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Topic: KILL YOUR FRIENDS - What did you think?!! | Reviews & Poll

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KILL YOUR FRIENDS - what did YOU think? [11 vote(s)]

5 stars - EXCELLENT!
18.2%
4 stars - Good
45.5%
3 stars - It was OK but not enough DaMO
27.3%
2 stars - It was a bit disappointing
9.1%
1 star - I didn't like it at all, this film is not for me
0.0%
DMF
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KILL YOUR FRIENDS - What did you think?!! | Reviews & Poll
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HAVE YOU SEEN KILL YOUR FRIENDS ?

What did you think?

VOTE in the POLL above

share your reactions in the comments below

action

 

Warning: 

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!!!!! 

movietape

 

 

 



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DMF
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There has been a very positive reaction to the film so far!

 









 





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Molonian
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So far so good! Let's keep the good reviews coming!

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Here is a review on a German blog 'The Moviegoers', giving the film 8.5 points.

No mention of Damien but nevertheless a great review and how wonderful to see his name in the credits!

My German is ok ish and can get the gist of most of it, (any German fans out there feel free to correct me!)

 

"You can imagine this pitch-black satire on the music industry as a combination of "Trainspotting", "American Psycho" and "Thank You for Smoking.""Trainspotting" because of the energetic narrative style and great choice of music, "American Psycho" because of protagonist Steven Stelfox, "Thank You for Smoking" because of the uncompromising deconxtruction of an complacent industry. As a whole this highly entertaining melange works really, really well."

"The most remarkable thing about "Kill Your Friends" is director Owen Harris in his screen debut .... together with successful author John Niven managed to make the extremely unsympathetic protagonist Steven into a really fascinating focus of the story , Actually Steven Stelfox is the opposite of a classic figure of identification for the audience. Even the psychopathic "American Psycho" Patrick Bateman looks slightly less obnoxious than this cocky, full of himself supposedly Talent occupied upstart who looks down with an unequaled arrogance on his environment."

"The other actors also do their thing well, succesful casting (?) from Niven even in minor roles" (struggled translating that part)

"Particularly Georgia King  as Steven's wise choice for ambitious secretary Rebecca and Tom Riley as his hated - because unlike Steven he is really competent - competitor Parker-Hall."

"James Corden ensures some delightfully absurd scenes at the beginning"

"Joseph Mawle from the TV series " Ripper Street " nicely embodied Head the legal department Trellick , who acts as a sort of mentor for Steven"



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Damiac
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Great reviews! Still no news about this one hitting theaters and I keep wondering why... confuse I know they wanted to show it in film festivals first to get feedback and more fame before hitting theaters but why is it taking so long.. I'm so ready to see this!! biggrin



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Molonian
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Jozie, I've been thinking and wondering the same thing. Maybe garnering critical success and good reviews will make it easier to sell to more mainstream venues. It may be too dark or edgy to be accepted without a few accolades first.

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Damiac
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So I've just spent some time running German language reviews through google translator.....not ideal, but you do at least get the gist. It really does seem to have gone down very well with German audiences - black humour and sarcastic are the two most common descriptions. The only negative comments I've seen are concerned with the lack of any sort of political or social comment.....and even then it's acknowledged that it's funny!

It seems that Stelfox is the narrator of his story in the film as he is in the book....as one reviewer mentioned that he sometimes talks directly to camera.  Really can't wait to see it myself!



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Oooh, I love that technique. Worked so well for House of Cards! 

I'm feeling marginally more interested in the movie itself. (The book was funny yet horrid; thus far my interest in the movie was for Damien only)



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Molonian
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Stelfox as narrator makes perfect sense for the film. I'm curious to see how the technique works, but mostly I want to see the Ross scenes!

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More great reactions to KYF screenings at Fantasy Filmfest!

 

 















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Damiac
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Fight club is one of my favourite films ever. smile

Everyone seems to be enjoying this.....



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Molonian
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Which is a good sign.

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My all time fave Hal line (just love the way he says it)

"We've been played! My God! We've been played!"

