So much average

Simply Perfect

Absolutely Brilliant!

For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

Total Garbage!!! No reflection to Washington heights what so ever. If I had four arms, I'll give it four dumbs way down. Acting performance worst than storyline. Truly over rated. Hour and a half of visual torture.Rather watch Ben Aflec movies for the rest of my life. Feel bad for the films that lost to this crap. What were the judges at the film festival watching? Total Garbage!!! No reflection to Washington heights what so ever. If I had four arms, I'll give it four dumbs way down. Acting performance worst than storyline. Truly over rated. Hour and a half of visual torture.Rather watch Ben Aflec movies for the rest of my life. Feel bad for the films that lost to this crap. What were the judges at the film festival watching?

I loved this film from the moment La Vida es un Carnival started till the end. It avoids so many of the cliches that other immigrant stories fall prey to, and instead gives us a real snapshot of the lives of a handful of characters in this New York neighborhood. I can't stand films where everything is so neatly wrapped up and by the end all of the characters' conflicts are resolved. Instead, this film let's us see a handful of very alive characters fight to pursue their dreams against the barriers of their families, history, loves, and, most importantly, themselves. By the conclusion, we don't know all the answers of where they'll be, but we know who they are, and we care about them immensely. Nat Moss and Alfredo de Villa deserve a huge round of applause for having written such a touching and compelling story.The movie is also beautifully shot, with de Villa's hand adding to the text as all great directors do. In one fantastic scene, we see one of the characters joyfully announce his engagement, ask for help from his friend, and have his friend reveal that he cannot help due to a debt between their fathers. The character then responds in anger to the fact that his father would help his friend, but not his own son. As tightly as the scene is written, it is shot equally well, with the camera following the characters through the bodega, keeping up their increasing intensity. The shooting adds to the scene immensely. There is also a beautiful sequence that is set up over many very brief earlier moments where we see a real transformation in the main character's artistic direction (he is a cartoon artist). I was struck while watching it how hard it is to show in a film the growth of an artist, or even the creative process. Yet here de Villa does so brilliantly, making it completely believeable.Finally, the acting in this film is fantastic. As the star Carlos of the film, Manny Perez wonderfully alternates, like his neighborhood, between the high energy of his ambition, the frustration (and ultimate satisfaction) of his family ties, and his ambivalence about where he belongs. Tomas Milian turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as the father/bodega owner. And numerous smaller roles reveal potential stars, including Danny Hoch, who is brilliant from start to finish, and Bobby Carnavale, who steals the screen nearly every moment he's on it.

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS (2003) **1/2 Tomas Milian, Manny Perez, Danny Hoch, Jude Ciccolella, Andrea Navedo, Bobby Cannavale, David Zayas, Callie Thorne, Judy Reyes. Well-acted morality tale about a talented illustrator (Perez) with dreams of having his own comic book finds himself trapped in the titular neighborhood where he is forced to aid his recently stricken father (Milian) to run the family bodega. Conflicts and conscience run high with the feel of early Lumet or Lee thanks to newcomer Alfredo De Villa's use of digital video to give the film a feeling of intimacy and closeness that parallels the claustrophobia felt by the main characters. Familiar yet watchable.

"Washington Heights" brings fresh elements to the old, but continually autobiographical for young filmmakers, story of the immigrant's son who is striving to get out of the old neighborhood.The lead could have been played by John Garfield, but as the old neighborhood is now a Dominican Republic stronghold, he's played by Manny Perez, who was also very good in A & E's "100 Center Street." Another alum from the same show, Bobby Cannavale, only gets to do a similar role as he did in "Kingpin." but we also get to see other TV series refugees as well in different roles.What's new here is not only does he want to be an artist, but a comic book artist escaping into an exaggerated fantasy world. The usual conflict with the father is O'Neillian as it is not just rebellion, but complicated with responsibilities.The financial struggles of each character ties them all together in a tense web of dependencies, making the climax more shattering to all. Freshest is the lack of sexism and genuine affection for women; all the women are employed, independent, and not dragging the men down with unwanted pregnancies; nice to know characters in such movies have finally discovered birth control (though I missed a couple of plot resolution points involving the women).The very long list of thank you's in the credits reinforces that the film was a labor of love with minimal budget, but the resulting cheap, available light cinematography is less Dogma-noble and more just plain hard to see.