Kill Your Darling

John Krokidas' Kill Your Darling (US, 2013) - 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." Directed with an assured sense of style that pushes against the narrow confines of its admittedly fascinating story, John Krokidas' first feature feels adventurous yet somewhat hemmed-in as it imagines a vortex of jealousy, obsession and murder that engulfed Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac in the early days of their literary revolution. The picture's pansexual content and intellectual focus will limit its specialty-market reach, but it should court a small, discerning audience. 2013SUN. RATING: 8