HOWL, starring actor James Franco as Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, opens Friday and will play a seven-days-a-week run through Nov. 4 at Coral Gables Art Cinema.
From Robert Rosenberg, the cinema's director:
Allen Ginsberg was a poet, counter-culture adventurer, and chronicler of the Beat Generation. In his famously confessional, leave-nothing-out style, James Franco as Ginsberg in the movie recounts the road trips, love affairs, and search for personal liberation that led to the most timeless and electrifying work of his career: the poem HOWL. Meanwhile, in a San Francisco courtroom, HOWL is on trial. Prosecutor Ralph McIntosh (David Strathairn) sets out to prove that the book should be banned, while suave defense attorney Jake Ehrlich (Jon Hamm) argues fervently for freedom of speech and creative expression. The proceedings veer from the comically absurd to the passionate as a host of unusual witnesses (Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Treat Williams, Alessandro Nivola) pit generation against generation and art against fear in front of conservative Judge Clayton Horn (Bob Balaban). HOWL is simultaneously a portrait of a renegade artist breaking down barriers to find love and redemption, and an imaginative ride through a prophetic masterpiece that rocked a generation and was heard around the world.
A.O. Scott in The New York Times has said HOWL "does something that sounds simple until you consider how rarely it occurs in films of any kind.It takes a familiar, celebrated piece of writing and makes it come alive" and Jennie Yabroff has called HOWL "a great film. Franco disappears into Ginsberg's sexy earthiness."
The Coral Gables Art Cinema is a state-of-the-art theater that will be what we consider the best and most comfortable venue for experiencing independent, alternative and international film South Florida, with first run seven-day-a-week showcase presentations in both 35mm and true industry-standard theater quality digital projection.
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