for places to sleep, and has to escape from a threatening situation. When he ends up at the police station, he is sent to a crowded and oppressive orphanage where, with the help of a compassionate social worker, he is fortunate enough to be adopted by Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman, “ Just Go with It ” and David Wenham, “ 300: Rise of an Empire ”), a loving family in Hobart, Tasmania.

Here he must forget about his old family and adjust to a new home and a new country. A year later, the Brierley’s adopt another Indian boy, Mantosh (Keshav Jadhav), but this time they are not as fortunate as Mantosh has both physical and mental problems. Jumping ahead twenty five years, Saroo (now played by Dev Patel, “ The Man Who Knew Infinity ”) has gone to Melbourne to study Hotel Management but his memories are reactivated when the Indian food served at a party thrown by his girlfriend Lucy (Rooney Mara, “ Carol ”) bring back thoughts of his family in India. It is now 2008 and the introduction of new Internet technology such as Google Earth allows him to believe that he might, after all these years, be able to find his way back home.

Grateful to his new mom and dad who raised him, he has not told them of his background for fear of hurting them. Now that he can see a path back to his roots, his conflicting emotions make it doubly hard for him to communicate. When Sue finds out about his past, however, she is happy for him and wants his real mother to know how well he has turned out. In one of the most poignant moments of the film, Sue tells Saroo about a vision she had when she was younger that led her to adopt children rather than have her own. It is a moment of pure transcendence.

The story that eventually takes us back to Ganesh Talai might seem far-fetched and manipulative if it were not for the fact that it actually happened. Though Lion has its flaws and is hindered by a failure to probe deeply into the inner life of its characters, the performances, especially those of Pawar and Patel, are so convincing that the narrative comes across as completely believable. While the film has emotional highs and lows that may induce copious tears, a fact that some of our more cynical critics will not hesitate to point out, Davis trusts his audience enough to keep the maudlin aspects of the film to a minimum and respect the humanity of its characters.

Tagged: adoption , Australia , boy , India , novel adaptation , true story

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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Lion Review

20 Jan 2017

118 minutes

It's an almost universal childhood memory: you go out with a parent, perhaps to a supermarket, carnival or sports event. Then you suddenly realise you’ve mislaid them. They were there a few moments ago, their hand wrapped around yours, but something caught your eye and now the hand you’ve just clutched belongs to a stranger. You look up and find yourself in a towering forest of unknown adults and you’ve never felt more lost, alone, vulnerable and scared.

For his feature debut, Australian director Garth Davis (BAFTA-nominated for his work on 2013 crime-mystery series Top Of The Lake ) has adapted a real-life story which takes that feeling and intensifies it a thousandfold. Even if you haven’t read Saroo Brierley’s autobiography A Long Way Home , it doesn’t hurt to know how the story ends or the details of his life. Lion is more of an emotional odyssey than a plot-driven film, and Davis (working with Luke Davies’ script) unfussily halves the running time between child and adult Saroo. Thankfully lacking a spoon-feeding voice-over or lazy framing device, his tale is allowed to unfurl naturally and gradually, experience by experience, so you feel each moment as directly and keenly as possible.

Which isn’t to say Lion is a difficult watch. Far from it. Davis and cinematographer Greig Fraser ( Zero Dark Thirty , Foxcatcher ) somehow imbue Saroo’s world — even the slums of Calcutta — with a delicate, magical quality that in no way sterilises the reality of the drama. And, portrayed in infancy by astonishing discovery Sunny Pawar, the young Saroo beams with a strength and determination that makes you marvel at his resourcefulness as much as you fear for his well-being. Though his accidental train journey takes him to a strange land 1,600 km away from home, where the Hindi-speaking boy doesn’t even understand the language (Bengali), he is quick to adapt and driven by a deep-rooted confidence that someday, somehow, he will find a way back to his mum. This isn’t some jaunty kids’ adventure, but neither is it a gruelling ordeal.

