CROSSTOWN

This film covers about a week and the life of a family and their different perspectives on what happened. This film mainly follows the life of Angle, 14 years old, and how he is trying to find out who he is while living in a very bad part of Los Angeles and the struggles goes he through, facing the gangs, his family, his girlfriend, and trying to find himself.

This film was very unique in the way that the story is being told, the whole film only covers about a week or so and they repeat the same scenes but in different perspectives. For example they would have a scene of Maria and Angel meeting in Angels perspective, and then they would have the same scene but from different cameras and through Maria’s eyes and how she saw it. Once you get used to this kind of storytelling it is really cool because you get all of the details of what happened, the full understanding and it makes you feel like you are really there. The filming in the film is amazing, in certain scene most of it would be blurred out but the this that they wanted you to be focusing in on was so sharp and then it would change what was blurry and what wasn’t, it was a really cool use of cameras.

In my opinion a outstanding actor in this was both the son Angel and the dad Jesus. I loved Angle’s acting because his character completely changed from being a soccer geek, sensitive and nice young boy to a shaved head, tattooed and hard man. I think that the actor that played Angle did this transition very well and convincing. I really liked the performance of Jesus because there was this one part when (SPOILER ALERT) he barged into a room where the two men from the ARMY were and he just started hysterically crying and yelling at them because they promised his eldest son Bento and the whole family green cards and papers if Bento joined the ARMY and now he is dead and they don’t have any papers! Jesus’s performance in that scene was so believable and amazing and it made you very sad for him and feel him pain and it made me very made at the ARMY people!

I recommend this film to anyone that is prepared for a hard subject but a great story that a very well done! I recommend this film for ages 12 and up. This is a must see and one of my favorite films of the festival! I rate this film 5 out of 5!