Kill Your Darlings 2013

Scott Foundas, Village Voice: An unquestionable improvement over last year's paint-by-numbers On the Road, but it still falls victim to the kind of idol worship that has made most movies about the Beats hard to take. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Radcliffe - hair permed into Ginsbergy college curls, full of vitality - holds the emotional center as a young artist in art and in life. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: The excellently acted, fact-inspired "Kill Your Darlings" is a consistently interesting origin story with impressive period details ... Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: From the incense-soaked bohemian off-campus parties to the source music by Jo Stafford and the Andrews Sisters, the period atmosphere evokes style. But something is missing here, like a clear perspective. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Overall the movie seems to wander, like the worst excesses of free verse, needing a little structure to rein it in. Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: The saving grace of Kill Your Darlings is its sordid romantic angle, a narrative thread that pulls the film away from wink-wink allusions and into more serious emotional territory. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: "Kill Your Darlings" occupies some in-between place, with young, intelligent actors working hard at being gritty as their director makes sure we see every ounce of effort. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: That Ginsberg is played by Daniel Radcliffe might come as a shock, but the movie rolls on and you realize you're in very good hands. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: This debut feature by New York University graduate John Krokidas outpaces most dramatic films about Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs, pushing back the legend enough to consider them as people. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Director and co-writer John Krokidas doesn't have a very fluent gift for period re-creation - everything seems stagy - and most of the actors, playing divas of various stripes, overact. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: You don't need to know the Beats to understand "Kill Your Darlings," you just need to know the twinkling promise, and dark turns, of life. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: There is a chemistry between [Radcliffe and DeHaan] that is more than just sexual. Read more

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: And the Beat goes on, this time in a syncopated study that sheds light in particular on the young Allen Ginsberg. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: "Kill Your Darlings" ... feels like it is trying too hard. Far too conventional underneath all the trappings, you wish it would howl. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: Dramatizing a passion for the written word on film can be tricky, but in his feverish Kill Your Darlings, first-time director John Krokidas brings creative desire to life with vigor and emotion. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: A lukewarm Radcliffe, plus a wandering script, make for a fair-to-middling movie, but the raw material of this dark corner of Beat history remains fascinating. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The only thing it really kills is about an hour and a half. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Krokidas develops a nice rhythm - crucial for any film about the Beat movement - even if the composition feels a bit too meticulous. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: Mr. 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. Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: This vibrant portrait of a legendary New York bohemia in the 1940s transcends its flaws by evoking genuine feeling for poets in their youth. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Kill Your Darlings is a tale of inspiration, then, but also a tale of jealousy, obsession, homophobia, and homicide. It's a whirlwind. Read more

Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com: A sort of Muppet Babies version of the Beat poets ... Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Sex, lies, betrayal and murder set among the gods of the Beat Generation. That's Kill Your Darlings, a dark beauty of a film that gets inside your head and stays there. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: [A] brash, bristling, highly watchable film. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Ultimately ... two points of emphasis must be pared down to one, and this is where "Kill Your Darlings," arriving at the fork in the road, makes the wrong turn. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Kill Your Darlings" is a true-crime murder mystery, a love letter to the wild-living artists of the Beat Generation, and a portrait of the artist as an adolescent. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Bursting with hipster attitude and New York atmosphere, the fact-based "Kill Your Darlings" is a coming-of-age chronicle that morphs into a crime story without missing a beat. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star: A stylish-looking story that often presents the players as self-congratulating caricatures, overly proud of their own cleverness. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: A captivating look at an American literary giant in those years before he was ready to howl. Read more

Cath Clarke, Time Out: Daniel 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 Read more

Eric Hynes, Time Out: There's a heart here, but with all the superficial noise, it's hard to hear it beating. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: This multi-faceted tale - part murder mystery, part coming-of-age story, part intellectual disquisition of a socio-literary movement - is well-shot, assuredly directed and sharply written by Krokidas and Austin Bunn. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: A mysterious Beat Generation footnote is fleshed out with skilled performances, darkly poetic visuals and a vivid rendering of 1940s academia in Kill Your Darlings. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: Kill Your Darlings wants to be a young man's movie, but it's all "cinema du papa," as the French New Wave used to call it. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: Though based on fact, the film is awash in delicious and difficult ambiguities. Read more