THE BEACH BUM (US/UK/Switzerland/France - 2019) Written and directed by Harmony Korine. Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Martin Lawrence, Zac Efron, Stefania LaVie Owen, Jimmy Buffett, Jonah Hill, Donovan St. V. Williams, Clinton Archambault, Joshua Ritter, Chela Arias, Bertie Higgins. (R, 95 mins) The stoner comedy THE BEACH BUM is a pretty blatant attempt by Matthew McConaughey to give himself his own BIG LEBOWSKI. Like Jeff Bridges, he's practically iconic just by being "Matthew McConaughey," right down to his signature "alright, alright, alright," which will likely be carved into his tombstone. McConaughey tried one of these projects before with 2008's barely-released and largely-forgotten SURFER, DUDE, an ill-advised, self-produced vanity project that came a few years before the vaunted "McConnaissance" that culminated in his Oscar for DALLAS BUYERS CLUB. With THE BEACH BUM, McConaughey puts himself in the hands of writer/director Harmony Korine, who made an enfant terrible splash a generation ago as the 22-year-old wunderkind screenwriter of Larry Clark's controversial 1995 provocation KIDS. Korine went on to direct his own films of varying degrees of unwatchability, like 1997's GUMMO and 1999's JULIEN DONKEY-BOY. He remained on the fringes of the indie scene over the next decade, with 2008's MISTER LONELY getting some acclaim before 2009's TRASH HUMPERS had him back in GUMMO mode. With 2013's instant cult classic SPRING BREAKERS, with perhaps the ultimate James Franco performance, Korine demonstrated an unexpected maturity in his ability to make something relatively multiplex-accessible. THE BEACH BUM again finds Korine in the vicinity of mainstream, albeit with some expected indie and arthouse flourishes, mainly in the form of the same kind of striking cinematography that Benoit Debie provided for SPRING BREAKERS. There's just something hauntingly beautiful about a shot of McConaughey's stoned character dancing in a torrential downpour lit with some SUSPIRIA-esque purple filters with accompaniment by Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown."
While THE BIG LEBOWSKI had a shaggy dog mystery plot to guide The Dude along in his ambling antics, THE BEACH BUM feels mostly improvised and pretty much a goof on the part of all involved that's equal parts arthouse indie, DAZED AND CONFUSED, Cheech & Chong, and '80s slob comedy propelled by a ton of yacht rock needle drops. In a role he was born to play, McConaughey is Moondog, an affable stoner and Key West folk hero who spends his days smoking weed, drinking PBR, doing lines, getting laid, cruising on his boat christened Well Hung, and hanging with celebrity bros like Jimmy Buffett and Bertie Higgins, even joining the latter onstage at a beachfront bar for a rendition of his 1982 hit "Key Largo." Ostensibly a once-revered poet (think Charles Bukowski crossed with Captain Ron), though his watching an old VHS tape of a nearly vacant reading says otherwise, Moondog gets by on the family wealth passed down to his wife Minnie (Isla Fisher), with whom he's in an open marriage. She's in Miami, hooked up with Moondog's soul-singing best friend Lingerie (Snoop Dogg), and Moondog has just arrived for the wedding of the daughter Heather (Stefania LaVie Owen) to the square Frank (Joshua Ritter), referred to by everyone as "Limpdick." Moondog and Minnie go bar-hopping after the wedding, and a drunk and stoned Minnie crosses left of center and is killed in a head-on collision. Moondog survives and is told by her lawyer (Clinton Archambault) that half of the $100 million inheritance goes to Heather, while his half is held in escrow until he publishes his next long-delayed book of poetry, Minnie's final inspiration to get him off his ass and do something. Instead, he rounds up a bunch of homeless guys and destroys one of his houses, which leads to his arrest and a choice: jail or rehab. Moondog opts for rehab, which lasts almost an entire day before he busts out with Flicker (Zac Efron), a JNCO-wearing, panini-bearded, paint-huffing pyromaniac who once fronted a Creed cover band.