Lion ’s impact does soften during its second half, just as its pace slackens. As you’d expect, watching an adult, Australian Saroo (Patel) obsessively scan Google Earth for his Indian birth home is inherently less gripping than the street-based trials of his five-year-old incarnation. But the story also shifts down a gear to become a domestic drama about adoption and identity. While it’s ably handled, it rests in this mode for a little too long, holding us back from a circle-completing resolution that, when it finally arrives, feels a little too brisk.

That said, Patel turns in a career-best performance which finally delivers on his early Slumdog Millionaire promise, while Kidman is the most impressive she’s been in years — since The Hours , in fact — in the relatively minor role of Saroo’s Australian mother, Sue. Her performance during one short but excruciating dinner-table scene is a mini acting masterclass.

So, despite its latter-half sag, Lion is a triumphant debut for Davis. In one sense it’s epic, capturing an amazing life divided between two very different worlds; but it maintains an intimacy with Saroo that is so engaging, you can’t help but feel lost with him — and also profoundly glad to have found him.

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"Beautiful, Emotional Family Drama"

What You Need To Know:

(BB, FR, Pa, V, S, N, AA, DD, M) Strong moral, pro-family worldview includes one person says a character has died and is now with God and themes of honoring one’s parents, about a boy who gets lost on a train across India 1600 miles away from his biological mother and siblings, with a scene where hungry lost boy pauses before a Hindu shrine and appears to pray briefly silently before taking some of the food offerings, and a man tells boy his name is Rama, but he’s not the god; no foul language; light violence such as two boys jump onto and off a train, a little boy carrying a watermelon is grazed by a passing motorcycle leaving a cut on his head, troubled young man hits his head repeatedly when his adoptive brother harshly condemns his behavior at dinner; implied fornication between couple in three scenes where they lie together in bed, with some light kissing in one scene, and man caresses sleeping woman’s hand in a second scene; some images of upper male nudity; family drinks wine at dinner, party scene with drinking, and drunkenness in one scene; protagonist’s adoptive brother smokes and there’s a reference to him “getting back on the hard stuff”; and, young boys steal coal to provide for their impoverished family, woman says she was inspired to adopt children from India when she had a vision as a young girl, men kidnap a group of children trying to sleep in a subway, but the young protagonist escapes, and apparent predator says little boy is exactly what “they” want but the boy escapes and runs away.

More Detail:

LION is the emotional true story of an Indian man who got lost as a child on a train across India and is adopted by two loving parents in Tasmania. LION is a simple yet incredible story with very powerful, inspiring scenes, with little objectionable content, but the protagonist lives with his girlfriend, so there are three scenes of them waking up in bed together as the man becomes obsessed with trying to locate his birth mother.

The movie opens with adorable 5-year-old Saroo and his older brother, Guddu, climbing aboard a moving train to steal some coal to provide for their impoverished mother and sister. One day Saroo convinces Guddu to take him with him when Guddu has to go away for a week to work as a night laborer. At a train station, Guddu disappears for five minutes to find work and tells Saroo to wait for him on a bench. Saroo nods off. When he wakes up, Guddu hasn’t returned, so Saroo gets aboard a decommissioned train to look for Guddu. Saroo falls asleep again, and the train takes him 1600 miles east to Calcutta.

Sleeping on the streets and taking food from a Hindu shrine, Saroo runs away from some men kidnapping children. He also runs away from a nefarious couple that seems to befriend Saroo but act suspiciously. Eventually, a young businessman takes pity on Saroo and brings him to the police, who take him to a state-run orphanage full of hundreds of street children and orphans.

Saroo gets adopted by a white couple in Tasmania, John and Sue. A year later, they adopt another boy from India named Mantosh, but he doesn’t fit in as well as Saroo.

Twenty years later, Saroo attends some courses for hotel management. He falls in love with a young woman named Lucy. One night, at a party with some other friends from India, Saroo notices a pastry that brings him back to his travels with his brother. Saroo breaks down, and his friends learn about his story of getting separated from his brother and losing track of his mother. They encourage him to use Google Earth photos to try to find the hometown where he lived. However, Saroo becomes obsessed with his search, which threatens to ruin his life. He’s also miscalculated the mileage of the train which took him away.

So, the question becomes, will Saroo ever find his mother and family?

