Reviewed by Glenn Gaslin
(Moving Pictures Icons issue, June/July 2006)

Directed by John Dullaghan. Released by Magnolia Films. Box office: $319,000 (US); $329,000 million (world).

The man drinks. The man works nights in the post office, and he writes. He fights and he embraces poverty and he makes it big. And through three-bottle poetry readings, small-press stardom, fatherhood and the very end, this literate and hypnotic documentary sketches the poet/dirty-old-man/genius Charles Bukowski from every angle. With archival footage and interviews from family, girlfriends and postal workers - plus, like, Bono and Tom Waits - Dullaghan excavates the mythology Bukowski built around himself. And it's all true - the hard living, the fear, the talent.

There are quieter revelations, too: Bukowski realizing he's become a pop figure, enjoying his success and even putting down the bottle. Indeed, the everyday moments hit with the strongest hooks, to hear the man recite his soaring nihilism - "radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men" - while we watch him simply walk down a Los Angeles street, among us.