Thanks for the memories!

So much average

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Howl is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg (James Franco) in 1955 and published as part of his 1956 collection of poetry titled Howl and Other Poems. In 1957 San Francisco, Allen faced charges in the obscenity trial.This is simply not my cup of tea. It may be yours if you like jazz, poetry and most importantly, have James Franco read you poetry. I don't like the non-linear telling of the story. I don't think Franco is a particularly good reader. There should be real intensity in the story but Franco's restraint performance contradicts it. For fans, I would suggest wearing a beret, lighting a smoke, turning on the jazz and snapping your fingers. You would get into the right mood which I never achieved.

Alan Ginsberg is an Iconic Figure of the Beat Generation. His Worth as a Poet is, Like All Poets and Art for that Matter, a Matter of Taste. Ginsberg's Howl Might be too Self Indulgent to be Great Poetry but is a Seminal Work that Broke Boundaries, and was Famously Attacked for being Obscene.The Obscenity Trial that was the Result of the Book being Sold Openly on Bookstore Shelves is Witnessed here with Verbatim Trial Transcripts Dramatized by Actors. The Beats are Secondary to Ginsberg's Persona and this One Particular Poem. That Coupled with HIs Homosexuality is the Focus.James Franco seems to be Acting here and the Beard is Laughable at Times. But it is an Honest Effort and doesn't Distract too much from the Overall Impact and Power of the Movie. It is a Unique Format Interspersing Surreal Animation to Illustrate some of the Poems more Lured Laments and it Works Just Fine and has a Distorted and Catchy Style.Overall, the Film is a Fine Gloss of the Beats and a Somewhat Intriguing Probe into One of its Accidental Founders. Ginsberg is Like an Angry Dove and His Stream of Consciousness Poetry is Interesting and its Clunky Style is Either Genius or Nothing More than an Angst Ridden Excuse for Him to Lay Waste to a Hypocritical World that did not Accept His Lifestyle or His Family's Mental Illness with Much Compassion. Overall the Film and Ginsberg's Work is a Matter of Taste or it could be said…"One Man's Meat is Another Man's Poison".

The film starts with the interesting claim that every word spoken was actually spoken.The film isn't a documentary, though it is very similar to one. It centers on several key events so that no dialog needs to be added beyond the historical. A reading of "Howl", the obscenity trial, and two interviews. Each is shown in parts to create a narrative with the suspense being the outcome of the trial. We see the courtroom, the defendant's lawyer, Jake Ehrlich (Jon Hamm) and prosecutor Ralph McIntosh (David Strathairn), Judge Clayton Horn (Bob Balaban) and several of the expert witnesses. Here the debate was whether "Howl" was obscene and thus the book store owner was guilty of selling "obscene" literature. We also hear interviews of Ginsberg as he gives background information on himself and his poem. Eventually, of course, the poem is not ruled as obscene and the bookstore owner is let go. Several more intimate moments about Ginsberg's life, particularly his relationship with his mom are seen. It's nice to see Franco portray Ginsberg and attempt to imitate his distinct idiolect and mannerisms. Ginsberg always had a unique way of talking, perhaps a product of his New York, Jew upbringing or perhaps because of his experiments with drugs, jazz, and performing arts. The movie is a more intimate portrait of Ginsberg than I was expecting. I felt that they probably put too much emphasis on his relationship with his mother. A lot of lobotomies were performed at the time, and abuses in mental health care continue to this day. I would hardly put the guilt on Ginsberg, an icon of counterculture. Furthermore, I liked how Ginsberg was portrayed as a struggling artist. His success came, but it took some work. I also really liked the cartoons that were used to illustrate the poem. I found they complimented the emotional exploration of the film. I'm not sure I would recommend this to anyone who's not a fan of Beat Literature, but I did enjoy it. Of course, I'm a fan of the Beats.

I'm surprised that this film worked as well as it did, and that it has been received as well as it has here. I read Howl about 5 years after Ginsberg wrote it, when I was in high school, and, like it or not, it became part of my thinking in the fifty years since then. Still in high school, I could quote passages from the poem at my friends, who would follow up with the next passage, etc. Boooring. But if you had told me that a film would be made about it, with a script constructed of trial transcripts and interviews in the public record, alternating with a recreation of Ginsberg's first public (paying-public; there was ONE previous reading of the full poem) reading of the poem, I wouldn't have expected much. And I would have been wrong. It's well-done and well-acted, and no excuses are made for anything about Ginsberg or his work. I was dismayed at first to see the poem interpreted into animation, but the filmmakers were savvy enough to produce the animation in the style of the times, i.e., 1955, when Disney's Fantasia was still the state of the art, and the animation in Howl could have come out of the Night on Bald Mountain section. In the end, it worked, I think, by keeping the viewer visually in the world of the poem itself, rather than in the biographical material about Ginsberg or the trial and the litigants. So if you want to watch a movie about a poem, and the poet and his friends, but mainly about the poem, this one does a pretty good job.