"Annie's getting hysterical downstairs and I'm not enjoying it"

"kill me. Kill me now. You can tell Annie that I attacked you or something"

"“Were you guys talking about me? I heard ‘clearly gorgeous’” 

 "Yes because otherwise you are quite the catch"

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It was the press premiere of KYF at TIFF last night and the reviews are coming in!

 

'Kill Your Friends': Review | Screendaily

 All sense of the British music industry being a giant yellow submarine full of playful moptop Beatles is well and truly laid to rest with Kill Your Friends, screenwriter John Niven’s adaptation of his own cult novel about the morally bankrupt biz, although ‘Help!’ is an appropriate response to an encounter with his relentlessly cynical and remorselessly black-hearted protagonist, A&R man Steven Stelfox (Nicholas Hoult). At its best, Niven’s savvy tale of a business he clearly loathes aims for the inky-bleak humour of Withnail overlaid with the insider-takedown tones of Robert Altman’s The Player, orHow To Get Ahead in Advertising, although he and first-time director Owen Harris struggle to turn this smattering of ingredients into a film that consistently engages.

Harris’s film is clearly pitching for cult status , and the project’s ‘insider’ aura  should help market it into niche theatrical returns

Scarface-levels of cocaine consumption date Kill Your Friends to the 1990s heyday of Britpop (as an A&R talent-spotter, Niven famously turned down the chance to sign Coldplay). Stylistically, its dark-edged patina – daylight full of glaring steel, a night-time of clubs and drugs and strobes and violence – drenches the viewer with its glassy nihilism but also couples Kill Your Friends to the empty world of American Psycho,

For a film about the music business, it’s interesting thatKill Your Friends sticks so faithfully to one note throughout; it’s as if Niven fears any glimpse of humanity might risk the project’s integrity, but the lack of human empathy ultimately becomes this project’s biggest handicap. T

Kill Your Friends fields a few comic gems, though; the rise of a girl band (managed by Transporter’s Ed Skrein) and the selling of Moritz Bleibtrau’s Euro-packaged dance hitSuck My Dick during the MIDEM convention in Cannes are particularly mischievous and laugh-out-loud funny. The cast is knowingly cool, from Hoult on through to James Corden, Joseph Mawle, Georgia King and Craig Roberts. Harris’s film is clearly pitching for cult status , and the project’s ‘insider’ aura  should help market it into niche theatrical returns before setting down into home viewing in the UK, although it may struggle internationally. The soundtrack, as to be expected, is bristling.

Breaking the third wall throughout and speaking directly to camera, Hoult plays the ruthlessly ambitious Steven Selfox, an A&R – artists and repertoire – talent-spotter at Unigram records, where he works under division head ‘Roger Waters’, played entertainingly as a shambling, clueless coke fiend by James Corden. Not particularly talented himself but certainly ambitious, Steven’s loathing for Roger, literally, knows no bounds. He’s a pure-blooded misanthrope, surrounded by men and women who also have a similarly toxic cocktail of drugs and ambition running through their veins in the music industry shark-tank. (Typical of Selfox’s bleakly sardonic narration is the declaration that a track is “the biggest insult to humanity since a room full of Nazis chuckled over the blueprints for Auschwitz”).

With the coked-up artist Rage (Osy Ikhile) about to self-combust to the label’s enormous cost, there’s a race on to sign the new hottest ticket, a band called The Lazies (led by Frida Sundemo),. Selfox dispenses with Roger, only to find himself with a new, equally Machiavellian boss. “How far are you willing to go?” is the question, and Niven/Harris establish early on that Steven Selfox is certainly ready to go the distance.

Georgia King has a nice part as Steven’s put-upon assistant with a mind and ambition of her own, and Craig Roberts turns up as the A&R junior, with Steve Piddock good as the label’s head, Derek, and Edward Hogg playing a music-loving copper sent in to investigate Roger’s sudden disappearance. There’s a point where Kill Your Friends tips over from a sarkily distanced-cynicism into undisguised anger, which is its true underlying colour, but that’s towards the end of this nicely-edited film. Nicholas Hoult effortlessly steps up to leading man status; he’s young enough to be right in the role, but there’s still a depth to Selfox’s fresh-faced duplicity which is eminently watchable.

