Kill Your Darlings (2013)

About twenty minutes into Kill Your Darlings I knew I was in trouble.  I was already having a hard time getting into it and still had well over an hour to go.  It didn't help that this featured some of the founding members of the Beat Generation, which I've never really cared much about.  Well, if you're not a fan of the Beat Generation, why in the hell did you see this, you ask?  I honestly didn't know that's was Kill Your Darlings was about.  I mainly saw this because it stars Dane DeHaan, one of my favorite young actors, and Daniel Radcliffe, whose career choices I'm following very closely post-Potter.

Believe it or not, I try to go into most movies knowing as little as possible about them.  I avoid trailers as much as I can, and stay off the web to avoid spoilers.  Many times I'm not even aware of who wrote or directed the film until the credits roll.  If it's based on a book, I won't touch it until after I see the movie.  I do this mainly to avoid going in with certain expectations, especially when I know it's from a writer or a director I may or may not like.  I know sometimes that's unavoidable with the bigger releases, or when the commercials or posters say, "Brought to you by the director of this and that."  Generally speaking, I try to go in as 'clean' as I can, and many times I usually don't know much more than the lead actors.

Kill Your Darlings follows the story involving the murder of David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), and the early days of the Beat Generation.  As the movie begins with the murder and the accused, Lucien Carr (DeHaan) already in jail, there's little suspense at all to the remainder of the story.  We mainly watch Carr, Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) drink, do drugs, listen to music, and cause mischief.  I don't find it all that interesting to watch people do drugs, especially when I have no experience with their drug of choice.  I have no problem with alcohol and marijuana, but I have no knowledge at all of benzedrine.  Watching people listen to music is also pretty uninteresting to me, too.  Would like to see a Youtube video of me sitting in a bar watching a band you've never heard of that doesn't focus on the band or music?  Pretty fascinating, right?  Kill Your Darlings features much of the same general hedonism that I disliked about On The Road, only with less misogyny.  I guess if you think about it, this is sort of a prequel to On The Road.  The credits even specifically mention how Kerouac went on to write On The Road after this.  Okay...

After the opening sequence, we go back to just before Allen Ginsberg's heads off to Columbia University.  I was excited when I saw David Cross playing Ginsberg's father.  I thought maybe he'd lend some humor to the movie, but unfortunately this did not happen.  Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Ginsburg's mother, who is dealing with mental illness, but I found this subplot to be largely pointless as they didn't have any impact on the main story.  Maybe if Ginsberg had suffered from mental illness himself, it might have made more sense to include this, but it came across as unnecessary backstory.  After arriving at Columbia, Ginsberg meets Carr who introduces him to various members of the Beat Generation.  He begins to experiment with drugs and his own sexuality.

Another issue I had with the film was that I'm never made to feel why these people were important literary influences.  I didn't finish Kill Your Darlings wanting to know more about these guys.  The film features lots of scenes of Ginsberg writing and reading poetry, but the moments that worked best were the character moments, especially Carr's interactions with various members of the group.  They are inspired to create a "New Vision", and while there are several moments where you see them throwing out ideas, tearing up books, and working it out, what was the end result?  It wasn't clear to me.

As John Krokidas' feature directing debut goes, it's a decent effort.  I thought the pace dragged a little too much, and there were certain elements and characters that didn't add much to the story or were wasted entirely.  Part of the drag stems from how I mentioned that we begin with the ultimate climax of the film.  Lots of times this can work, but here it just made me antsy knowing I was going to sit through 100 minutes to get to a climax I already knew was coming.  Since this is a little-known story, spoiling how it turns out in the first five minutes was a mistake.  There's very little about the aftermath of this event, and it's all the lead up to it.

It's very well acted though.  Dane DeHaan was extremely charismatic as Lucien Carr, and it's one of those performances where he makes it easy to understand why people were drawn to him.  He plays off everyone well and it was interesting to see how manipulative he could be.  DeHaan's chemistry with Radcliffe is one of the strongest points of the film.  As for Radcliffe, if he wanted to distance himself from Harry Potter or make people start to forget about that part of his career, then he certainly accomplished that with a daring and earnest performance.  I think he even went "full gay."  It's bodes well for his future that he's willing to take risks like this, and it reminds me of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's earlier performance in Mysterious Skin.  Outside of wasting Cross, Leigh, and especially Elizabeth Olsen (an extreme waste), I found most of the performances to be good.

Kill Your Darlings is a stylish and well-acted story, but unfortunately meanders and suffers from lack of focus.  I didn't hate the film, it simply didn't work for me.  If you're someone who's a fan of the Beat Generation, or are interested in Daniel Radcliffe's career post-Potter, then you may get some value from watching it.  It's a rental at best.

