Rent Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Interesting and entertaining film - Kill Your Darlings review by PV

I liked this film. It's well-scripted, well-acted and recounts the little-known tale of a murder within the beat poets clique in the 1940s.

The period detail is interesting; not sure how much the characters are true to life though.

But I never knew how that event inspired an early Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs novel.

Full marks to Radcliffe for his performance; Dane DeHaan plays the Bosie characters to an older guy's Oscar Wilde, and not sure how true to what really happened all that is anyway. Other characters too stand out - the cold fish spoilt rich kid Burroughs and Kerouac's testosterone-pumping thrust of a performance. This film is WAY better at portraying him than others I have watched.

But this film stands on its own - though, in reality, these beat poets were really up themselves! This movie is more interesting than much of their dire pretentious poetry, for sure.

I don't see why anyone has an issue with modern music and sound effects being used in a period movie - what a terribly quaint and puritanical attitude!

4 stars

Could Have Been Better - Kill Your Darlings review by KW

An interesting film covering the Beat Generation during their time at Columbia University, but with such a wealth of characters to cope with the screenplay within the limited time it had could only gloss over their frailties as well as their good points. The fact that they survived and became successes in their right, is sort of glossed over, which for me is a failing of the film, assuming we already knew what had become of them.

Harry Potter & The Beat Generation - Kill Your Darlings review by Milstead On Movies

With a title like 'Kill Your Darlings' I was expecting a much more taut, thrilling and dramatic film about a real-life murder.

Based on a true story, the movie focuses on the rise of the 'Beat Generation' writers Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs & Jack Kerouac as they plan to go against the grain of conventional prose and indulge themselves in a new wave of literature.

For the most part, the film plays out like Fight Club at Columbia University, except there's no fights, there's no conflict and there's no real drama, just a group of rather unpleasant, self-obsessed characters talking pretentiously and marvelling in their own genius. The only real rebellion they participate in on-screen is stealing the university's library keys to put banned works like Lady Chatterely's Lover on display.

One of the biggest faults I found with the film was how openly gay Ginsberg & Carr's characters were. Perhaps they were that way in reality, but considering the events in the story took place at a time when homosexuality was not just taboo but forbidden! I'm sure the entire point of the Beat Generation school of literature was to express their lifestyle choices through their writing. In my opinion, the film would have been much more powerful if the characters were wrestling internally with their sexual orientation, instead of leering salaciously at each other throughout the duration.

A murder does takes place in the story but it's very much on the periphery rather than being the integral part of the story that it should be.

Overall, the film is just a giant snorefest despite a handful of good performances, especially Dane DeHaan as Carr. Daniel Radcliffe, aside from resembling a young Allen Ginsberg is incredibly miscast (perhaps it's because his acting has no real depth. All I see is Harry Potter.)

Worth watching if you want to see a schoolboy wizard having his first gay kiss, but there's no entertainment or even educational value in this film. It's merely an independent film intended to shock with no real merits aside from some decent acting performances.

Also, the intentional anachronisms of having modern songs playing over the soundtrack borders upon criminal.