Kill Your Darlings
Daniel Radcliffe is poet great Allen Ginsberg in this 1944-set true crime drama about a murder that coincides with the emergence of the Beat Generation. Co-stars Ben Foster (Contraband) as William Burroughs and Boardwalk Empire’s Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2013.
While attending Columbia University, the young Ginsberg's life is turned upside down when he sets eyes on Lucien Carr (DeHaan), an impossibly cool and handsome classmate. Carr opens Ginsberg up to a bohemian world and introduces him to Burroughs and Kerouac. Repelled by rules and conformity in both life and literature, the four conspire to tear down tradition and formulate the tenets of the Beat movement. On the outside looking in is David Kammerer (Hall), a man in his 30s desperately in love with Carr. When Kammerer is found dead, and Kerouac, Burroughs, and Carr are arrested in conjunction with the murder, their lives change forever.
- Director:
- John Krokidas (feature debut)
- Writer:
- John KrokidasAustin Bunn
- Cast:
- Daniel RadcliffeDavid CrossMichael C. HallElizabeth OlsenDane DeHaanBen FosterJennifer Jason LeighKyra Sedgwick
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Reviews & comments
Flicks, Team
flicksIs there anything more dull than watching a writer tapping furiously on a typewriter, even if he’s on amazing drugs? Okay, with the notable exception of all-work-and-no-play-makes-Jack-a-dull-boy of course. Fortunately Kill Your Darlings is about more than the emergence of a literary group that would hold future English 101 classes in raptures. The boys who seeded the Beat Generation broke the rules of their professors, but more interestingly lived on the edge and a brutal crime lurks in its origins.
Variety
pressDirected with an assured sense of style that pushes against the narrow confines of its admittedly fascinating story.
Total Film
pressSex, drugs, murder, radical verse and Radcliffe make persuasive bedfellows in Krokidas' live-wire lit-pic.
Time Out
pressDaniel Radcliffe is back in a pair of nerdy specs as Allen Ginsberg in this sincere, heartfelt film about how the gay beat poet found his voice
The New York Times
press[Director] Krokidas deftly shows how the ambition to write is entangled with other impulses. The emergence of Allen's poetic vocation is almost a subplot in a story about guilt, lust, friendship and murder.
The Guardian
pressThough it begins as a murder-mystery, may be best described as an intellectual moral maze, a story perfectly of its time and yet one that still resonates today.
The Dissolve
pressDoesn’t know what to do with Radcliffe and DeHaan, good as they are; there’s little sense of how they fit into a larger framework, or what bearing, if any, it might have on its more famous subjects’ later output.
Hollywood Reporter
pressThere’s a limber, freewheeling aspect to the storytelling that echoes the rule-breaking literary form of the Beat writers.
Empire Magazine
pressA vibrant, insightful film about writers and writing, featuring Daniel Radcliffe's best post-Potter performance.
Flicks, Team
flicksIs there anything more dull than watching a writer tapping furiously on a typewriter, even if he’s on amazing drugs? Okay, with the notable exception of all-work-and-no-play-makes-Jack-a-dull-boy of course. Fortunately Kill Your Darlings is about more than the emergence of a literary group that would hold future English 101 classes in raptures. The boys who seeded the Beat Generation broke the rules of their professors, but more interestingly lived on the edge and a brutal crime lurks in its origins.
Variety
pressDirected with an assured sense of style that pushes against the narrow confines of its admittedly fascinating story.
Total Film
pressSex, drugs, murder, radical verse and Radcliffe make persuasive bedfellows in Krokidas' live-wire lit-pic.
Time Out
pressDaniel Radcliffe is back in a pair of nerdy specs as Allen Ginsberg in this sincere, heartfelt film about how the gay beat poet found his voice
The New York Times
press[Director] Krokidas deftly shows how the ambition to write is entangled with other impulses. The emergence of Allen's poetic vocation is almost a subplot in a story about guilt, lust, friendship and murder.
The Guardian
pressThough it begins as a murder-mystery, may be best described as an intellectual moral maze, a story perfectly of its time and yet one that still resonates today.
The Dissolve
pressDoesn’t know what to do with Radcliffe and DeHaan, good as they are; there’s little sense of how they fit into a larger framework, or what bearing, if any, it might have on its more famous subjects’ later output.
Hollywood Reporter
pressThere’s a limber, freewheeling aspect to the storytelling that echoes the rule-breaking literary form of the Beat writers.
Empire Magazine
pressA vibrant, insightful film about writers and writing, featuring Daniel Radcliffe's best post-Potter performance.
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