Bukowski: Born into This

I may as well get it out of the way that I am a bit biased going into this film. Charles Bukowski is possibly my favorite author (only Dostoyevski and Burroughs gives him serious competition). The documentary didn't really tell... Full review

I'd never heard Bukowski speak before. I'd seen the pictures and read the words. This hard-nosed writer surprised me as a very soft spoken, very sensitive artist. His intimidating face became friendlier and friendlier to me as the film progressed.... Full review

If you go into this film without ever haven read Bukowski, it can be a jarring experience, but rewarding nonetheless. I love his stuff, most of it anyway, and never really had a chance to see him while he was... Full review

Chris Knipps review gets a "1". The movie gets a "10". I happen to think this is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. I just wanted to say...How the hell did this guy Knipp get his review... Full review

For those of us who haven't read any of his writing, Charles Bukowski, as seen in this informative, engaging new documentary by John Dullaghan, is a craggy deadbeat everyman, a working class L.A. writer with enough cult status to have... Full review

Charles Bukowski is probably the greatest American poet, who, to this day, remains largely unrecognized by the literary establishment in the United States. His greatest recognition came in and still is in Europe. He's the poet that college professors love... Full review

Charles Bukowski is probably the greatest American poet, who, to this day, remains largely unrecognized by the literary establishment in the United States. His greatest recognition came in and still is in Europe. He's the poet that college professors love to... Full review

An old friend of mine used to regail me with stories of Charles Bukowski, the great everyman poet who wasn't afraid to tell it like it his, who didn't care at all about formalism or what had come before him...he... Full review

Warm, elegiac ballads ("Sleeping In The Aquifer," "Born Into This") mixed with buzzing, forward-pressing material ("American Dipper [Male Variation]," "Bray"). Pastoral, folky and rousing in various combinations, the songs coaxed a host of personalities out of only four musicians. ... Full Review

Still, Bukowski had pity for others as well as himself, and was loved, despite everything, by many who knew him: he was on the right side, and it seems just that he should be remembered. The most telling comparison is with Terry Zwigoff's film about onetime Bukowski illustrator Robert Crumb: a sharper portrait of a far more original "underground" figure. ... Full Review

Great movie. Bukowski: Born Into This " is one of the most powerful documentaries I have ever seen. Most crucial to the film's success is the extraordinary amount of footage of Bukowski, himself, that Dullaghan has managed to assemble. ... Full Review

But Dullaghan's film inadvertently reveals a different truth: Bukowski clung to a snug little post-office job for 15 years, living with a female patron whose purpose apparently was to help float his financial boat. With self-mythology his biggest talent, Bukowski was marketed (we use the term loosely) in the '70s as a "skid-row poet" whose prose rose like a noxious gas from downtown streets; manifestos from society's forgotten corners. ... Full Review

Dullaghan can pluck footage of the angry, drunken Bukowski of 1977 and play it off against the placidity of the wiser, sadder, richer Bukowski of many years later. Bukowski: Born Into This (113 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is not rated but features extreme profanity and ugly scenes of domestic violence. ... Full Review

On the radio the other night, during a live broadcast from New York's Village Vanguard, Jenny Scheinman's violin sounded more like a choir than a stringed instrument - a near-vocal ensemble of languid sighs, chatterlike runs and long, exultant squeals,... ... Full Article

As an avid reader who doesn't know that much about Charles Bukowski, apart from the poems I read in school and his reputation as the hardened "dirty old man", I felt that it was time to educate myself more on... ... Full Article

Offering rock bands alcohol is like enticing children with candy: if you have it, they will come. (Not that I've been hanging around playgrounds with pockets full of lollipops lately, or anything like that.) ... Full Article

"I'll see you again ... when the sun begins to shine", Reid Paley belts in a rough-hewn growl that falls somewhere south of guttural. With his black-suited, minimalist band-just Paley, Jim Murray on drums, and Eric Eble on Czechoslovakian upright... ... Full Article

Henry Lawson once said, "Drinking is a man's way of crying."In John Dullaghan's film on the life and work of Henry "Hank" Charles Bukowski jnr, we see him do both, but more of the former. ... Full Article

There are worse things than being alone," begins Charles Bukowski's haunting poem "Oh, Yes."The iconoclastic poet, souse, lover, brawler, and outcast was certainly an authority on the subjects of loneliness and pain. ... Full Article