Why medium rare? Because I like it better than well done. This movie hits too close to home for many of the reviewers I can tell. Problem is that they are living it or agree with the abusive bullying lifestyle. It makes me sick to see 4 and 5 stars out of 5 for so many stinkers and this one gets low ratings. This isn't the best movie but it isn't a waste of time. Great cast and it is well made. Make yourself a drink and a smoke if you like and watch this one with your dog on a rainy. This is a tale about a guy that hates himself and was raised by a parent that also hated himself thus the vicious cycle of self hate and low self esteem. How can we learn to see life in a better way? How do we rewire our brains from a lifetime of conditioning in an abusive environment. Not every movie ends like a fantasy that is personally gratifying. Why? Because people do not make as many happy endings. If you want that to change make some effing happy endings and stop breaking people in half. That goes for women and men. Stop if you aren't too broken to pull it off.

I like the balance in "The Adderall Diaries" as well as performances of the director Pamela Romanowsky and artists (James Franco and Ed Harris). The balance of between different way of seeing. We all may storytellers and we like telling the stories how we perceive and/or how we want to see the truth. We may sometime get closer the truth or we may create our own truth. The movie perfectly depicts this by keeping another well-created family story in the background. The story-telling way of the movie gives freedom to the audience without applying or imposing one way. Very successful direction and James Franco plays perfectly. No need to say how Ed Harris has been a shiny masterpiece. Thank to all.

This was a pretty good turn for Franco, one of his best attempts at drama in indi cinema. Franco is the protagonist, a writer who wrote a great book about his broken childhood, and the relationship with his abusive father, but it comes to life that what he's passing off as truth may not be all that, and he tries to redeem his career with a new book about a True Crime, evolving a father (played by Christian Slater, who I have not scene in forever) whose on trail for the murder of his wife.It's an Intriguing story about how sometimes we remember things differently than they actually happen. James Franco played this role well. It was not a matter of weather he was right or wrong, but just a matter of how he saw things that was not entirely accurate.Ed Harris and Franco had some really good scenes together as well. Harris played the abusive father who, like his son, remembers events differently. The father son connection felt very realistic.This is not the first time Franco has done a film on Child abuse (also not the fist time Amber Heard played an ex-punk rock bases with a few issues, she also did it in the recent but horrible film One More Time). Franco also tackled the trouble youth Topic in the film Yosemite, but that movie was a little more serious while this one is definitely better done. I can recommend.

"The Adderall Diaries" (2015 release; running time: 90 min.) brings the story of how Stephen Elliott (played by James Franco) deals with his distant past and also some current setbacks. As the movie opens, we see grainy video footage of a seemingly happy family. We then move to today, where Elliot gets the good news that Penguin has accepted a book proposal. In a parallel story, Elliot gets interested in a murder case (software engineer, played by Christian Slater, "disappears" his wife), and at the trial, Elliot makes the acquaintance of Lana, a NY Times reporter (played by Amber Heard. To tell you more might spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.Couple of comments: this is the feature length debut of writer-director Pamela Romanowsky, who was handpicked by James Franco himself for this job. The movie is based on the Stephen Elliot book of the same name. I have not read the book so I cannot compare how closely (or not) the movie is to the book. I had high expectations going in for this movie. Oh boy, what a disappointment this turned out to be, and I'm being mild. It takes a little while to figure out what is going on, but when it finally start to male sense, I waited to get transfixed. I waited, and waited.... Meanwhile, we see poor James Franco playing the tormented writer, struggling with writers block, and his horrible past, and it all feels so... acted!. We watch, and it does nothing for us. Thankfully there is Amber Heard, always easy on the eyes (and reason I don't give the movie just one star). Ed Harris (as Elliott's dad) and Christian Slater do the best they can with the material they are given, meaning not a whole lot. PLEASE NOTE: the running time is listed here on IMDb, Amazon and other places as being 105 min., but I can categorically tell you that the version I saw today was at most 90 min. Maybe the 105 min. refers to what was shown as the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, where this movie premiered. Yes, a year ago. Also, it turns out that Stephen Elliott himself has disavowed the movie.The movie opened today out of the blue without any pre-release advertising or fanfare at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The early evening screening where I saw this at was not well attended, and I'm being mild (4 people, including myself). I can't imagine this will play in the theater more than a week. There is a reason this movie currently scores only 20 on Rotten Tomatoes: it's a pretty bad movie, in fact one of the worst I've seen in quite a while (and I see a lot of movies). Unless you are a die-hard fan of James Franco or Amber Heard, there is no reason at all to waste 90 or 105 min. on this. I'm sorry that I watched this movie, but that doesn't mean you have to.... Viewer beware!