 

 

'Kill Your Friends': TIFF Review | The Hollywood Reporter

Based on John Niven's cult novel, this darkly comic feature debut by Owen Harris revisits a golden age of fear and loathing in the music industry.

In the late 1990s, the UK music industry hit stratospheric new heights of success and excess thanks to a bumper crop of mega-selling homegrown bands including Oasis, BlurRadiohead and the Spice Girls. Shortly before illegal downloads and plummeting CD sales brought the party to a crashing end, British pop enjoyed one last blazing golden age. Incoming Prime Minister Tony Blair even invited various rock stars into 10 Downing Street to celebrate the champagne supernova that some called "Cool Britannia". Fortunes were made, mediocrities became megastars, and Scarface-sized mountains of cocaine were consumed.

This is the backdrop to Kill Your Friends, a bracingly dark comedy based on the cult 2008 novel by the Scottish authorJohn Niven. Drawing on his own experiences working at a London record company, Niven also wrote the screenplay for first-time Brit director Owen Harris, maintaining most of the book's key plot points but diluting some of its more grotesque, profane, scatological elements. Making its North American debut in Toronto this weekend, Kill Your Friends remixes a brutally funny novel into an entertaining if somewhat familiar big-screen tale of amoral, chemically-fuelled decadence. Domestic buzz will ensure brisk business when the film goes on UK release in November, with more niche appeal likely in overseas markets.

Nicholas Hoult (X-Men, Mad Max) stars as Steven Stelfox, a 27-year-old A&R manager at a major London record label. Responsible for finding and nurturing new talent, Stelfox is solely focused on scoring hit records that will boost his own wealth, status and career prospects. Although he knows the right cool names to drop when talking to co-workers and potential signings, he despises the romantic notion that music has any artistic value. "Do these look like the shoes of somebody who gives a fuck about the Velvet Underground?" he sneers.

With his hollow-cheeked, dead-eyed, vulpine good looks, Hoult is well cast as Stelfox, a Machiavellian psychopath who will stop at nothing to achieve his career ambitions, from office back-stabbing to blackmail to murder. One key stumbling block is his immediate boss (James Corden), who duly meets a brutal end involving vast quantities of drugs and a baseball bat. But new obstacles soon spring up to thwart Stelfox, including a secretary who knows his dark secrets (Georgia King) and a dogged detective with musical ambitions (Edward Hogg). Before long the bodies start to stack up.

Niven cites screenwriter William Goldman's celebrated memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade as a key inspiration for Kill Your Friends, especially his golden rule about the Hollywood formula for commercial success: Nobody Knows Anything. The character of Stelfox also has some more obvious literary ancestors, notably the homicidal anti-heroes in Brett Easton EllisAmerican Psycho and Irvine Welsh's Filth. All three are strong, witty, knowing voices on the page. All three lose some crucial texture and depth in the leap from book to screen.

Harris and Niven try to recreate the book's confessional first-person tone by having Hoult intermittently talk directly to camera. But the literary Stelfox was much more misogynistic, homophobic, racist and generally contemptuous of humanity than his screen avatar. Possibly for commercial reasons, the film-makers have softened their protagonist's toxic nature a little, earning a 14A rating but sacrificing some of his diabolical charisma and lacerating wit in the process. The movie is tamer than the novel, almost becoming a celebration of overblown hedonism in Wolf of Wall Streetmode rather than a portrait of a morally vacant, mentally unhinged monster.

That said, Harris still takes us for a deliciously nasty walk on the wild side, doing a solid job with his feature debut. Appropriately, the soundtrack features several big Britpop stars from the era in question - Blur, Oasis, Prodigy, Chemical Brothers - plus a propulsive original score by Junkie XL (Mad Max). Some strong cameos also stand out, including Rosanna Arquette as a New York record label boss and Moritz Bleibtreu as a mullet-haired German producer of pornographic techno anthems. While not quite as vicious and vulgar as it should have been, at least Kill Your Friends is a movie that understands the potency of cheap music.



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Damiac
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Still no mention of Damien  cry

Despite earlier assurances, I'm not at all surprised to hear that it's been toned down a bit from the book.  Sounds like it'll probably get a 15 cert here in the UK.....which will make my Nick Hoult fangirl daughter very happy!  Wonder how many times she'll come and see it with me!!



