Synopsis:

A Lower East Side teen-ager struggles to find some sanity while surrounded by an eccentric grandmother, a crazy new girlfriend, and a longing younger brother.

Brian's Rating: B : I am going to go ahead and put myself on a limb and say that this was a very good romance story put to film.  I don't say that very often, but I have got to hand it to the director on this low budget film who produced a quality movie that does an excellent job of capturing the emotions of the characters set in the slums of NYC.

I am not even sure why I liked it, which is the mark of a good director.  It has a simple story, it had acting that was only good enough to not screw things up, and the characters seem to be simple and shallow.  EXCEPT (and this is why I think the directing was excellent), the seemingly simple characters blossom before you on the screen and it makes the viewer really feel like he understands the setting.  The closest I have had to living in slums is a ratty, rundown college apartment, and so I cannot make any claims to understanding.  But I feel like I do.  The director draws you in and makes you feel part of their lives.

Evidence of this is an artistic shot where the camera is viewing a conversation from Victor and another character through the scuffed up glass pane of a door.  The sound is only faint muffles, so my first thought was how annoying that was.  However, in retrospect, this really makes you feel like you are there.  A phantom trailing the action.  Another mark of a good director is when another underlying story can be told without using dialog.  Many scenes from this movie run deep, and although I likely only caught a couple of them to understand the unspoken dialog, I was impressed when I did.  An example of this is a scene with maybe only 3 lines where it is evident that the grandma (legal guardian) is starting to accept who the kids are, the kids recognize this, and in turn soften up towards their grandma.

As mentioned before, the characters, although seemingly shallow at first, are beautiful, and the portrayal of them is what makes this movie good.  They live in the slums, but hardly notice.  They do not let their circumstances change who they are, and serves as a wonderful reminder that you can be happy with very little.

I somehow, inexplicably, enjoyed this movie quite a lot.  I would even watch it again maybe, and for me, that is about as good as it is ever going to get for this type of movie.

You don't need a high budget to make a good movie.  "Brick" is evidence of this, and so is "Raising Victor Vargas".

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