A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints.

Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly: "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is like a piece of naif art - a movie by someone who scarcely seems to have seen a movie before, let alone made one. And perhaps for that very reason, it's forceful and alive and spilling over with crazy poetry."

"What sets the film apart, and makes it one of the more remarkable American directing debuts in recent years, is [Dito] Montiel's passionate, almost reckless engagement with the possibilities of the medium," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Adapting his impressionistic, often rambling memoir for the screen, he demonstrates an autodidact's exuberant self-confidence and the eye of a born filmmaker. Working with a large, mostly young cast, he has made a picture so full of life and feeling that the screen can hardly contain it."

Updated through 10/5.

Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times: "There's a quality of daring in Montiel's approach, trusting that the intensity of his feeling for his characters can become contagious, and in the distinctive way he backs into his story and its scenes, moving from jagged, intimate moments to large-scale images that imbue the film with a sense of the beauty and magic of memories."

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir dissents: "I suspect this guy can make a good movie if he learns the right lessons; he's made about half of one here. But the praise heaped upon A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints is way too much, way too soon."

Earlier: Scott Macaulay's interview with Montiel in the summer issue of Filmmaker.

Update, 9/30: Michael Guillén talks with Montiel and - this is a welcome twist - his editor, Jake Pushinsky.

Update, 10/2: Online listening tip. Montiel, producer Trudie Styler and Chazz Palminteri are guests on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Update, 10/5: Jennifer Merin interviews Montiel for the New York Press.

Posted by dwhudson at September 29, 2006 9:16 AM