A/perture and RiverRun have teamed up to offer the Cineclub, a new screening series offered the second Monday of each month – that means tonight! – for one screening only of films finding success on the festival circuit and independent films programmed to supplement the weekly screenings.

The first film in the series is Howl, which stars James Franco as poet Allen Ginsberg in an unusual biopic that focuses on the time he wrote his long poem of the same name and when his publisher defended it in court over an obscenity suit.

Franco gives a powerful performance as the beat poet, and the strong supporting cast includes Jon Hamm as the defense attorney for Ginsberg’s publisher, David Straithairn as the prosecutor, and Jeff Daniels as a literary critic testifying for the prosecution.

I admire they way Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman – co-writers and co-directors – have crafted the film from court transcripts, interviews, and the Ginsberg’s poems.  I’m more ambivalent about Eric Drooker’s animation for the poems, not the use of animation, which seems fitting, but the look of these sequences.

Howl evokes a time and place with authentic feeling and with a sense of the iconography of the key players, Ginsberg and his friends Jack Keroac and Neal Cassady.  Some people may find the treatment more cerebral than engaging as the film celebrates the writer’s craft, but this is not a problem for me as a viewer.  Poetry is elusive, so why should a film about it be any different?

This one-time only Cineclub screening is at 8 p.m.  Check the a/perture website for details:  www.aperturecinema.com

Howl is a strong beginning for a promising series.