Based on a true story, LION is a beautifully made, extremely emotional and inspiring story. The ending is very powerful. Newcomer Sunny Pawar almost steals the whole show as young Saroo. However, Dev Patel also delivers an excellent performance as the older Saroo. Rooney Mara as Lucy and Nicole Kidman as Saroo’s adopted mother are also effective in a superb ensemble cast.

LION has a strong moral, pro-family worldview overall. Saroo is moved to find his mother and brother mostly out of concern for them. He not only honors his biological mother, but also the married couple that adopts him. Happily, LION has no foul language, but Saroo lives with his girlfriend. During the search for his family, he’s seen waking up three times next to her. Also, his adopted brother is a troubled young man, and there is brief mention in one scene that he’s back on the “hard stuff.” Finally, there is a positive reference to being with God in the afterlife, but in a generic way. The only overt references to Hinduism are when Saroo takes the food from the Hindu shrine, and when a minor character mentions that his name, Rama, is the same as the name of a Hindu god.

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Review: meme-ready 'lion king' returns with thunderous family saga to minneapolis.

"The Lion King" was social media-ready long before African dance challenges went viral on TikTok.

Julie Taymor's magnum opus, which has returned for a monthlong run at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis where it premiered in 1997, is studded with iconic African scenes, earwormy songs such as "They Live in You" and "Hakuna Matata," and gorgeous dances.

There also arebreathtaking costumes and scenography plus some fetching juvenile humor from meerkat Timon (Nick Cordileone) and warthog Pumbaa (William John Austin).

The musical grabs us from its enveloping opening number, "Circle of Life," as a puppet parade of Serengeti animals files into the theater, and never lets go. Other iconic elements include the spaceship-like movement of the set pieces for the competing courts — Pride Rock and the Elephant Graveyard, the propulsive wildebeest stampede and choreographer Garth Fagan's grass skirt dances.

Then there's Rafiki (Mukelisiwe Goba), the entertaining medicine woman who is a little show unto herself as she delivers with rapid-fire clicks that communicate with clarity and humor even if we don't speak Sesotho.

All these elements, executed nearly flawlessly at the Orpheum, combine for a rare work that's worth seeing again and again.

If the story feels Shakespearean, it's because "Lion King" resets "Hamlet" on the savanna. Scheming Scar (Peter Hargrave), who rules over the bare, death-infused Elephant Graveyard, covets the prosperous Pride Rock throne of his brother, Mufasa (Gerald Ramsey). He teams up with some hyenas to try to get rid of both Mufasa and innocent prince Simba, who just can't wait to be king (Mason Lawson alternates in the role with Julian Villela for Young Simba). Exiled and unaware of his true worth, adult Simba (the terrific Darian Sanders) needs Rafiki and Nala (Khalifa White) to get him to see who he really is.

"Lion King" is a restoration story, but female characters have some agency. There's Rafiki, the storyteller, and Young Nala (Aniya Simone alternates with Jaxyn Damasco) has a history of pinning Simba in play-fights.

The show's magnificent artistry makes it easy to be smitten with it. "Lion King" has fabulous performances, even with a few sound issues (underamplification?) at Thursday's opening night performance.

But like any great work, it continues to remind us of things we should know, like the power of humor.

Scar is one of the show's most captivating characters. Most everything about him is fake — including his demonstrated affection for Simba. But his sense of humor helps to not only cover his illegitimacy and evil but also use wit to win us over, even if everything goes to pot once he gets hold of power.

Still, ultimately, good prevails in the Pridelands.

"Being brave doesn't mean you go looking for trouble," Mufasa tells a young Simba. But when trouble comes to you, you call on your ancestors and muster all the strength you can to defeat it.

'The Lion King'

Where : Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls.

When : 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 1 & 6:30 p.m. Sun. Ends April 28.

Tickets : $39-$199. Hennepintheatretrust.org .

Rohan Preston covers theater for the Star Tribune.

