User reviews

If you are thinking about watching this movie in 2020 or later, I assume it is because you discovered the amazing Timotheé Chalamet and are working your way through his films. I would say it is kind of worth the watch. It is not much of a commitment, the film is only an hour and a half. Chalamet has only one or two lines but is on screen every now and then for flashbacks for few seconds at a time and shines in his brief appearances. (What a great casting choice for his talent of course but also because it is fully believable that he is a young James Franco). The story is kind of interesting, it has some insights into unreliable narrative, trauma and drug use, playing the victim and not taking responsibility. I did feel however that the movie could have been better. The story line of the murder trial wasn't working for me. I liked Lena and Steven's relationship but she all of a sudden couldn't handle him anymore and was angry at him, which was too abrupt. All in all, flawed but still a good movie.

I didn't expect to like this movie (I'm not a Franco fan. Sorry, James.). I almost didn't watch it because of its overall low rating here. I'm glad I did, though, because it was raw, well acted & had a meaningful message. It made me reflect. In a good way. This film is underrated.

The Adderall Diaries, Stephen's (James Franco) first book is called A" Part" but while it bears a different title, it's clearly just a substitute for "A Life Without Consequences", and it's those details that dismantle and nearly destroy Stephen, riding high on his success, when their lack of veracity is revealed. The Adderall Diaries is a tough film and has several different elements and subplots within the story. It may feel clustered at once, but the film is quite interesting for those reasons. There appears to be much happening, and although it is well acted, it does not feel forced in any way. The film really does a good job of its flashback scenes, where Franco and Ed Harris (playing his father) tell their point of views of how they lived going up. These flashbacks are constantly brought up and shown, and they play an important part within the end. Amber Heard does a solid job playing Franco's love interest. The film is quite short, at 87 minutes. Perhaps they could have developed the story a little more, though the film is quite good and worth a watch.

Through a weird melding of fiction and true crime, this character study movie delves into the drug-hazed past of a lonely author battling addiction and past trauma. It does this using cross-cuts between the author's present struggle to write his second book, and bitter memories from his childhood. To be honest, this isn't the kind of movie I would have spared my time to watch and, for the most part, it did not consistently engage me. However, I do not regret watching it because the only reason that led me to watching it did not disappoint: Amber Heard.

This is the 26th Amber Heard movie I've watched in my stated goal to work through the entirety of her filmography as part of my effort to gain a critical and personal understanding of the entirety of the film career of this often underrated and misunderstood, but still very promising, actor. While this is not among the best movies that Heard had starred in hitherto since her 2004 film debut with Friday Night Lights, her performance in it continued to showcase her impressively steady growth and maturity as an actor in the industry. Indeed, the confidence and authenticity with which Heard plays Lana Edmond - a Los Angeles Times reporter that Stephen Elliot (James Franco) unsuccessfully attempts to pull into his abyss of addiction and sadomasochism - adds to the evidence for the fact that by 2015, Heard had firmly established herself as a first-rate actor whose only missing ingredient to an Oscar nomination (and possibly a win) was a first-rate director willing to cast her into a fitting role that would allow her to prove to wider audiences what her fans could already see. For instance, the range of emotions that Heard is able to communicate to the viewer in the scene in which Lana is coerced by Stephen to choke him is a testament to the depth with which Heard was able to connect both to her characters and to the audience at this stage of her career. In addition, while Lana mirrors a couple of other characters that Heard had played in her career to this point - think, for instance, Eddy from The River Why (2010) and Emma Jennings from Paranoia (2013) - it is noteworthy that this was the first woman-directed character study thriller film that Heard had starred in in which her character was required to convincingly embody polarized emotional extremes. That she was able to successfully nail this role attests to her ever-growing versatility as an actor. In all, Amber Heard is magnificent in her role in this movie and so I recommend the movie mostly because of her performance, a performance that most people, fans and non-fans alike, would greatly be entertained by.

Aside from Amber Heard, Ed Harris' performance is also commendable, which is something that cannot be said for James Franco's average-at-best performance. Another positive aspect of the movie was Pamela Romanowsky's (director and writer) writing of Lana Edmond. At a time when nearly all (male) directors would have reduced Lana into a mere manic pixie dream girl for Stephen, one has to commend Romanowsky for having refused to allow Lana to fall into an abusive relationship with Stephen in an attempt to "fix" him. This is especially important in light of the fact that while Lana is still, to some extent, sexually objectified in the movie as many a director had done to many a Heard's character to that point in time, Romanowsky at least ensured Lana's agency and dignity by making her refuse to play along with Stephen's drug-fueled sadomasochistic lifestyle.

