Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Beat poetry is a subject that I am not familiar with and I am not entirely sure it exist in the parts I am from, but it's definitely an interesting subject to illustrate on film."Kill Your Darlings" discusses a murder that occurred in the 40's involving several monumental names of literature from Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac, who would later go on forming what's called the Beat Generation. The acting was on par with the theme of the film, Dane DeHaan and Daniel Radcliffe, in particular, doing a fantastic job. The film debates topics such as sexual repression, recognition, reputation and exploration. As with most artists, the members of the Beat Generation certainly had a tumultuous and troublesome lifestyle that is depicted in the movie through love triangles, extravagant parties and misdemeanors.The film's screenplay started off well, describing Ginsberg's freshman experience at college, meeting with DeHaan's character, Lucien Carr, and surely enough the first steps of beat poetry were about to begin. However halfway through the script looses focus and ultimately doesn't lead up to anything, leaving the viewer with not much factual information about the great poetry generation."Kill Your Darlings" had substantial background information that could have been put to more use while still being captivating to the audience.

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.

This film is boring from the beginning to the end. Well, I confess I did not see him fully! I passed it forward several times because I couldn't take it. The sex scenes with Radcliff will hunt me forever. I guess I won't be able to look at him the same way as I used to do with harry potter. He grown up the worse way. The theme is deplorable. No way this argument could deliver a work of art (like you assume the 7th should be). In one word: presumption The worst movie i watched this year. Again I can't understand why I have to go on writing this review when all I want to say is: escape this one. Someone should have told me that!

i just read burroughs' and kerouac's novel "and the hippos where boiled in their tanks" and i was so excited to see, that there was a movie based on the same story...let's be brief: the book was so much fun, which the movie was not, it was like a completely different story, over-dramatic and above all so much Hollywood-style, i.e. not even depicting the fun in drugs and useless drinking for instance (which was essential in the beat generations and so much fun in the novel), that's highly insulting for ginsberg, kerouac and burroughs....so much more fun reading the novel, forget about this movie! (except for the amazing cast: radcliffe, de haan (reminds me of young di caprio) and houston)