A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS DVD REVIEW

Has anyone else seen A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints? I’m not sure why it didn’t get more attention around Awards season. Stellar cast, great performances and solid direction should have added up to more accolades. It could be that people found this coming of age story just too slow. I found it powerful and moving. Writer Dito Montiel has crafted his own coming of age story that is part a haunting from a past filled with regret and revelation of just how beautiful life is even at it’s most tragic. “In the end I left everything and everyone but no one, no one has ever left me.” It’s as true a statement about family, community and striking out on your own as has ever been offered for this writer. And the film also doubles as a look back at New Yorks Queens in the eighties, as tough a neighborhood as Scorcese ever lived in. A survivors tale writ large this is mythic yet down to earth stuff and deserves a look by anyone whose ever wondered how we can drift so close and so far from one another trying find our way through the human sea. Audio commentary, making of doc, deleted scenes, alternative opening and ending and a cast that includes Chaz Palminteri, Robert Downey Jr., Rosario Dawson and Shia LeBeouf make this a must have.