Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

tomgillespie2002 Genius, alcoholic, misogynist, poet, borderline psychopath. These are some of the words and labels branded on 'Beat' poet and author Henry Charles Bukowski Jr. during this extremely detailed and informative account of his life and work. For those unacquainted with his blue- collar genius, Bukowski started out drifting through meaningless jobs across America in the 1940's, drinking and writing all he could in his spare time. It wasn't until the 1960's when a collector of 1st editions and manager of a printing company offered to publish a collection of his works, when his career took off. He wrote possibly thousands of poems and was asked to write a novel. This work was Post Office, an deadpan account of his 16 years working for the U.S. Post Office.Although he was, and still is, recognised as a 'Beat' writer (alongside the likes of Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg), he was very much a man of his own style. Where Kerouac wrote about his personal journeys in a structured, detailed way, Bukowski wrote about mundane things in a straightforward way. It was very much poetry for the blue collar workers. In this documentary, John Dullaghan pieces together interview footage shot by the likes of Taylor Hackford and Barbet Schroeder, as well as pieces conducted by Italian and Belgian TV, to create a portrayal of a very complex and misunderstood man (there are also interviews with the likes of Sean Penn, Bono, Tom Waits and Harry Dean Stanton).Like A Man Within (2010), which focused on fellow beat writer William S. Burroughs, Born Into This tries to tackle the various attributes that made the man. While telling a relatively chronological story of Bukowski, it covers the subjects of his childhood abuse at the hands of his father, his alcohol abuse, his treatment of women, his reaction to fame, and how this led to an influx of women begging for his 'purple onion' (as he called it). Running at 130 minutes, this is an incredibly (and necessarily) detailed documentary that really gets to the heart of the man who created some incredibly pieces of literature. I remember reading Post Office and Factotum when I was younger, and being blown away by its simplistic beauty and honesty. A must-see for any fans.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

adrian_3 Nothing wrong with Born Into This, I thought it brilliant. It simply showed one completely individualistic and unique person that never told people what they should do or or how to lead their lives As you get older you basically settle down into the life of a sheep - always a slave to something. Whether it be marriage / a relationship, the job, or keeping up with the neighbors ("ooh dear, they have a new car with 2 cup holders. Better go get one that has 3") etc etc. He just didn't give a toss about any of that stuff and basically kept the same attitude throughout his life. At the very least he kept true to his "endurance is more important that truth" saying

ppalomurto I highly recommend this unique masterpiece. Hank was even more lovable person in live than I expected.When the documentary ended I was very touched. Even a couple of tears on my cheek. Those might be caused by wine a drank while watching this hypnotic film. But anyway if you are not familiar with his work it's about time to read one of the greatest writers within this genre. Lots of rare material (at least here in Finland) and even a short interview with his daughter Marina. As a dilettante's summary: a must for anyone ever read Bukowski and for others hopefully a trigger to start right away.Don't try, God bless.

littlesiddie This was a special movie for me since Bukowski occupied a special place in my life and provided me with some basic notions about looking at the world during an early formative time in my life. The year was 1975, and I was 21.Now that I'm 50 and I've been "clean and sober" for over half my life, Bukowski has lost quite a bit of his charm. Watching him in this movie I couldn't help but realize what a total case of adolescent arrested development he was. And although I think he should practically be canonized as a saint for his refusal to knuckle under to the phony plastic American success machine, it's also apparent that most of what he had to say was only negative, it only went half way there, so to speak. In other words, he provided no positive suggestions. He just said: be yourself, be a slacker, follow your own obsessions. And this isn't enough as far as offering young people something good to believe in, something that will help them feel like they can belong to something worthwhile.And much of the negative imagery quoted in his poems in this movie (I was never a fan of his poetry, only his prose) is almost embarrassingly lurid and crude, only a small step up from, a slightly more polished version of, garden variety Heavy Metal rock 'n' roll doom and gloom song lyrics.One other impressionistic thing I wanted to note was just how much John Martin, the publisher of Black Sparrow books, reminded me of Leonard "Nipper" Read, the police officer that arrested and helped prosecute the infamous UK gangsters, the Kray twins. Just a fun fact, that's all.Another thing that struck me was Bukowski's attitude. I'd heard him speak before, on cassette tape and on an early video of a reading he did in Bellevue, Washington, and I knew he had this kind of snotty, purring way of talking, but it really came through here. He really didn't seem like a very nice person, not someone whose attitude I would put up with in real life for very long.But, all-in-all, this was a very well done documentary, very well paced and hardly ever got bogged down. And it was a real pleasure to get a well rounded picture of a personality I had always been very curious about. And it was also very good to get to see and know some of the other people in Bukowski's life. John Martin, for example, is a very interesting and engaging man in his own right.As a portrait of an interesting literary and cultural figure I would recommend this film highly to everyone. And I think most Bukowski fans will like it a lot, too.