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Mufasa: The Lion King

Simba, having become king of the Pride Lands, is determined for his cub to follow in his paw prints while the origins of his late father Mufasa are explored. Simba, having become king of the Pride Lands, is determined for his cub to follow in his paw prints while the origins of his late father Mufasa are explored. Simba, having become king of the Pride Lands, is determined for his cub to follow in his paw prints while the origins of his late father Mufasa are explored.

Barry Jenkins
Linda Woolverton
Irene Mecchi
Jonathan Roberts
Kelvin Harrison Jr.
Billy Eichner
1 Critic review
1 nomination

Barry Jenkins at an event for Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)

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When will Mufasa: The Lion King be released? Powered by Alexa
December 20, 2024 (United States)
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Do Not Watch Review: A Different Kind of Viral Video

By Neil Bolt

The discovery of mysterious recordings that hold a malevolent sentience destroys lives in multiple time periods in Justin Janowitz’s layered found footage movie Do No Watch .

The narrative ambition for this found footage movie is admirable. It’s essentially three sets of found footage in one, each from a different timeline, but all infected with some dark presence eager to escape its confines by spreading beyond these digital documents.

At the base of it is footage of three people looking for a mysterious underground vault. In the second timeline, is being edited by a small company looking to make a low-budget horror hit. In the timeline that wraps it all together, we follow two people investigating what happened to the team that edited the footage and, ultimately, what happened to that footage.

Thematically, this layer cake of found footage is spot on. The concept of spreading something viral through media that has dark intentions is a perfectly apt one for our past decade of social media, ”content” creation, and punditry. Like all horrific real-life nonsense, it makes for a splendid horror movie. Movies such as Pontypool and games like the Metal Gear Solid series (specifically MGS 2 and MGS V) are great progenitors of the viral nature of words in entertainment that fit a previous era. Do Not Watch is the natural successor to this, albeit in a less barbed, satirical manner than that.

There is a meta aspect to it, though. The malevolent force in question seeps through every layer of the footage we see. Bubbling up into the viewer’s own fourth layer via flashing messages and other visual aberrations clearly not meant to be in the other layers.

It’s a lot for the film to carry, and it’s admirable that Janowitz manages to juggle them as well as he does. A nice side effect of this is that even when it threatens to unravel, it feels like part of the makeup of the film.

Where everything rests is in the payoff. In keeping with the film’s mood of obsessive mania, each resolution is held off despite tease after tease of the next scene being the key one. Does Janowitz perhaps push that a bit too far for the outcomes we get? Yes, the straight payoff of each story is not quite as explosive and dread-inducing as it could be. Where Do Not Watch does deliver is in the underlying idea of an entity spreading through video. The result is technically less interesting and important than the implication. A cursed video that can transfer itself to other footage. Growing obsession and despair with a feeling and a frustrating lack of answers. A feeling that compels its viewers to keep looking for them.

The elusiveness of Do Not Watch does mean that it doesn’t do itself many favors in rewarding patience and delivering instant gratification. The delivery method is inventive and ambitious, but cracks can be found in such an approach.

Still, I’m all for a movie that dares to be divisive without doing it as a gimmick. The constant cutaways from resolution can be understandably irritating in a traditional structure. But it’s clearly part of Do Not Watch’s D.N.A. to be that way.

If I had to pick an aspect that didn’t work for me, then it’s actually in how the visual ”spread” is represented in the finale. It felt like a compromise for those who might be frustrated with the film’s payoff. It’s not a disaster, but it did take a bit of the oppressive edge off for me.

Do Not Watch does some cool things with the found footage model. That means it also sacrifices a bit of audience accessibility in the process. For me, that made it all the more interesting, but I can see this rubbing some people the wrong way.

SCORE: 7/10

As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 7 equates to “Good.” A successful piece of entertainment that is worth checking out, but it may not appeal to everyone.

Do Not Watch screened as part of the Unnamed Footage Festival .

Neil became a horror fan from just a nightmare-inducing glimpse of the Ghoulies VHS cover and a book on how to draw ghosts. It escalated from there and now that's almost all he writes and talks about.

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‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Review: As Messy and Beautiful as Family

Goran Stolevski’s Queer Lion winner overflows with love and young talent.