Efron doesn't even appear until around the 50-minute mark, and in about ten minutes of screen time, with the help of some hypnotically captivating facial hair that should be an early front-runner for next year's Best Supporting Actor Oscar, almost manages to steal the movie from McConaughey, bringing a surprisingly dark edge to what's been pretty aimless and easy-going for the most part. Even the grieving over Minnie's death is played for laughs, with Moondog reminiscing to Heather about how "Your mom had an amazing ass...and she could fellate like a python!" McConaughey is clearly enjoying himself playing one of the most irresponsible characters you'll ever see, though there's never any doubt he's a loving father. Heather's forgiving affection for him is genuine, though she recognizes his flaws and can hardly conceal the fact that marrying a guy like Frank is an act of rebellion (when Frank criticizes Moondog, Heather says "He's a great man...he's brilliant. You'll never be great or brilliant...but you're dependable"). Once Moondog breaks out of rehab, THE BEACH BUM becomes a series of increasingly silly vignettes, with a visit to his dolphin tour guide buddy Captain Wack (Martin Lawrence) and his coke-addicted parrot, and a trip to a party yacht with Lingerie and Buffett, who write an ode to Moondog called "Moonfog" before the cops arrive and Lingerie whisks him to a small charter plane captained by his personal pilot, an elderly rasta (Donovan St.V. Williams) with severe glaucoma. THE BEACH BUM has some genuine heart to it and there's no shortage of outrageous scenes (Minnie ripping a bong as Moondog goes down on her...while she's getting a pedicure) and quotable dialogue (Lingerie, officiating the wedding, asks Heather why she's settling down with a guy like "Limpdick" when "your pink tweeter ain't even squirted yet," which, trust me, is hilarious when said by Snoop Dogg). Sure, there isn't a whole lot to THE BEACH BUM's ramshackle structure beyond McConaughey trying to turn Moondog into his version of The Dude. It could've used more Snoop and Efron, and even at 95 minutes, it starts to wear a little thin by the end, but truthfully, I laughed quite a bit, which is more than I can say for a lot of present-day comedies. And while it's not exactly the best Matthew McConaughey performance, it's certainly the most Matthew McConaughey performance.
ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST (France/Spain/Belgium - 2014; US release 2015)
Giving audiences the rare opportunity to see Benicio Del Toro in a movie about drug trafficking, ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST grants the Oscar-winning actor a role he was seemingly born to play: infamous Medellin Cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar (1949-1993). Unfortunately, ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST is a tedious misfire hellbent on making Pablo Escobar a supporting character, and there are long stretches where Del Toro, who gained quite a bit of weight to play the cartel head in his indulgent years just before his 1991 incarceration, is offscreen. Rather, the focus is on Nick Brady (THE HUNGER GAMES' Josh Hutcherson), a Canadian who's somehow found his way into the Escobar inner circle on the eve of the boss turning himself over to Colombian authorities. Flashbacks show Nick was a surfer spending time doing Habitat for Humanity-type charity work in Colombia in the mid '80s with his older brother Dylan (Brady Corbet) and his wife Anne (Ana Girardot). Nick meets and quickly falls in love with nurse Maria (Claudia Traisac), who happens to be the beloved niece of her protective uncle (you guessed it) Pablo Escobar. Nick is welcomed into the family and affectionately dubbed "Nico," but tries to keep a distance from knowing too much about Uncle Pablo. Escobar is lauded as a benevolent hero by the people after his 80% stake in the world's cocaine traffic has made him a multi-billionaire with some interests in legitimate businesses, like opening a hospital for his nurse niece. But Escobar is a powerful and merciless boss who doesn't like loose ends, and he wants them all tied up before he goes to prison. Nick realizes far too late that he knows too much and the lives of everyone he loves are in danger and that Uncle Pablo intends to have him killed.
The directorial debut of Italian actor Andrea Di Stefano (Dario Argento's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and Hollywood fare like EAT PRAY LOVE and LIFE OF PI), ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST is plodding and sluggishly-paced, perhaps because you aren't expecting a movie alleged to be about Pablo Escobar to instead focus on Peeta Mellark and his Colombian girlfriend. Del Toro pops in and out of the story with the majesty of a slovenly Don Vito Corleone, but the bulk of the film focuses on Nick, who's based on a person who was involved with Escobar's niece, but beyond that, his story as presented here is a work of fiction, which begs the question "Who cares?" Di Stefano has essentially dropped the character of Pablo Escobar into a Josh Hutcherson movie that could just as easily be titled THE MEDELLIN GAMES. Things pick up when Nick realizes he's a target and Escobar's men start pursuing him, but then the story just becomes an excuse for Hutcherson to play a suddenly gun-toting, blood-splattered badass blasting caps into some cartel flunkies. After a deadly dull opening hour and change, it at least belatedly comes alive when it turns into a conventional chase thriller, but it's too little, too late. There's one admittedly great scene that's very well-acted by Hutcherson, when he hears an inconceivably savage act on the other end of the line during a phone call, but almost everything else is ponderous, predictable, and boring. The Weinstein Company acquired this in early 2014 and sat on it for a year and a half before releasing it on just 105 screens in June of 2015. Its Blu-ray/DVD release has been expertly timed with the wide release of SICARIO, a far superior Del Toro drug trafficking saga. The actor makes a superb Escobar, but this isn't the Escobar movie he should've done. (R, 120 mins)
