1st watched 12/26/2009 – 8 out of 10(Dir-Larry Clark): Extremely well executed drama about a couple of older drug-using thieves who take a younger couple under their wings as they survive in this rough un-forgiving chaotic world. The movie begins as the younger couple is introduced and the male character(played by Vincent Kartheiser) robs a community college's snack room of it's vending machine change and gets ferociously beat up by a security guard but then kills him. Uncle Mel(played by James Woods) then invites the kids to tag along with him and his girl and they graduate to bigger thefts with bigger consequences. The older couple(who can't have kids) kind of take on a tutoring and parenting role to the younger couple and they start developing a good friendship as well. It's obvious there are needs being fulfilled both ways in a companionship perspective as they both have many losses in their personal lives. Mistakes start being made after it's determined the younger girl is pregnant and the younger couple start evaluating whether this life is for them. This causes friction in the characters in this no-holds barred insane lifestyle movie where the characters just want to make good for themselves and this vulnerability brings the audience to like the characters. Melanie Griffith is un-expectedly excellent as the older woman and the overall acting and direction is very well done. You believe this story and that keeps you interested and involved until the end. The movie itself is not for the faint-at-heart but it is a definite un-heralded gem in the independent film-making world and should be viewed.

Larry Clark's follow-up to Kids combines the themes of a crime gone awry and the would-be father/son bonding with a style that is unquestionably "indie". Would it be too much to ponder over hand-held even when not entirely necessary? It's not an extreme annoyance, and it does serve some purposes of tense vibes when James Woods chides out his mentee or during one of the said gone-bad crime scenes. It's only when it doesn't serve a purpose that really suits the material that you want Clark and his DP to get back to the steady-cam and tracking shots- which he does do from time to time- as opposed to say, for example, the overlong jittery shots of Bobbie (Kartheiser) running through a field. In fact if there is any one glaring flaw on Another Day in Paraidse it's not knowing how to quite get a scene completely together properly, on the technical fronts. One of the scenes that should be the most powerful emotionally, involving the death of one of the principle characters, is shot and edited shabbily, as if an anything goes approach will be just fine, as a good but inappropriate blues song plays over the scene and then into the next small scene until it finishes. Scorsese Clark is definitely not when it comes to timing with the soundtrack.

On the other hand, it is what Clark does get right as a director that does make this violent and foul-mouthed effort a look some ten years later. The blues songs, for example, are mostly very good and placed in nicely in some scenes, specifically towards the beginning as Bobbie runs away from a botched robbery and during a hot and heavy sex scene (a live performance of "Looking for a Fox" also is 100 times better off of the cover done in Blues Brothers 2000). The casting of Woods, who also served as producer, was a sharp move as well, because it provides him ample time to go for small subtle moments of authority (the "what are you doing" bit in the diner), and really BIG scenes (emphasis on capitals) as he yells and kicks and screams and yells the F bomb every other word. It's not entirely a great performance, but it works for what his character is: a washed up old crook of a drug dealer who looks for scores when he cans but puts on an air of seeming to be in control and smart, which he isn't.

It's good to see someone like Griffith in the matriarch (or would-be one) role, and Gregson-Wagner, who maybe is the least effective of the lot of the actors, is still up to the challenge of playing the sort of tag-along of the four. They all go for realism, which works pretty well with all things considered; those being that the script veers into predictability after the first half hour, and the dialog, while about as sharp as can be under the circumstances (Clark is, more often than not, at his best when he has Harmony Korine writing for him), does go into the fold of not being as revelatory as potentially allowable as the characters go further into downward spiral territory. Save for some bits of pretension and a couple of botched techniques, it is a solid film, with one of the more shocking gun fights from the late 90s.

I looked forward to seeing this because it starred James Woods , an actor who`s as underrated as he is impressive ( Check out his performance in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA where he outshines De Niro , and this was when De Niro was still an acting god ) and who`s always been great at playing intense anti-heroes . I`d actually pay good money to see Woods read out his shopping list so when the satillite TV station issued a warning about " The following film contains scenes of violence " ( Warnings about violence is unprecedented at 1 am on a satillite TV station ) I thought I`d be seeing a real tour de force acting class by Woods but as the credits started the words " A film by Larry Clark " came up . I`ve never seen a film by Clark but knew of his reputation and ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE plays very much like how a Clark film is supposed to play : drug abuse , explicit teenage sex , drug dealing in a violent low concept plot with totally amoral characters on a fast track to hell . This is a really bleak , nihilistic , gritty film with some really cruel violence . It should be praised for showing how utterly pornographic violence is , but it`s also a film you won`t want to watch more than once no matter how much you love James Woods acting style