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Marvellous Molonian Moderator
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I noticed there was no mention of Damien too.

Aww mother and daughter fangirling !

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DMF
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More reviews are in and they are very mixed indeed! The Guardian hated it, giving it only 2 stars. But then, this film was never not going to cause a stir... because of its content!
And yes, still not a mention of Damien!!!!!! grrr.... 

Toronto Film Review: ‘Kill Your Friends’ | Variety

Kill Your Friends review - Nicholas Hoult is a poor man's Patrick Bateman in tiresome comedy | The Guardian

TIFF Review: 'Kill Your Friends' Starring Nicholas Hoult, Craig Roberts, James Corden & Rosanna Arquette | The Playlist

‘Kill Your Friends’ Review: Nicholas Hoult Rises to the Top | TIFF 2015 | Collider



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Marvellous Molonian Moderator
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Yeah it was always going to be a 'marmite' kind of film. At least people are talking about it !

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DMF
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How true, I like that. These are the critics reviews... I have not seen a single negative review from the audience who have seen the film so far!

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First twitter mention (any mention) I've seen about DaMo in KYF! 

 

 

 



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Damiac
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And it sounds promising!aww 



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DMF
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I am more excited now Jozie! Damien in a hilarious role is an exciting prospect!



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Positive KYF review from Exclaim.ca

Kill Your Friends review | Exclaim

The premise is ludicrous, but you'll be hard pressed to find a better film that looks at the over zealousness and self-seriousness of those found in the more lucrative side of the music business, and how intrinsically funny their motives and decision-making can be.

 

It's a dirty, poignant and downright hilarious film, and even funnier if you've ever felt the sting of the often absurd music industry. 


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An insightful KYF review from TV and Film Now, but does seem to confirm what we suspected about not enough screentime for loads of the actors...

Kill Your Friends Review: Nicholas Hoult Stars In A Darkly Comic Satire | Film and TV Now

 

"The film has such a large collection of established and upcoming British talent that it’s unfortunate the film seems to forget that most of them exist halfway through"



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I'm supposed to keep this spoiler free, so just some quick words about Kill Your Friends.

The movie is hilarious!  They kept the spirit of the story, but despite what Tom Riley said, they did tone it down alot in my opinion. Makes Stelfox a much more sympathisable character, but by today's TV/film standards it's hardly an outrageous film. Great use of the narration technique. My only complaint is exactly what that last review you posted domino mentioned - they forget that all these great actors are in the movie.  Way underused, all of them. (but of course, especially Damien) And the camera work is fast.  The camera hardly rests on anyone's face longer than a few seconds at a time when they are in a group.  At least if felt that way.

Ross is one of the marketing guys, he appears about 8 times.  And he talks in all but one of his scenes I think.  His accent is "common".  I don't know enough about accents to say if he's supposed to be from an particular region.  And since they are all high off their kites most of the time, he's exciteable and extra slurry.  But to be fair, I miss about a third of the dialogue simply because I'm American. I didn't get some of the slang/references and they tended to talk fast. But as I said, I'm accent impaired.

His hair and clothes though. Not the most flattering.

Damien's name does not appear in the opening credits, unless I missed it, but does obviously appear in the end credits which are by order of appearance, so he's somewhere in the middle.

I'm just not sure what to say and what not to say that constitutes spoilers, so I will leave it at that for now. Not as dark as the book, not nearly enough Damien, but overall a fun movie.



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papillon... pamplemousse... bibliothèque... un baiser
A lilt in his voice.  Every sentence like music...
#kisskisskiss 
A terrible beauty is born.
Love me some #Jacksass

Damiac
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So glad you enjoyed it whimsy! Really looking foward to seeing it for myself coolbounce

I confess that -although he is in the trailers we've seen - I was worried that damo might be a bit 'blink and you'll miss him'.....so I'm pleased it sounds like he's actually there.....although it's inevitable that there won't be enough!   Ugh!  3 long weeks til it comes out here.....I'm desperate to hear some more....especially as I've already read the book!  Maybe you could spill some beans under a spoiler link thingy?  



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