The Big Picture

Housekeeping for Beginners features moving performances, particularly from its young actors, who elevate the narrative.
Authentic portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community adds depth and relatability to the story.
Some core relationships feel underdeveloped and unclear.

A chosen family is one of the most powerful things you can have. Surrounding yourself with a group of people you’re just as close to (and in some cases, even closer to than) those you share DNA with is extremely special. It’s an experience that many in the LGBTQ+ community are particularly familiar with, with homophobia and disownment still unfortunately rampant in today’s society. Goran Stolevski ’s Housekeeping for Beginners takes this beloved trope and complicates it, as those who make up this unconventional family unit didn’t exactly choose to be part of it. It’s more forced family than found family, and it’s all the better for it, stripping itself of any oversimplified saccharine sentimentality to embrace the chaos and tap into something real.

Housekeeping For Beginners

Despite never aspiring to be a mother, Dita finds herself compelled to raise her girlfriend's two daughters. As their individual wills clash, a heartwarming story unfolds about an unlikely family's struggle to stay together.

What Is ‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ About?

We start with Suada ( Alina Serban ), a tough, fiery single mother at the doctor’s office with her more reserved and buttoned-up girlfriend Dita ( Anamaria Marinca ), though they often say they are cousins due to the discrimination and lack of protection for queer people. It’s immediately obvious that all is not well, as the scene is permeated with tension. Eventually, we discover that Suada has pancreatic cancer, and she’s not hopeful about the prognosis nor interested in treatment.

Suada passes away relatively early in the movie, leaving Dita to care for her two daughters, who share many aspects of Suada’s strong personality. There’s rebellious teenager Vanesa ( Mia Mustafi ), who’s in a hurry to grow up, frequently smoking, drinking, and getting into fights over older boys, and young Mia ( Dzada Selim ), who’s loud and outspoken even at the tender age of five. But Dita doesn’t have to do it alone. She has help in the form of her brash housemate Toni (Vladimir Tintor) and Toni’s much younger lover, the sensitive, 19-year-old Ali (Samson Selim). Together, they all must learn to live with grief — and each other.

‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Throws Us Into the Narrative Deep End

Housekeeping for Beginners is undoubtedly a character-focused film, and it takes a while to understand who everyone is and how they relate to one another. We are thrown into the middle of their tangled web right away, and while it sets the frenzied tone perfectly, it can be confusing and difficult to follow at times. You never want an exposition dump, of course, but Stolevski chooses to withhold certain seemingly basic details until much later in the movie — something that ultimately doesn’t feel necessary or additive to the viewing experience.

Many such details are never revealed to us at all. I found myself curious about how Suada and Dita met and how long they’d been together. The fact we get so little background about this core relationship makes it difficult to put some key moments between them into context — for example, when Suada tells her children that, from now on, she is nothing to them and that Dita is their mother or when she threatens self-harm unless Dita promises to take on that role. Tonally, those scenes feel slightly off as-is, though they could very well make sense if we were privy to more of their history. The same goes for Dita and Toni’s dynamic. They have so little interaction that it’s not totally clear why Toni lives with Dita for free — especially when, during an argument, she seems bitter that she’s taking care of him.

Instead, we spend much of our time on other dynamics — for better and for worse. In addition to our main characters, there are also several supporting characters in the form of other people who live in the house as members of the extended chosen family. While they do provide some laughs, particularly during Dita and Toni’s awkward wedding scene, they eat up precious screentime, especially during the crucial dinner when Suada is still alive. The other housemates aren't bad characters in and of themselves, but in an already loud, crowded movie, they add noise and take up space the film can’t afford to give them, which in turn makes the central relationships too thinly drawn.

‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Is Elevated By Its Young Talent

When Housekeeping for Beginners does flesh its dynamics out, it really soars. Dita’s relationship with Vanesa is particularly meaty. Mustafi is an extremely talented actress with an intense, captivating charisma you can’t look away from. She’s simultaneously dangerous and vulnerable — and perhaps even more dangerous when she’s vulnerable. Vanesa is able to push all the right buttons to bring out the worst in the usually logical, even-tempered Dita, which in turn brings out the best in the film. They emerge as the central connection in the film, and the place we leave them in at the end is pitch-perfect — hopeful but realistic.

