Kill Your Darlings, Cinemas across London

In his latest film Kill Your Darlings, Daniel Radcliffe's performance as the tradition busting, non-conformist beat poet Alan Ginsburg has already been praised by critics as intelligent, informed and wellconsidered. Pretty good going considering the first time he read Ginsburg's Howl,he says he had barely gotten through three pages before he was utterly confused.

  Ever eager to demonstrate the breadth of his range in theaftermath of the Potter films, Radcliffe plays the young, naïve Ginsburg as hearrives at Columbia College, New York, and is introduced to the writers withwhom he would go on to found the beat movement: William Burroughs and JackKerouac.

  The film is very much a period piece, evoking the romantic and hedonistic East Village scene of these aspiring writers. Its release is capitalising on the recent fashion for films about this era such as  Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Freidman's  Howl (2010)  and Walter Salles'  On The Road (2012).  But Kill YourDarlings distinguishes itself  by approaching the beat generation with a lot less sentimentality and credulity. Centring around the true story of a murder of the three poet's mutual friend, the film shows the group as they fragment and break apart in the after-math of the crime, and doesn’t stop much on the way to fawn over them as transcendent geniuses or inspired revolutionaries.

  It's a must see for any devotee of the beats, but even if you couldn't care less about Kerouac, Ginsburg, a scene where Radcliffe kisses Daniel DeHaan (who plays Lucien Carr) adds a point of interest.