2.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

The Spectacular Now (2013)

The Spectacular Now is the sweetest, most poignant movie about teenage alcoholism and enabling I've ever seen.

The Spectacular Now was a much different movie that I was expecting.  My first clue should have been that this was rated R.  You usually don't see a lot of light-hearted teen films with that rating.  My second clue should have been that this was directed by James Ponsoldt, whose last film, Smashed, dealt with a similar theme.  Apparently Ponsoldt's first film, Off the Black, also deals with it as well, but I haven't seen it.  Anyway, the tone of the film caught me a little off guard.  It's not like I didn't like The Spectacular Now, but I'm on borderline on putting in that category of a great film that I'm not sure I want to see again.

Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) is a popular student approaching graduation.  He has a hot girlfriend, Cassidy (Brie Larson), and is the life of the party.  Sutter lives in the now, and it's spectacular.  Get it?  Fortunately, nobody actually says that phrase in the film, so you'd hear that collective, "Oooooh, that's what it means", from the audience.  Sutter has a few issues though.  One, he's more than just a social drinker, and is never without a flask or soda cup spiked with something.  Second, he's not a great student and doesn't have much in the way of ambition or plans after high school.  Cassidy dumps Sutter for these reasons.  After a night of binge drinking, he wakes up on the front lawn of a fellow student, Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley).  She's a bit of a wallflower, but the two of them hit it off and eventually become a couple.  As it's a case of opposites attracting, Sutter's friends think Aimee is a rebound, and Aimee's friends don't want Sutter to screw her over.

While their relationship is sweet, when Sutter gives Aimee a gift of a flask filled with booze, it appears that they may be heading down an unhealthy path.  Aimee is a good student and has a bright future ahead of her.  There's concern about what kind of influence Sutter might have on her.  Sutter genuinely wants the best for Aimee though and encourages her to go away to college and stand up to her mother, even though he doesn't seem interested in following his own advice.

As the case with many character-based stories, I felt it was a little on the slow side as far as pacing, but it picks up as it develops.  This comes to a head when Sutter reconnects with his estranged father (Kyle Chandler), and is disappointed to find out they aren't all that different.  He realizes he's heading down a similar path.  The fact that there's an arc and character growth is one of the things I really liked about the film.  You're left with a satisfying ending that didn't feel forced.

The chemistry between Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller is fantastic and they bounce off each other in a very real way.  Woodley builds on her critically acclaimed performance from The Descendants with another great one.  She's extremely natural and perfectly captures that shy girl falling in love for the first time.  It doesn't even feel like she's acting.  I was actually a little more impressed with Teller though.  I liked him in 21 & Over as a fast-talker in the mold of a young Vince Vaughn, but here he shows dramatic depth and that there's a lot more to him.  When he breaks down in front of his mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), there isn't a dry eye in the theater.  Even in her limited screen time, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Sutter's older sister evokes a similar feeling.  The entire supporting cast is strong.  Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dayo Okeniyi, Brie Larson and Bob Odenkirk are all great.  However, the best performance of the film is by the kid that plays Aimee's younger sister.  He has no dialog, just flips the bird with both hands.  I can't wait to see how his career develops.  Okay, I'm kidding a little on that last one.  Wouldn't it be funny if he grows up and wins an Oscar and then we go back and remember his first role as the flip off kid from The Spectacular Now.

The dialog is very natural and captures the awkwardness of high school, being unsure of yourself and venturing into a relationship.  I expected nothing less from the Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who also wrote (500) Days of Summer, which is still one of my favorite films.  The Spectacular Now is based on a book Tim Tharp, but I had never heard of it prior to seeing the film.  Tharp doesn't even have a entry on Wikipedia.  Someone should correct that.  While this is a heavier film, James Ponsoldt does a great job of balancing the tone and elements.  It's serious when it should be, but sweet and funny when it's not.  You get the feeling that you're watching something important.  At the very least you have to appreciate that this is anything but a typical, predictable teen romance.  Nobody in the film is perfect or can be put in a box.  Like real life, you don't always know how things are going to turn out, and at some points it appears the worst may happen.

As much as I've been anticipating the film, I waited a few extra weeks to see it until my favorite theater, The Vine (www.vinecinema.com), was playing it.  One of the reasons why I love The Vine so much is that it's a theater that has restaurant food and beer.  While watching The Spectacular Now, I found myself drinking at a much slower pace that I normally do.  There's nothing like watching a film about alcoholism to make you take a hard look at yourself.

Darker and more emotional than this year's other coming-of-age offerings, The Spectacular Now offers a nice contrast to them.  It's one of those films that will stick with you well after watching.  It's honest, real, and anything but typical.  The great performances from Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller alone make it worth watching, and you can count this film among the year's best.  I highly recommend watching it.

4.5 out of 5 Death Stars