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10 Great Movies From 2013 That You Probably Missed In Theatres

More than 600 movies received a theatrical release in 2013, which means that if you went to see a new movie every day this year, you still could not cover the whole cinematic spectrum. 2013 was, in this critic’s opinion, one of the best years for film in recent memory. Of the 80 or so films I saw this year, I enjoyed about two thirds of them. The titles that I can recommend heartily range from big-budget extravaganzas (among them, Gravity and Star Trek Into Darkness), as well as modest films that did not last long in theatres. If the diversity of the picks from early awards and critics prizes attest to anything, it is that the variety of quality films was vast this year.

[h2]4) Kill Your Darlings[/h2]

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Its title comes from an axiom to ‘murder’ extraneous bits of style from one’s writing or art, but Kill Your Darlings works supremely as a stylish, engaging drama about the early days of the Beat generation. It also features career-best turns from Daniel Radcliffe and Dane DeHaan, as poet Allan Ginsberg and his acid-tongued friend Lucien Carr, respectively.

Based on a true story, the film focuses on these young, dangerous minds and other friends – including Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) – during the freewheeling mid-1940s. Allan and Lucien want to abandon the tenets of traditional poetry and begin a more experimental manifesto dependent more on free verse. Writer/director John Krokidas focuses on these sly minds who want to slay each other with wit and words, and mines riveting emotional depth with his stellar cast.

The main draws of Kill Your Darlings are Radcliffe and DeHaan, and they both give exceptional performances. As a timid Ginsberg soon driven wild by same-sex thoughts, Radcliffe is revealing and vulnerable. The main find is DeHaan though, magnetic in every scene with a reptilian smile and James Dean haircut, an angel-headed rebel whose quest for literary freedom ignites something within Ginsberg. Under Krokidas’ direction, who enlivens the story with a pulsating, jazz-fueled atmosphere and music associated with the Beat lifestyle, we begin to care deeply about these self-absorbed outcasts.

For more on Kill Your Darlings, check out our exclusive video interview with the cast and director below.