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[Video: a trailer for Bronx-based film “Gun Hill Road,” which opens tomorrow.]
I picked up the Village Voice near the Kingsbridge Road 4 train stop yesterday and, because I’m a movie junkie, immediately turned to the film reviews. It included a short and positive portrait of “Gun Hill Road,” an independent movie written and directed by Bronx-born filmmaker Rashaad Ernesto Green, starring two well-known Bronx actors, Judy Reyes and Esai Morales.
That’s good news for Green’s film, which made it’s New York debut at the first-ever Bronx Film Festival in May. Only one problem: the reviewer said the movie is set in Brooklyn! Doh! Finally, an independent Bronx film starts building buzz (apologies to “City Island” fans) and the Boogie Down gets mistaken for trendy Brooklyn. Sigh.
Silly copy editing mistake aside, this exposure bodes well for “Gun Hill Road,” which is, of course, set in the Bronx, on and around Gun Hill Road, where Green says his family has a history and still maintains a presence. “Gun Hill Road,” which was picked up by a small distributor after doing well at the Sundance Film Festival, will begin playing at three theaters in New York (two in Manhattan and the Bay Plaza theater in Co-op City) starting tomorrow. The following week it opens in Los Angeles and then, a week later, in San Francisco.
We’ve been writing about “Gun Hill Road,” since it first started filming in the Bronx last summer. I wrote about the film after seeing it at the Bronx Film Festival during Bronx Week and was interested to see how professional critics would review it.