That said, the movie has quite a number of problems to contend with. For one, its promotion of drug use is a huge no-no for me, especially since we live at time when the corpus of empirical evidence for the harmful effects of drugs, both hard and "soft," is overwhelmingly large. Secondly, the way the movie frames violence and abuse as products of both victims and perpetrators is, in my view, quite dangerous and misleading. According to the movie, children can be just as culpable in their own abuse as parents are. However, contrary to this, children should never be held accountable for their own abuse cause there is no moral nor ethical reason to do so. Indeed, only parents and the adults around them should be held responsible for the abuse that they subject children to. After all, children are always the products of their parents, societies, and surroundings.

A third problem with the movie is that, despite having a woman director, it still is very much a male affair. Indeed, nearly all of the cast and crew is made up of White men. Fourthly, racial representation among the cast and crew is almost absent and, fifthly, there is no diversity whatsoever is socioeconomic class representation.

For all its negatives, I would have given this movie a 4/10 rating. However, owing to Amber Heard's stellar performance, I grant it a 7/10 and still recommend the movie to fans of hers as well as to every person interested in Heard's as well as Ed Harris' careers and lives.

Stephen Elliott (Franco) is upset and embarrassed when he reads excerpts from his latest novel when Neil Elliott (Harris) shows up to let everyone know they are being played as he is not dead as his son writes about him. The father and son duel goes on and we in the audience are not sure who to believe about things that happened in Stephen's life as each makes a lot of sense.

The beginning of this movie seemed to indicate we were in for another druggie movie and I almost shut this down. Then the TV on screen shows a murder trial courtroom scene and this captures Stephen's interest. Ours too. The father, Hans Reiser (Christian Slater), is accused of killing his wife and claims he did no such thing and that he always acted on the behalf of his kids. Stephen realizes that his father always claimed the same thing. Stephen believes he can prove his father wrong and tell the world the truth and get his writing career back on track. He gets Lana (Amber Heard) to help him get paperwork proving he was all the things his father said was not true. Later we learn that Stephen takes Adderall among other drugs. We knew about the other drugs, but not Adderall until now. Hmmm……

I must say this time James Franco has a role that works for him as he invested himself completely. Kudos.

As for Ed Harris, well, he does steal all the scenes his in. He is just that good. But wait ….. there is another actor who seems to command scenes, too, and that is Jim Parrack (Who?) who plays Roger, Stephen's boyhood friend. I'm sure we will see more of him in other movies. Keep an eye.

Yes, there is a twist later on and I think we all knew what it would be. The question is will this revelation actually help Stephen? Should the Director have spent more time talking about the effects of Adderall or did the movie do this for us? Inquiring minds want to know. (7/10)

Violence: Yes. Sex: Yes. . Nudity: Yes. Language: Yes.

Hans Reiser gets hooked on a Russian asset, a woman from Saint Petersburg. Reiser is the golden boy from Linux with his Reiser file-system and company Namesys. He has two children with Nina, but "Before her disappearance, Nina Reiser had obtained Russian citizenship for her daughter and son in 2005 and 2006 respectively" . Forensics and LAPD play ball with the Russians and Hans Reiser is arrested for traces of Nina's blood in his car and charged with 1st degree murder. This was a total setup by LAPD and the Forensics department. The charge won't go away and a plea bargain for 2nd degree murder is given if Reiser leads the police to the body of Nina. This then happens (which amazes me to this day) : "Reiser's attorney, William Du Bois, who was handcuffed to Reiser and accompanied by a heavy police guard to the site, said that the remains were found buried on the side of a hill between Redwood Regional Park and the Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve, less than half a mile from the home on Exeter Drive where Reiser lived with his mother, and where Nina Reiser was last seen alive on September 3, 2006.(Lee, Henry K.; Jaxon Van Derbeken; Chronicle Staff Writers (2008-07-07). "Wife-killer leads cops to body in deal with D.A.". SFGate. p. A-1.) Forensics of Nina's body conclude that she was strangled to death. So what was the fuss with Nina's blood planted on purpose in Hans Reiser's car ? Reiser gets 15 years to life in San Quentin State Prison and has been transferred numerous times across the California prison system ever since. "In July 2012, a jury awarded Reiser's children $60 million against their father for the death of Nina Reiser." The Russians have not stopped drinking vodka in Saint Petersburg ever since. The day will come that royalties, copyright amendments and ownership are due for the work of Hans Reiser. The Russians already know today that they will be the sole heirs and beneficiaries to the work of Hans Reiser. In other Linux related news it was reported that on 28 December 2015 the founder of Debian Linux, Ian Murdock, was killed in his apartment under suspicious circumstances. On 9 Mar 2016 Linux hackers were kindly summoned to put their coffees down and listen up as Microsoft had just launched a Debian Linux-based switch operating system.

Was a movie that had been kept away from me as many of Amber's were. I appreciate being able to see them now. No matter how cruel everyone has been trying to keep me from having friends and finding ones from years ago, I can assure them that I will find the ones who mean something to me. I am now in charge of my life and Amber your more than welcome to say high as well as Whitney. Luke.