Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Today Jack and I enjoyed this tale of Allen Ginsberg and his future Beat Generation friends as wayward freshman at Columbia University. It opens with a murder that really happened. The great cast: Daniel Radcliffe (perhaps you've heard of Harry Potter?) as Ginsberg, Ben Foster (last blogged in Ain't Them Bodies Saints) as William Burroughs, Jack Huston (best known to me as the "half-faced" Richard Harrow on Boardwalk Empire, he's part of the famous Hollywood Huston family) as Jack Kerouac, Dane DeHaan (The Place Beyond the Pines) as Ginsberg's best friend Lucien, Kyra Sedgewick (less than one degree of Kevin Bacon--she's his wife--she's won a lot of awards for The Closer) as Lucien's mom (her jewelry gets its own credit at the end), Elizabeth Olsen (Liberal Arts) as Kerouac's girlfriend, Michael C. Hall (Dexter, Six Feet Under) as a pivotal character, and as Ginsberg's parents David Cross (Tobias Fünke on Arrested Development, Cross played Allen Ginsberg in I'm Not There. (2007)) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (most recently in The Spectacular Now, she's back to playing crazy and nobody does crazy like JJL). Every one of them delivers. 

The title is from an English professor's advice to his students, meaning that the words they have written are the darlings and the writer should edit/cut them ruthlessly.

Nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, it's the feature debut of director/co-writer John Krokidas and co-writer Austin Bunn. About half of the songs in the credits are listed on imdb, and the score by Nico Muhly (The Reader) is good too, but not available to stream or buy at this time.

Audiences and critics agree at 75% and 74% respectively on rottentomatoes. There are many darkly lit scenes so I recommend seeing this on the big screen before it leaves its short run here or wherever you are.