This Movie Captures The Spirit & Despair Of New Jersey -- & I Should Know

There is a land across the Hudson River from New York, where Bruce Springsteen blares on the radio, highways snake around industrial sites, and dreams pale against the Manhattan skyline. That land is New Jersey. And I, like the aspiring rapper at the heart of the movie Patti Cake$, am all too familiar with its shapes and contours, its strip malls and dive bars, its tree-lined suburban streets. I, like Patricia Dombrowski, grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey. While watching Patti Cake$, I recogn...