Thursday, April 10, 2008

Movie: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints


Last night, my good friend Misty and sat down to watch this memoir of Dito Montiel (who also adapted his memoir to screenplay and directed). It stars Robert Downey, Jr., Shia LaBeouf, Channing Tatum (who is really growing on me - I plan to watch Step Up at some point soon), Chazz Palminteri, and Dianne Wiest.

This movie covers a period of Dito's life when he was probably about 17. He lives in a rough neighborhood in Queens, with friends that are abused, doing drugs, dying in all sorts of violent and upsetting ways. He so badly wants to get out of town that he meets a new friend that inspires him to walk dogs for money, save it up, and head to California to start a band. It doesn't all go as planned.

We were distracted by pizza, internet, chatting and things, so we weren't paying attention for about the first 10 minutes. We found we didn't know what the heck was going on for like 3/4 of the movie! It was violent with rather crude language for almost the entire movie. We decided if they cut out all the F's, it would cut the movie time in half.

I thought the acting was really good, the story really sad and disturbing, but only partially redeeming (redemption stories are my favorites). The way the movie was shot and edited was very interesting. While I didn't really GET the way it was edited, I liked it. It made for some very dramatic scenes.

Overall, I thought it was alright. It didn't change my life or anything, but I wasn't feeling like I wasted my time.

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