The passionate idealism of filmmaker Jim McKay's first film, "Girls Town", gave way to the spirited but serious "Our Song". McKay's latest movie is "Everyday People", airing tomorrow on HBO. His best film yet, "People" is a sincere study of a group of Brooklyn residents dealing with changes, in their neighborhood and in their own lives as favorite local restaurant "Raskins" faces the wrecking ball to make way for a new corporate development.

In a generally positive review in today's New York Times, Alessandra Stanley takes a close look at the movie, offering an at times problematic analysis:

The movie, shown last winter at the Sundance Film Festival, is a paean to pregentrified urban life in all its shapes, ages and colors. And that alone can be a turnoff. Affluent New Yorkers, particularly those who live in Brooklyn, can turn tiresomely lyrical about their run-down, multicultural neighborhoods, reveling competitively in the authenticity of dollar stores, bodegas, Caribbean beauty parlors and graffiti-covered walls as they turn up their noses at middle-class improvement. At times the movie's nostalgia — particularly when dwelling on the poor, longtime customers who treat Raskin's as a second home — turns treacly, an oversentimentalization of Brooklyn color that comes perilously close to the preciousness of the French movie "Amélie."

I found it interesting to note that Ms. Stanley assumed that the restaurants customers are poor. While the film dwells on how some of the workers will make a living if the place shuts its doors, the storylines involving Raskin's patrons focus on what a valuable part of the community the site has become and not really on their wealth or lack thereof. And as for the "Amelie" charge, what I found so touching about the sentimental moments of "Everyday People", and so contrary to the cleanly washed streets of that French film, was McKay's ability to find the pure urban beauty in the simplest aspects of daily life and among a diverse and real look at city people and their lives, from a moving subway car, to a mom & kid walking down the street, to people eating lunch on the steps of the courthouse.

Jim and I talked about gentrification, and other issues, the other day for an article published in indieWIRE this morning. Like the characters in the film, Jim is struggling with some of the same issues. Its a war being waged daily in rapidly evolving Brooklyn neighborhoods or on the blocks around my Hell's Kitchen apartment where locals of varying racial and socioeconomic backgrounds are fighting to preserve the integrity or where we live, hoping to strike a balance that maintains a mixture of businesses while preserving what it is that makes our neighborhood unique.

As blue-eyeshadowed, blue dress-wearing, blue drink swilling Betty tells the conflicted developer near the end of the film: "Honey, you can't wash out all the color and keep the flavor."