Selim is an absolute natural, giving one of the strongest performances by a child actor I’ve ever seen. She’s extremely confident, infusing every scene she’s in with energy and youthful innocence. She frequently serves as comedic relief, but she nails the dramatic moments, too. The scenes where she cries out for her mother are positively heart-wrenching and have a rawness that transcends the emotionally manipulative feeling many other films that catalog the mourning of children seem to exploit.

“It’s a different kind of love but just as strong,” Ali tells her about Dita and Toni’s relationship, “the strongest.” One can’t help but think he’s also talking about the love Dita and Toni have for her — to sacrifice parts of who they truly are to provide the best life possible for Mia. It’s tender, wise words like this that help make Ali the heart of the film. Not only is he gentle with Mia, but he and Vanesa are close in age and have a similar interest in travel. Ali and Dita take on similar roles in their romantic relationships, as Toni and Suada are stronger — sometimes even domineering — personalities. Therefore, the two of them look out for each other as well. Ali is not only a compelling character but a crucial one, as he acts like a bridge to everyone, able to connect in different ways. Selim flawlessly embodies the role.

‘Housekeeping for Beginners’ Handles Social Issues With Authenticity

Housekeeping for Beginners touches on several serious topics: namely, racism and homophobia through the lens of North Macedonian culture. As white people, Dita and Toni have certain privileges that Suada and her children aren’t afforded, which frustrates her. She snaps at a doctor for his racism toward a Romani patient and recalls being graded unfairly in school. The film doesn’t ignore the fact she and Dita are an interracial couple and that Toni is a white man, even having Suada use this to her advantage to give her girls a better life when she’s gone. It shows how clever and resourceful Suada is, but it also highlights her unjust treatment.

The same can be said of the way the film handles LGBTQ+ issues. When Dita gets married to Toni for the sake of the children, she’s met with happiness and praise from friends and colleagues — something that feels like a punch to the gut, considering she would not be met with the same response if she was open about her relationship with Suada. Ali knows that he will eventually need to get married to a woman someday but plans on still having relations with men behind her back. It’s pretty bleak. However, the way that the queer characters interact with each other is anything but. They often tease each other, reclaiming and throwing out slurs, roasts, and dark jokes. The film manages to capture the specific way queer communities communicate with one another and the unique chemistry between them in a way few others have. The companionship and solidarity between a lesbian and gay man is especially rare and beautiful to see as well.

Housekeeping for Beginners centers on messy characters and relationships. At times, it can feel like a bit of a messy film, too, with some of its relationships not as clear or developed as they could be. But there’s a lot of love in this film, and there’s a lot to love about it, too.

While its execution is occasionally muddled, Housekeeping for Beginners is effective thanks to its authentic portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community and strong performances.

The film features moving performances, particularly from its young actors.
The movie authentically captures the queer community.
While touching, the film never feels overly simple or sentimental.
Some of the core relationships feel confusing and underdeveloped.
A couple of the supporting characters detract from the main storyline.

Housekeeping for Beginners comes to theaters on April 5. Click below for showtimes.

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The Inventory

Sonic 3 Movie Fans Declare War On Mufasa , And I Hope They Win

Both ‘live-action’ adaptations are set to premiere on december 20.

Shadow the Hedgehog on set of the third Sonic movie.

Sometimes, movies premiere on the same day and live harmonious lives at the box office. Last summer, Barbenheimer , the coexistence of Barbie and Oppenheimer , prompted movie theater marathons, memes, and cosplay dedicated to the diametrically opposed films. But that’s not always what happens, sometimes fans pit movies against each other. Now, normally, I am not rooting for things to fail, but in the battle between the Shadow the Hedgehog-led Sonic the Hedgehog 3 movie and the Mufasa-led Lion King prequel nobody asked for, I’m hoping that hedgehog throws the lion into a stampede of wildebeests ahead of schedule.

