West of Brooklyn

What a marvelous discovery! I saw this film tonight on an obscure TV station in Croatia, where I now live. When you throw in a bunch of Italians trying to make a movie about life and love in a close-knit Italian family you really have to hit the high notes not to make it predictable--batta bam, botta bing! But Marmo and crew kept you laughing and engrossed with a loving take on leaving, losing and discovering what's important and why. The pans against the movie are surely defensible, but with such poorly written, badly acted, terribly edited, overblown "blockbusters" like Interstellar and anything to do with The Hunger Games, how refreshing it is to see and listen to believable characters, a plot that makes sense and editing that keeps you fully engaged instead of shaking your head wondering what the hell was that? We're all so jaded with production values and big budgets it's good to remember that small, independent films like West of Brooklyn still make magic. Buy it, enjoy it, and pass it on~