Tockinit not horrible nor great

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Kirpianuscus like many books, this film has the great gift to impose the flavor of its story to the viewer. and the basic tool for this is a splendid form of realism who transforms it in a form of documentary. a film about friends, family and the search to reconquest the essence of a period. about important small things. about joy and troubles and words, confessions, love and projects about future. a film about life meanings and about a place who becomes puzzle of memories. sure, nothing new. but the story of Dito Montielis fascinating for the universal references. parts from the youth of each viewer is present in this story from Astoria. events, figures, talks, dreams, choices are replaced in a different field but with same resonance. and this does A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints not great film but a personal story as descending in the past of yourself.

thesar-2 I happened to catch A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints on IFC on-demand one day and since it stars Robert Downey Jr, one of my favorites and Shia LaBeouf who can act, when he's far-far away from big-budgeted movies, I gave it a chance. Though, I can't say I was really disappointed, I can say I wasn't that impressed.I guess it's just not my type of movie. It's a flashback movie of a novelist who speaks not-so-fondly over his family living in Queens, NY in the mid-1980s who screams every line, incessantly talks over each other and the punk kids he either grew up with or wooed. Realistic, I suppose, but I'm certainly glad I never had to ever endure one minute of this guy's life.Older Dito (Downey Jr.) starts off in the present reciting his life story and then we get the typical 80% past and 20% present movie. In the past, Young Dito (LaBeouf) hangs out with the wrong crowd with aspirations of getting out and promising a girl he'll take her with him. He's also dealing with his loud father who, per his own words, is very abusive, though through sight, I honestly don't think he was that back. I've seen worse.The kids, or mini-gang, just wander around Queens always getting into a beef with a real gang. Yelling, swearing, baseball bats, murder and accidental suicide ensures. And though I've already admitted I haven't walked in these kid's shoes – or lived in NYC, or any large inner-city, for that matter, I doubted their reactions. Such as after the accidental suicide, and at the funeral, the brother of the deceased goes on to talk about the previous plot point as if nothing ever happened. Those parts I found unrealistic.Other than that, I'm sure these situations and families truly lived like this, and just like a lot of movies, a la Boyz n the Hood, I'm sure there's always at least one member wants to break out of the mold and venture to a cleaner life. But, we've been there, done that, with a lot more interesting characters. And with characters we actually care about. There wasn't a single likable or charismatic person in this movie, including Dito, that I rooted for.So if loud and overlapping conversations, yelling, swearing, ruthless and "abusing" low-life families and kids stuck in the 1980s is your bag, you might like this "real portrayal." Other than that, you're best just to go back to (or in this movie's case, forward to) the much better 1991's Boyz n the Hood.

jor_supersid its just a dead end actor's piece with horrible direction, sorta a stab at indie film only with lucid (and run if the mill) typical Hollywood story frame.the movie tricks you into thinking its real to life, but the truth is that life at least has explanations for events. further more how can you care about characters, whom appear only as the are with no explanations for how and who they are (only showing a father beat a kid in the street is lazy) its called basic story telling for a reason.everyone just wanted to be involved in a "gritty real life drama" including the director himself. actors were drawn to it to try and get chops for dramatic exposure, like when Shia punched a wall in an audition.... gritty hardcore, just like black flag.yes it showed disillusionment in youth but doesn't every hip hop/urban dance/rap movie show that, along with poor race relations. I mean at least ROLL BOUNCE had a real arc for the lead, without alienating the other characters, while building to an actual conclusion.bottom line is this: reality is that all the characters were dragging the lead down, even the girlfriend or the Scott, they "get by" unhappily in how they all live. they only want support because they have no means to advance, anything but being ignorant leads them to confusion, just like any one trying to place a real story in this never ending plot hole of schlock. so just like anyone who'd watch this again, you like the lead would need to have a lot of balls (or no brains) to want to return to a life in Purgatory....and please make sure the editor never works again.

paul2001sw-1 Dito Montiel's semi-autobiographical film about growing up in the rough New York neighbourhood of Astoria is interestingly constructed, catching the flavour of remembered youth with a mixture of sentiment and revulsion. For those of us who have been unfortunate enough to see 'Transformers', the film offers the surprise discovery that Shia La Beouf can act; Chazz Palminteri, a mainstay of films of this sort, here resembles Richard Nixon, while there's also an authentic Glaswegian in the cast. The movie isn't bad, but watching it mostly made me glad of my own safe, middle-class upbringing, far away from the city's mean streets.