Both Sonic 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King are set to premiere on December 20, 2024. Admittedly, I kind of forgot about the not-live-action-but-photorealistic-animated Lion King movie from 2019 because it was a creatively bankrupt endeavor (other than the excellent Beyoncé companion album). Like many others, I was reminded yesterday that Disney was trying to capitalize on nostalgia again with a prequel based on protagonist Simba’s father, Mufasa, when it released the film’s first image, showing a lion standing at the top of a cliffside.

Do we need a Lion King prequel? Do we need one that uses the remake’s photorealistic art style? But most importantly, do we really need another movie taking up theaters that could instead be hosting the debut of live-action Shadow the Hedgehog?

Sonic fans, ever the mischievous little guys, have made it clear that they will not go see what Mufasa did before he became a welcome mat for a few dozen wildebeests. They will, however, be seeing a different tragedy, probably, when child star Alyla Browne plays Maria Robotnik and probably gets murdered on-screen . Reader, they’re so real for that.

Whether Sonic the Hedgehog 3 outperforms Mufasa on opening weekend remains to be seen. Even if Paramount’s live-action Sonic universe is also capitalizing on a brand that many people feel nostalgia for, the movies have been entertaining riffs on the franchise rather than a near-line-for-line remake of something readily available on Disney+. Mufasa is new, but it’s built on the foundation of Disney’s artistic black hole of “live-action” remakes.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 director Jeff Fowler announced the movie had completed filming on March 28 , though there’s still no word on who is playing Shadow . The third movie is the culmination of Sega’s recent efforts to put Shadow back in the spotlight after he became more of a background character in recent years. The upcoming Sonic X Shadow Generations remaster is adding a new storyline featuring Sonic’s rival, and they’ve started putting the broody Ultimate Life Form on brand deals like the Sonic IHOP special menu . I tried Shadow’s Chaos Chocolate Pancakes yesterday, and let me tell you, four pancakes are too goddamn many.

Review: Kinetic 'Monkey Man' announces a bold new action director, one you already know

D ev Patel’s got something to say, but he's going to let his fists do the talking. With his directorial debut, the wild revenge movie “Monkey Man,” the Oscar-nominated actor makes a bold statement with this one-two punch of a film that asserts himself as both an action star and a promising new genre voice.

Having achieved his fame in more serious dramas like “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Lion,” Patel’s passion project is a big swing, and a big swerve for the actor. Luckily, it connects, landing with a satisfyingly bone-crunching intensity. And if this is intended as Patel’s calling card, he leaves the whole damn deck on the table.

“Monkey Man” is a love letter to East Asian martial arts movies and to Indian folklore and culture. The monkey in question is both Hanuman, the Hindu god of wisdom, courage and devotion, and the face of the dingy rubber mask that the "Kid" (Patel) dons for his lopsided underground boxing matches, which are announced by a delightfully slimy Sharlto Copley .

This is a revenge picture, so the Kid, who sometimes goes by the alias Bobby, must get his payback, driven by fiery blood-soaked memories and the sound of his mother whispering Hanuman’s legend in his ear. He wheedles his way into the kitchen of Kings, an upscale restaurant, and then alongside the in-house drug dealer, Alphonso (Bollywood star Pitobash), upstairs in the VIP club where corrupt cops and powerful politicians party with a harem of international escorts.

The Kid wants to get close to Chief Rana (Sikander Kher), a cruel police officer whose bloodied knuckles haunt his nightmares. But Rana is only part of the food chain of money and power in this unnamed city — there are far bigger predators to fight if he does manage to send murderous greetings from his dead mother.

This Kid’s got potential but he’s not quite finished yet and Patel turns “Monkey Man” into his coming-of-age story, mapping the fight scenes in tandem with his growth as a warrior. That’s part of what makes Patel’s direction of the film so fascinating — the action sequences at the end of the movie are so much slicker than the hectic, chaotic brawls in the first half, because the Kid is so much more skilled and confident. The style of the film evolves with our hero.

Working with cinematographer Sharone Meir (who most recently collaborated with the legendary John Woo on “Silent Night” ), Patel favors lengthy takes in which the camera follows bodies in motion closely, looking up to catch a hit and then down to see the result. These shots get smoother as the film progresses and the climactic showdown in the VIP bar is a gorgeously fluid set piece, soundtracked to the churning guitars of Indian folk-metal band Bloodywood. Rhythm and musicality is a huge part of Patel’s action style, and he utilizes it for effects that are both comedic and sublime, such as in a training montage featuring the renowned tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain .

