Everyone from The Sex Pistols to indie director Gus Van Sant, whose Drugstore Cowboy explicitly recreates its affectless, deadpan anti-style, acknowledges the aesthetic influence of Tulsa, photographer Larry Clark's 1971 book of portraits of young drug addicts in his Oklahoma hometown. Clark is more widely known these days for his controversial 1995 debut feature, Kids, but his new film, Another Day in Paradise, opening next Friday at the IFC, Dublin, returns to that 1970s dustbowl junkie milieu, while also carrying echoes of such classic outlaw movies Badlands and Bonnie and Clyde in its portrait of a pair of druggie thieves on the run from the law. In addition, it gives a rare, meaty, leading role to one of Hollywood's most criminally underused character actors, James Woods, and sees a critically-acclaimed return to form for Melanie Griffith after a long string of disastrous movies.