MANGLEHORN (US/UK - 2015)
The third chapter in Al Pacino's back-to-basics, character-driven trifecta of low-key indie films following THE HUMBLING and DANNY COLLINS, David Gordon Green's MANGLEHORN lets the Oscar-winning screen legend be eccentric without resorting to his familiar post-SCENT OF A WOMAN histrionics. Pacino is very good here, but the film is a mixed bag, with Green too often engaging in self-indulgent asides and distracting detours into quirkiness that serve no real purpose other than establishing film festival bona fides. Pacino is A.J. Manglehorn, a sad-eyed locksmith in a smallish Texas suburb. Manglehorn works and spends most of his days alone with his beloved cat Fanny and occasionally takes his adorable granddaughter Kylie (Skyler Gasper) to the park. Divorced and mostly estranged from his high-rolling investment broker son Jacob (Chris Messina), Manglehorn laments a life wasted, spent without his lost love Clara. The proverbial "one that got away," Manglehorn pours his heart out in letters relayed in voiceover and mailed to Clara daily, and every day, there's an envelope in his mailbox stamped "Return to Sender." At first coming across like a tragic and lonely old soul, Manglehorn is soon revealed to be abrasive and a bit of an asshole who seems to sabotage his interactions, whether it's an unpleasant lunch with Jacob, where he complains about the food and how he never loved Jacob's mother because she was a poor substitute for Clara, or running into sleazy tanning salon owner/part-time pimp Gary (SPRING BREAKERS director Harmony Korine, in a role that seems like it was intended for Green pal Danny McBride), a socially inept, no-filter type prone to using words like "retard" and "mulatto" in public, but who still idolizes Manglehorn, his childhood Little League coach. Manglehorn has a friendly flirtation with bank teller Dawn (Holly Hunter) that leads to a disastrous date that goes south as soon as Manglehorn does what he always does: surely as THE BIG LEBOWSKI's Walter Sobchak made everything about Vietnam, Manglehorn steers every conversation into another rambling tale-of-woe monologue about how he let Clara slip away.
At its core, MANGLEHORN is a tale of redemption for a bitter, angry man who has some good in him, especially when it comes to his devotion to his granddaughter and his willingness to drain a good chunk of his savings on an expensive surgery for an ill Fanny. But Manglehorn wants Clara and is content to make everyone within earshot as miserable as he is about not being with her. It gets repetitive after a while (though his date with Dawn is a small masterpiece for connoisseurs of cringe), and Green's idiosyncratic digressions--a guy breaking into song in the bank and a teller responding in kind; Manglehorn encountering a multi-car pileup involving a truck full of smashed watermelons that looks like a pointless homage to Jean-Luc Godard's WEEKEND; one scene where he shows off some De Palma-style trickery that comes off like directorial wankery--just get in the way. Green also does some obvious telegraphing with the way he deliberately keeps the viewer out of a locked room that Manglehorn enters daily and emerges in a rage--of course, it's the decades-long shrine for the unattainable Clara, every returned letter filed away, every rejected bouquet of flowers wilted and rotting, which makes him look less like an unfortunate man burdened with a lifetime of sorrow and regret and more like an obsessed loon who needs a restraining order. Pacino's skills help him play a largely unplayable character, and by the time it's over, it's little more than a quirky indie version of AS GOOD AS IT GETS. Even with its many ups and downs, MANGLEHORN is still required viewing for Pacino completists, but be warned going in that it includes a feel-good ending that directly involves a mime. (PG-13, 97 mins)
COP CAR (US - 2015)
Often coming off like a hastily-sketched idea that the Coen Bros. penciled into the margins of a script only to not include it, the acclaimed indie COP CAR has a solid premise that isn't quite enough to carry it to feature length. It gets a lot of mileage from a terrific, frantic performance by a Brimley-stached Kevin Bacon as Sheriff Mitch Kretzer, a suburban lawman whose day goes from bad to worse when his cruiser is stolen by a pair of grubby ten-year-old runaways who take it on a joyride. Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) are two of the dumbest, most obnoxious brats in cinema history, a pre-teen Beavis and Butt-Head who make one idiotic decision after another, usually involving playing with Kretzer's weapons they find in the backseat and staring down the barrel of the guns to figure out why they aren't firing. They also don't know there's a body in the trunk, the second of two that a coke-fueled, corrupt Kretzer was trying to bury in a field--he was off disposing of the first body when the idiot kids stumbled on the seemingly abandoned cop car. As the kids recklessly drive around the rural outskirts of town, plowing through fields and stopping to point automatic weapons at one another, Kretzer races around town, first on foot, then in a stolen car, then finally in his own pickup, to try and cover his tracks and locate the kids.