Patel also intersperses blink-and-you’ll-miss-them POV shots, further aligning us with the Kid’s experience and adding to the dizzying, hallucinatory effect of some of these fights. Every frame is wild and colorful, with lots of needle drops and an energy that is sometimes unwieldy. He dispenses with any restraint in “Monkey Man,” a film saturated with texture, music, spirituality and violence.

The screenplay, by Patel, Paul Angunawela and John Collee, is a bit formulaic and even hackneyed at times. The story is political but also politically muddled, imparting a vague warning about the hazards of worshiping false idols. Patel's plot relies on sexual aggression toward women as a moral cheat sheet while also using the same exploitation as a cheeky visual backdrop — a trope that can often be a trap. "Monkey Man" is far more successful at exploring sexuality in the genre via a group of transgender women who teach the Kid how to harness his pain into power, led by an incredibly compelling Vipin Sharma as the wise Alpha.

But formula also serves Patel well, allowing him to experiment and present himself in a new way to audiences. With “Monkey Man,” Patel manages to pull it off and then some, signaling the arrival of an authentic filmmaker, effectively following a similar trajectory of one of the film’s producers, Jordan Peele , who made a similar statement with “Get Out.” Patel did it his way, forged his own path and we’ll never look at him in the same light again — and that’s a good thing.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .

COMMENTS

Lion movie review & film summary (2016)
After all, the primal fear of suddenly becoming lost and separated from those you care about most is a universal one. The first 40 minutes or so of "Lion" preys upon such anxiety, heightened by its visually poetic boy's-eye-view camera work by Greig Fraser, in a way that anyone can relate. What is truly amazing is that the lion's share ...
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Lion is an inspirational true story even a film snob could love
Lion is based on a true, incredible story. As the film opens, tiny Saroo (the outstanding Sunny Pawar) lives with his beloved mother, younger sister, and older brother Guddu ( Abhishek Bharate ...
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"Lion" (2016 release from Australia; 118 min.) is "based on a true story", we are reminded at the beginning of the film, and brings the incredible story of Saroo. As the movie opens, we are in "Khandwa, India, 1986", and we see 5 yr. old Saroo and his older brother doing whatever they need to do to get by, hustling and bustling.
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Lion is a well-made melodrama with a rather disturbing message
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Lion is a gripping, moving, inspiring film that's high in heart and relatively low in content. While there are moments of sexuality, tension and sometimes troubling family relations, the movie's characters find themselves and each other. And, in so doing, they inspire those who watch their stories unfold—especially Saroo's lionhearted ...
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Lion is a 2016 Australian biographical drama film directed by Garth Davis (in his feature directorial debut) from a screenplay by Luke Davies based on the 2013 non-fiction book A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley.The film stars Dev Patel, Sunny Pawar, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, and Nicole Kidman, as well as Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Priyanka Bose, Deepti Naval, Tannishtha Chatterjee, and ...
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Though Lion has its flaws and is hindered by a failure to probe deeply into the inner life of its characters, the performances, especially those of Pawar and Patel, are so convincing that the narrative comes across as completely believable. While the film has emotional highs and lows that may induce copious tears, a fact that some of our more ...
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Lion Review. The true story of Saroo Brierley (Pawar), who was separated from his family as a child and adopted by a Tasmanian couple (Kidman, Wenham). As an adult, Saroo (Patel) uses Google Earth ...
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LION is the emotional true story of an Indian man, who got lost as a child and adopted by Australian parents. As a little boy, Saroo is separated from his brother when he accidentally gets stuck on a decommissioned train that takes him 1,600 miles away to Calcutta. After living for weeks on the streets, Saroo is placed in a state orphanage and ...
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Goran Stolevski's Queer Lion winner overflows with love and young talent. Housekeeping for Beginners features moving performances, particularly from its young actors, who elevate the narrative ...
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