Gimme the Loot at New Directors / New Films

Although not listed on Netflix, the kids-in-New-York-in-the-summer genre is one of our favorites. Gimme the Loot, fresh off winning the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW and playing to sold-out houses as part of this year's New Directors / New Films festival, joins The Wackness and Hurricane Streets and Kids in the pantheon of such movies. Like the city itself, it has a couple of spots that don't feel quite right, but it hums and bops with infectious vivacity as it tells of two teenager graffiti writers from the Bronx and their hopeless quest to hit the apple at Shea Stadium. (Among several other New York in-jokes is everyone's refusal to call it Citi Field.) In the Q-and-A afterward, an audience member, having learned the film has just been bought for release by IFC, asked a question that the movie itself asks, a question that --- romantic as it sounds --- the city has asked to countless people over the years: How does it feel knowing that your life is about to change?