‘The Adderall Diaries’ story-within-a-story is an entry to skip

Father-son dynamics come to the fore of “The Adderall Diaries” along with true crime, drug abuse, S&M, and the blurred boundaries between art, real life and editorial license. Director Pamela Romanowsky’s ambitious drama is based on Stephen Elliott’s memoir of the same name. Romanowsky and Elliott co-wrote the sprawling script.

Adderall Diaries posterIn the film, Elliott (James Franco) is the author of a semi-autobiographical novel that chronicles the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father, now deceased. Hailed as a major literary talent, Elliott has a generous advance for his next book and the encouragement of his agent (Cynthia Nixon). But, behind the scenes, Elliott struggles – he can’t focus and is using the drug adderall in an attempt to relieve his writer’s block.

He decides he wants to write about a real-life murder trial, in which a computer programmer named Hans Reiser (Christian Slater) is accused of murdering his wife. Reiser was found guilty and sentenced in 2008. (The actual murder and trial took place in California, but is reset in New York.) During the trial, Elliott meets a New York Times reporter (Amber Heard) and the two start a relationship; she also has been abused. An extra wrench in the works comes when Elliott’s father (Ed Harris), rough around the edges but in fact alive and sort of well, confronts Elliott about the accusations in his book.

There’s a smorgasbord of titillating storylines here and for the first half of the film, Romanowsky’s direction feels capable and confident, eliciting solid performances from her cast and creating a tense mood, edged with darkness (despite the frequent flashbacks, which were overdone and heavy-handed). But then she seems to lose her way, letting narrative threads unravel and dangle clumsily. The story doesn’t end as much as sputter to a halt – as if the project just became overwhelming.

Perhaps it was increasingly difficult to deal with two major intertwined deficits. First, many details of the story (altered from the book) don’t feel authentic. Nixon’s character is referred to as an editor, instead of an agent. I never got a sense that Heard’s NYT reporter was actually filing stories. Her primary objective seems to be pleasing Elliott in bed, until his kinky requests get too weird for her.

Second, Heard and to a certain extent Franco are miscast in this piece. I didn’t buy Heard as an adrenaline-fueled, deadline-driven, fact-checking writer and Franco’s existential suffering was undercut by a cute, cuddly vibe that he can’t quite shake.

Elliott’s father and his alternate version of their past should have been meaty and moving but instead felt trite and by the numbers, even though Harris is a fine actor. And Elliott doesn’t offer any particular insight into the Reiser case (that might have been covered more thoroughly in the memoir, which I haven’t read.) By the time the film ended, or rather expired, it left me deflated, frustrated, a little confused and, worst of all, bored.

‘Whitey’ documentary asks how Boston’s most famous mob boss got away with so much murder and mayhem

Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger/2014/CNN Films/107 min.

Whitey posterTrue-crime aficionado and award-winning documentary director Joe Berlinger says he’s always felt he had a civic duty to point out flaws in the criminal justice system. His latest film, “Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger,” looks at the reign of Boston’s most notorious and nefarious mob criminal and probes his ties with federal law-enforcement agencies. In telling Bulger’s sordid yet riveting story, Berlinger makes a case that there was widespread corruption at the FBI and the Department of Justice.

During his decades-long career, James “Whitey” Bulger, 84, became world famous. His irresistible narrative has spawned a cottage industry of books and films, says Berlinger. Johnny Depp is playing Bulger in the upcoming film “Black Mass” and in 2006’s “The Departed,Jack Nicholson portrayed a character that was partially based on Bulger.

When Bulger went to trial in June 2013 (after being arrested in June 2011 in Santa Monica), Berlinger says he saw an opportunity, as a filmmaker, to separate the man from the myth. “You have a guy who ruled Boston’s criminal underworld for 25 years and wasn’t even stopped for a traffic ticket. Finally the Massachusetts State Police said enough was enough and started forcing an investigation. … The FBI tips off Bulger and he goes on the lam for 16 years. Frankly, I thought he would never be caught.”

For his lifetime of crime, Bulger is serving two consecutive life terms plus five years at a facility in Tucson, Ariz. He was found to have been involved in 11 murders.

In the moral code of the Irish mafia, however, there was a worse offense than taking a life and that was to be a “rat” or an informant to law enforcement. In Berlinger’s film, we meet insiders on both sides of the law, many of whom speculate on whether Bulger committed the gangster’s ultimate betrayal. Berlinger’s take? “I think Bulger was never officially an informant in the truest sense of the word, but there was a relationship there where he was passing some information. The truth was in the middle.”

The film argues, sometimes eloquently and other times a bit heavy-handedly, that government corruption paved the way for the gruesome work of a vicious criminal, often showing us survivors who were left to pick up the pieces in the wake of brutal violence.

As for isolating the man from the myth, there was one interview subject rich with dramatic irony who does not appear in the film. Whitey Bulger is the brother of former President of the Massachusetts Senate, Billy Bulger. Unfortunately, Billy is not on camera.

But who knows? Maybe Johnny Depp will give him a cameo.

“Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger” opens Friday in New York and July 11 in LA.

Journalist tells gripping true-crime tale in ‘Darkness’

“People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman” by Richard Lloyd Parry is the true story of a young British woman who vanished from the streets of Tokyo in 2000 and the evil that swallowed her up (she was raped and killed). Parry, a longtime Tokyo-based journalist, chronicles her family’s efforts to find her and the police search for the perpetrator.

It took police seven months to find her remains. “Either the police had conspired in a misguided cover-up that had resulted in the decay of precious forensic evidence,” Parry writes, “or they had achieved the same result through scarcely credible oversight and incompetence.”

