"A Guide to Recognizing your Saints" film & book discussion

Hey all - I know that the film A Guide to Recognizing your Saints came out back in Fall 2006 (over four years ago), but I just recently saw this on DVD for the first time ever and found it stunning; it truly moved me & also blew me away. Extremely well-done in every respect, it was a superb & painfully honest coming-of-age story about growing up, redemption, forgiveness, and coming to terms with your past. As with other great NY based dramas, the city was a character in the film as much as the actual characters Dito, Antonio, etc. I would have to say that it's definitely one of the best NY-based dramas I've ever seen, and is definitely on par with Scorsese's Mean Streets & Taxi Driver (and this is coming from a huge Scorsese fan).

This film also gave me a new-found respect for the acting ability of Shia L. Prior to seeing AGTRYS, I always felt that SL was an average actor, i.e. I never thought he really added much to any film he was in. However, after seeing this film, it's obvious that he can really act - very impressive.

I wish I had seen the film when it first came out, but for some reason I never even heard of it until recently. From looking this up online, it looks like it was very critically acclaimed, but was also somewhat underrated & may have only seen a limited theatrical release. It's too bad it didn't get any Academy Award attention, becuase I really think this should have won "Best Picture" for 2006, it was that good.

I haven't actually read the book/memoir yet (that the film is based on), but plan to very soon, based on how good the film was. Anyway, since the book & the film seem to go hand in hand (and since this board discusses both books and movies) I wanted to include discussion on the book as well (I will post more once I've read the book).

(Now I'm also interested in seeing the other NY-based film by D. Montiel, Fighting, which has also been critically acclaimed).

 

Have not even heard of it, which is pretty disturbing.