A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)

Such a frustrating disappointment

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

As someone who lives in the area of the movie was filmed I can properly say if this movie is representing Astoria as it should be. I think the way this movie was represented from the book I think was done beautifully. The way It switches to past to present when something important happens to one of the characters we see them how that leads them to the future in the neighborhood.One thing I didn't like about the film was one death that they did. The death of Mike O'Shea. They killed him right after the reaper had died and his friend with the gun kills him. Why was he looking for them specifically, why would he be looking for them and not Antonio. The relationship with Dito and his dad is a little dysfunctional. His dad felt bad for Antonio because of his situation with his dad. He wanted to help someone without a dad by being their father figure.

Given all the filmed memory pieces about screaming, violent Italian- American families in New York boroughs, I'm not usually thrilled by even good examples. However director Dito Montiel adapts his autobiographical book, most of it set in the mean streets of Astoria in the early 80s. Robert Downey Jr. plays Montiel, who goes home to visit his estranged father (Chazz Palminteri), occasioning flashbacks to his younger self (Shia LaBeouf), his pals, and a violent feud involving graffiti and a baseball bat. With Rosario Dawson, Dianne Wiest, Channing Tatum, and Eric Roberts. Lovable the scenes with young people in the middle of a hot New York summer, talking to one another like panthers circling. Overall it's worth it.

I'm not good at rating anything that you can rate, so I'm going to say I liked it. I don't care about the actors that were used or the story but I'll note that my favorite character was Guiseppe, but mainly because there was a lot about him that the movie subtly showed in his actions and attitude. He seemed like one of the most interesting characters. I think the worst character in the film was Antonio since he didn't do much good at all, he only accelerated the trouble that was to come with his rash actions. The movie did portray the character's and their relationships with each other well though, Dito's differences from his father were clearly shown and emphasized by Antonio basically being the son Dito's father would've wanted.

This is one of the more believable and well-executed movie autobiographies I've ever watched, but it fall victim to the same pointless pursuit of naturalness that plagues so many slice-of-life films.Robert Downey Jr. is Dito Montiel, a somewhat well known writer living in California whose moderate fame is built on a book he wrote about his life growing up in Queens. Dito is summoned home by calls from his family and old friends to get his ill father Monty (Chaz Palmintieri) to go to the hospital. As he resists returning home, we flashback to young Dito (Shia LeBeouf), a kid with dreams too big for his working class family, working class neighborhood and working class friends. The plot is ostensibly about a conflict between Dito and a Puerto Rican thug called 'Reaper' and how that leads to Dito finally leaving for his destiny on the West Coast. What the story actually gives us is a series of vignettes about Dito and the people who make up his "not-very-social" social circle.We meet Antonio (Channing Tatum), the bigger, tougher and dimmer boy who's more like a real son to Monty than Dito. Antonio is filled with the self-loathing of the poor and desperate, but clings to it because he thinks it's all that defines him. There's Antonio's brother Guiseppe (Adam Scarimbolo), a boy who's constantly in a haze of booze and drugs. He's the kid who never says anything around adults but talks big around his friends. Nerf (Peter Anthony Tambakis) is another one of Dito's friends, who mainly just tags along with him and Antonio. When we see him 20 years later he's living with his mom and is staring down a life that's only going to get smaller and sadder as time goes by. Laurie (Melonie Diaz) is Dito's almost-but-not-quite girlfriend, the one he would have ended up marrying and probably resenting if he hadn't gotten out of Queens. Michael O'Shea (Martin Compston) is the Scottish foreign exchange student who gives Dito his first real taste of life outside his neighborhood, helping crystallize Dito's sense that he's not like his friends and doesn't want to be. We also come to see Dito's father Monty as a man who is content to think himself a big deal in a small world, but grows angry with anything that makes him realize how small he and his world really are.This is not one of those autobiographical films where you can easily tell how exaggerated and embellished it is. This is one of those films that wants to show you have everything "really" was, life in all its raw and mundane glory. Which means the dialog is relentlessly ordinary, the characters are simple and obvious and the conflict between and within characters isn't greatly examined or explored. It bubbles under the surface and momentarily erupts in shouting matches between people who can't or won't deal with what they're honestly feeling and thinking.You're not supposed to enjoy this movie. You're supposed to be impressed by it. You're supposed to be impressed at how marvelously they were able to capture real life and throw it up on the big screen. But I'm not impressed with these sorts of movies. I don't like them and I don't understand the people who do. I already live real life every hour of every day. I experience first hand all its highs and lows, its darkness and light, its years of denial and awful moments of realization. I don't need to have all that reflected back at me. I don't know why anyone would.Perhaps there are people out there who don't live enough real life. Maybe they've got too much money, too much brain power or too little time to notice or appreciate their own existence. Maybe movies like A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints fills in the gaps those folks feel in their own personal realities. But instead of watching films like this, maybe they should throw away their blackberry, turn off their iPod and go down to help out at their local homeless shelter. That's wouldn't be just watching real life. It would be living it.