hughman55 Well, how ironic that a film based on the giants of the Beat Generation, the literary revolution that cleaved the 20th Century in half, would collapse under the weight of a badly written, two dimensional, screenplay. There is no shortage of compelling story lines involving the writers who led this revolution; Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, or William S. Burroughs (murdered his wife playing William Tell with a bow and arrow and got a way with it, oops).The storyline they chose was the murder committed by Lucien Carr where he stabbed and drown a former lover, David Kammerer. There should be plenty to work with here. But rather than focusing the 90 minutes of screen time on developing anything meaningful about the literary movement, the murder, the murderer, or the victim, we're instead shown snapshots of those things, plus Allen's mentally disturbed mother, Lucien's overly involved mother, a prank they commit at the library on the Columbia University campus, Jack Kerouac's complicated personal life, university stuff, other stuff, and then more stuff. The context in which this murder occurs, and the literary revolution, is everywhere, and nowhere. And in the end you could care less about any of them or what they did.I recall hearing a lot about this film while it was in production. The hype was intense because of the real life characters, what they did, and who was playing them. I do not recall the film ever being released. Perhaps it was. But it just seemed to disappear quietly and was forgotten. I saw something about it years later somewhere and thought to myself, "Oh yeah, that. Wonder what happened to that film." After purchasing the DVD and watching it, it is easy to see why it was smothered in its crib and buried in the backyard. Which is a shame because the story is there, some of the acting is quite good, but none of that can, or ever will, overcome bad writing. Which was kind of the point of the Beat Generation to begin with. If you can see it for free and have nothing better to do with 90 minutes of your life it won't kill you to watch it. It won't give you any enjoyment either.

Kirpianuscus it is not easy to make a coherent film about beat generation. because the images are not the inspired vehicle for translate the spirit of a movement who has so many levels. because the actor remains hostage of one character who, in not frequent cases, represents a real piece from the movement. Kill Your Darlings is a good example for that. Daniel Rascliffe does a decent job and he must be admired for the nuances of character who uses. Dane DeHaan has as basic tool a wise ambiguity who becomes essence of his character and the only axis who sustain an exotic figure in search of the triumph who defines each teenager. the result- a sketch. interesting but useful only as introduction/ first step to discover a fascinating period who represents more than meetings of few young men in search of fundamental truth.

Dan1863Sickles KILL YOUR DARLINGS isn't just one bad movie, it's five bad movies! There are so many stories it does not tell, so many themes it cannot explore, so much overall phoniness and shallow ignorance of life, the universe, and everything.It's not a moving coming-of-age story. Nor a thoughtful analysis of Allen Ginsberg's poetry. Nor an evocative film about the World War II era. Nor a chilling crime drama, even though the climax involves a brutal stabbing. Nor a stark, uncompromising look at the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, even though every single character is presented as some kind of addict. Nor an honest and candid exploration of the social pressures of college life then or now. There were at least five or six good movies you could have made with this material, and instead they made this foul sewage. As I watched this movie, I kept wondering if I was being unfair. I mean, given how vile all the characters are, and how ugly and sad the ending is, could anyone have done a better job? But then I thought of THE BASKETBALL DIARIES, based on the life of Jim Carroll, starring Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio. Ugly scenes of drug abuse? Brutally real violence? The emptiness of higher education stripped bare? Homosexuality right in your face? It's all there, but in THE BASKETBALL DIARIES the stakes are much higher. These people really matter. Even the poetry sounds better!KILL YOUR DARLINGS could have been a good movie. But it wasn't. And by the way, the "Beat" movement was not a club for gay men. Plenty of gay men hated the Beats. And plenty of Beats hated gay men. There was no love lost between Truman Capote and Jack Kerouac. In fact, Truman Capote famously said of Kerouac's ON THE ROAD, "that's not writing, that's typing." It's movies like this that give teenage homosexual murderers a bad name.

Alex Deleon image2.jpegViewed at Jameson Cinefest in Miskolc Hungary, September 2013, a modest festival in a secondary city that has now become the most important film festival in the country and growing steadily with unusual heads up programming. KYD, the debut feature by 29 year old director John Krokidas, is a dope fueled coming of age story of soon-to-be literary celebrities before they became notoriously well known which then turns into a more than routine crime thriller. The murder of a homosexual older man in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs during their college campus years at Columbia. With Dan Radcliffe as Ginsberg, Dane DeHaan as Lucien Carr, and English actor Jack Huston as Jack Kerouac, and a cameo by Jennifer Jason Leigh (49) as Ginsberg's mentally ill Jewish mother. The ingredients for a fascinating film are all there but "Kill your Darlings" Is the kind of dismemorable title that can kill a picture before it starts. The packed auditorium where I saw it indicated a strong advance curiosity quotient reflecting the high level of literary awareness of Hungarian filmgoers, but it left me cold. While these were the literary icons of my own college days (I even met Ginsberg in person several times) and this is a period of high personal interest for me, I felt no sense of authenticity or real resonance with Theophrastus L WW II period. Above all the central Ginsberg portrayal was way off in my view and not at all true to life -- true, perhaps, to current screen life since the main actor, Daniel Radcliffe, (as Ginsberg) is an international celebrity because of his lead roles in the Harry Potter films,but painfully miscast hero. A little too canny for its own good this respectable first effort will only get a limited release because it is far more neo-intellectual than mainstream, and will probably disappear from view quickly. For the record the story deals with Ginsberg's short stay at Columbia University in 1944 where he meets his first important gay lover, the oh-so-hip Lucien Carr. Carr introduces him to his buddies future Beat Generation celebrities Jack Kerouac and William Boroughs, neither very believably portrayed, and then accidentally kills one of his other lovers, the middle aged David Kammerer, while trying to ward off undesired sexual advances. (Sample dialog: Carr: "I was a kid, and you dragged me into your perverted mess. Kammerer: "How can you say that? You know that's not true. I will never give up on us. Carr: "You're pathetic! ~ and stabs him with a pocket knife) Whike there are some references to the early writing of Ginsberg and Kerouac this picture deals mostly with the involvement of the future literary icons in this little known fait divers, which was briefly big news at the time, but was never referred to in their later writings. Nice try, better luck next time.😜