Parry has received excellent reviews for his work. Carolyn Kellogg of the LA Times calls it a dark, unforgettable ride that earns its comparisons to Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song.”

I requested a review copy today and will be writing more later.

‘Recipe For Murder’ tells true story of Australian lethal ladies

From left: Aimee Horne, Anne Looby and Betty Tougher portray the real-life killers.

Sydney, Australia’s inner suburbs in the early 1950s seem an unlikely setting for a slew of cold-blooded murders. But many families were plagued by poverty, poor housing conditions and an epidemic of rats (there are stories of parents sleeping with their children to protect them from being bitten during the night). And, for several women, apparently unhinged or at the end of their ropes, eliminating a tiresome man or two topped their to-do lists, along with cooking, cleaning and killing rats of the rodent variety.

Thallium – the active ingredient in rat poison – was the perfect murder weapon. It had no color, taste or smell and it produced a gradual demise rather than sudden death. Police estimate that hundreds of people died from thallium poisoning in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Banned in the rest of the Australia and most of the developed world, thallium was freely available in Sydney.

Writer/director Sonia Bible

“Recipe For Murder,” a film by first-time writer/director Sonia Bible, tells the true story of three notorious poisoners: Yvonne Fletcher, Caroline Grills and Veronica Monty.

Yvonne Fletcher, 29, a blonde good-time girl, was accused of killing two husbands. Next to be charged was Caroline Grills, 63. She was accused of being a serial killer after four members of her family died in suspicious circumstances.

The most scandalous and sensational case was Veronica Monty. The 45-year-old was charged with attempted murder of her son-in-law, Bobby Lulham, a famous Australian Rugby league player, with whom she had an affair.

“Recipe For Murder” follows the detectives cracking the cases, the media and the women standing trial. The film combines archival footage, film-noir re-enactments, interviews with witnesses, a musical score from “Animal Kingdom” composer Antony Partos and narration by Dan Wyllie. There are no plans for a theatrical release, but you can buy the film here.

I recently chatted with Sonia via email.

Film Noir Blonde: It’s such a fascinating but little-known story. I understand you became aware of it in 2003 at an exhibition in Sydney called “Crimes of Passion.” What was it that drew you to these murders?
Sonia Bible: The story of the thallium murders was a piece of history that I didn’t know about, and it was also a period that I was fascinated with visually. With three real-life femme fatales, film noir was the perfect fit for the stylized re-enactments.

Anne Looby as Veronica Monty and James Anderson as her son-in-law Bobby Lulham, a famous Rugby player.

FNB: At what point did you decide to make a film and profile the three women?
SB: Yvonne Fletcher, Caroline Grills and Veronica Monty were the three most notorious women of all those charged with murder by thallium. Their stories also intersected in interesting ways at different points in time.

FNB: Thallium poison, though it caused a painful death, was a silent, surreptitious killer. Was there something about that approach that you think appealed to women?
SB: The use of poison is traditionally a woman’s crime. It’s been around for a long time and is more often used by women. Men tend to use their fists or weapons to commit violence against others.

FNB: At the same time, thallium’s “advantages” may have held equal appeal for men, correct?
SB: No. Men used thallium in Sydney at the time to poison others or themselves, but women committed the majority of thallium poisoning cases. Women didn’t have any other means to control their circumstances at the time. Also the control of rats was considered a domestic duty to be carried out by women. Women had more understanding of the poison and ready access to it.

Grant Garland and Matthew Dale play the cops.

FNB: Toward the end of the film, we learn that the police investigators working on these cases (Don Fergusson and Fred Krahe) turned out to be corrupt. Do you think they may have targeted women perpetrators as a way of making an example of them or even to advance their own careers?
SB: No. Although Krahe and Fergusson went on to be corrupt, their investigations into the thallium murders were thorough and professional. Yvonne Fletcher was the first person to be charged with murder by thallium and it wasn’t because she was a woman. It was because she murdered two husbands in a very cruel way. Nobody even knew that thallium was dangerous to humans until Krahe and Fergusson cracked that case.

Matthew Dale, Aimee Horne and Grant Garland

FNB: What was your biggest obstacle or challenge in making the film?
SB: The biggest challenge in making the film was the production budget. We were doing period drama on a documentary budget, and always looking for creative solutions and innovative ways of getting around the budget constraints.

FNB: What kind of reception have you had from the film, both at home and elsewhere?
SB: “Recipe For Murder” achieved really high ratings when it screened on TV in Australia. It also got rave reviews in the Australian media leading up to the screening. The film won a Silver Hugo award at Chicago International Film Festival 2011 as well. We were all thrilled with the enthusiastic response.

Official trailer for ‘Texas Killing Fields’ now on YouTube

Inspired by true events, Texas Killing Fields” follows Detective Souder (Sam Worthington), a homicide detective in a small Texas town, and his partner, transplanted New York City cop Detective Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as they track a sadistic serial killer dumping his victims’ mutilated bodies in a nearby marsh locals call “The Killing Fields.”

Before long, the killer changes the game and begins hunting the detectives, teasing them with possible clues at the crime scenes. When a local girl Anne (Chloë Grace Moretz) goes missing, the detectives find themselves racing against time to catch the killer and save the girl’s life.

Directed by Ami Canaan Mann, produced by Michael Mann and Michael Jaffe, “Texas Killing Fields” also stars Jessica Chastain (“Tree of Life,” “The Help”), Jason Clarke (“Public Enemies”) and Stephen Graham (“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”).

The movie opens Oct. 14.