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Humboldt County (DVD)
Year: 2008
Rating: MA
Director: Darren Grodsky, Danny Jacobs
Cast: Frances Conroy, Brad Dourif, Chris Messina, Jeremy Strong
Release Date: January 12, 2011
Distributor: Madman
The Film: 4.5
The Disc: 2.0
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5“...a piece of kitchen sink realism familiar to Australians, but cut through with a ribald touch of Americana.”
The stylish debut of writer/director/actors Darren Grodsky and Danny Jacobs, Humboldt County, is flush with the idiosyncratic flourishes of a cult curio - to say nothing of its candid and constant drug use. It is also a piece of kitchen sink realism familiar to Australians, but cut through with a ribald touch of Americana. It's that particular combination of sometimes overstrained reference points that mark it as a first feature, albeit a sophisticated one.
The indomitable, obnoxious Fairuza Balk opens the film as Bogart, a sort of Siren drifter who captivates Jeremy Strong's Peter, a lost 20-something medical student, pulling him out of his insular shell and up to California's so-called Lost Coast. There he falls in with her "family", who live on the proceeds of a marijuana crop in an Eden of rugged intellectualism. Over one summer, this collective of recluses headed by Jack (Brad Dourif), Rosie (Frances Conroy) and their son Max (Chris Messina) - struggling to raise a daughter alone and looking for a too big pot payday - prove more family than Peter's own distant father (the great Peter Bogdanovich, who is better known as a director (Mask, The Last Picture Show) and film scholar).
Throughout, Humboldt County retains a distinctive voice, growing into an intelligent and memorable picture.
Extra features are limited to deleted scenes and a behind the scenes featurettes.
