This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Blistering performances.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

After mentioning there are 167 languages in Jackson Heights, the movie only concentrated on the situation of Latino and LGBT communities there. Anything was glossed over or totally missing. Very skewed view, unless you were interested in only those two features of Jackson Heights!

Be sure you know what you're getting into before you commit yourself to watching this dog of a movie. Maybe you're such a lover of Jackson Heights that anything about the place will do for you. If that describes you, then good, this will please you--it gives you anything (and everything) about the place, a random assortment of little scenes, 3 hours in total, of ordinary people doing this and that in the neighbourhood. But if an endless series of daily scenes- -a routine sermon in a mosque, an inconsequential community meeting, etc.-- doesn't sound fascinating to you, then spend your time and money somewhere else.I came to this movie because of a NY Times piece on "The Best 25 Movies of the 21st Century So far." Well, so far, of the 4-5 I've seen, they're all a waste of time, the usual film school stuff that sniffy reviewers love to love in order to display their ineffably superior taste, pretending not to notice, or maybe reveling in, the formlessness, pointlessness, dreariness, boringness.

I watched this travesty because I live in Queens and regularly visit Jackson Heights, and I did not notice the length of the movie before ordering. What I got was over 3 hours of home video, full of endless boring community talks and small business owners complaining about gentrification of Queens, same people who buy at Costco for resale. Disproportional number of LGBT scenes. It's Jackson Heights, not Provincetown. It has its good moments - some very beautiful street shots and the best part - the taxi driver school towards the end of the film, the reason for my 5 star rating (would be 2 or 3 otherwise). Cut this disjointed mess down to 1 hour, and you can get a very good documentary worthy of 7 or 8 stars.

I had the unfortunate experience of watching this movie recently in Queens. I was hoping for a survey of the various residents and eclectic vibe of Jackson Heights. What I got was 3 hours of trans-genders/gays, Spanish-speaking immigrants (Mexican's mostly), and a few old Jewish residents. Queens in general is known for it's ethnic diversity. Jackson Heights in particular is known for it's high South Asian population, along with East Asian - lots of Chinese, and Nepalese, which is not true for other areas in Queens. Literally every other neighborhood in NYC is filled with immigrants, gays, and Jews, and there are many other neighborhoods in NYC where it's easy to find a stronger representation of each of these ethnic groups - East Harlem, Washington Heights, Chelsea, Greenwich, the West Village, Bensonhurst, many parts of Brooklyn on the J line. Yes, Jackson Heights does have a history of gay rights, but not 3 hours worth at the expense of everyone else. Whatever point this movie was attempting to make about Mexican immigrants, trans-genders, and the elderly, it never came through. I'm giving this movie 2 stars because while it meandered on and on and on...an on, there's a lot of potential. With a good editor and a stronger point of view, this movie could be fantastic.