Directed and co-written by Jon Watts, who was rewarded (?) with the upcoming SPIDER-MAN reboot based on the festival buzz around COP CAR, the film mostly works as a thriller, but the implausibilities and the plot conveniences abound. It's never believable that Kretzer manages to misdirect all the other cops on the force and keeping them chasing their own tails all day, and it's tough to buy the way he goes about undetected all day long, even when he's pulled over by one of his own cops, calls in a fake emergency to the dispatcher on his cell phone, and manages to go unrecognized, with the now-distracted cop letting him off with the warning without really even taking a good look at him. Bacon is great as the wiry, frazzled, increasingly wigged-out Kretzer, and the child actors do a convincing job of playing--by design--a pair of stupid and truly appalling little shits, though Wellford's Harrison is slightly less loathsome than Freedson-Jackson's cocky, twerpy Travis. There's a couple of other characters--Camryn Manheim as a concerned citizen who spots the kids swerving in the cop car on a back road, and Shea Whigham ends up playing a prominent role, plus Bacon's wife Kyra Sedgwick provides the voice of the gullible dispatcher--but Bacon is the real show here. He's excellent, but the film seems ultimately too slight even for just under 90 minutes. (R, 88 mins)
This visually striking adaptation of Dostoyevsky's 1846 novella uses the title and the concept of the self, but really ventures off into its own dystopian nightmare black comedy scenario more akin to the likes of George Orwell and Franz Kafka. The retro-futurist production design recalls the drab and bleak worlds of Terry Gilliam's classic BRAZIL (1985) and Orson Welles' Kafka adaptation THE TRIAL (1962). There's also a lot of THE TRIAL in one of two performances by Jesse Eisenberg, who does a remarkable job of channeling Anthony Perkins' Josef K. in his portrayal of meek office drone Simon James. Afraid of his own shadow, Simon is employed by a bureaucratic company called ColLoc and works in a dreary, gray, overcrowded, and oppressively hot office building. He gets hassled by the security guard, who still doesn't recognize him after seven years of employment. His co-workers and his demanding boss Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn) rarely seem to notice him and if they do, they get his name wrong ("Stanley!"). Simon would rather keep quiet and look down, and on the rare occasions he considers speaking, he can't get a word out, especially around his cold mother (Phyllis Somerville), who can't even point him out when he's clearly visible in an improbably upbeat ColLoc TV commercial. He secretly pines for co-worker Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), finding excuses to visit her department for painfully awkward interaction or just spying on her through his telescope, as her apartment building is adjacent to his own. Simon's tenuous grip on his world is jeopardized when Mr. Papadopoulous hires James Simon (also Eisenberg), a doppelganger who looks just like Simon but is his opposite in every other way: brash and egotistical where Simon is quiet and withdrawn, James is Simon's id run rampant. His gregarious personality wins over the office. He coasts by on Simon's hard work. He bullies a waitress (Cathy Moriarty) into bringing him breakfast after they've stopped serving while she can't even be bothered to bring Simon a Coke. He seduces Hannah and the boss' daughter (Yasmin Paige) and demands a copy of Simon's apartment key so he can arrange other trysts he wants to keep secret from Hannah ("I'll also be taking other women up there, in case you start noticing different smells"). Obviously, Simon can only be pushed so far.
A cursory glance at some of the names associated with THE DOUBLE guarantees it'll at the very least be an interesting experience. Directed and co-written by comedian, music video director, and THE IT CROWD co-star Richard Ayoade, the film also lists Michael Caine and Harmony Korine among its producers, it's co-written by Korine's younger brother Avi, and in addition to Shawn and Moriarty, its eclectic supporting cast features, among others, James Fox, Noah Taylor, Rade Serbedzija, Chris O'Dowd, and Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis as an irate janitor. THE DOUBLE obviously owes a huge debt to Terry Gilliam and Orson Welles, but it still manages to be a unique and very well-executed bit of paranoia, dark comedy, and bleak misanthropy, anchored by two brilliant Eisenberg performances that play to both of his screen personas and allow him to take them into some dark places. Only released on 16 screens and VOD, THE DOUBLE didn't get much of a push from Magnolia and grossed just $200,000, but it shouldn't take very long for it to become a word-of-mouth cult item. (R, 93 mins)
A GOOD MAN (US - 2014)
For most casual moviegoers, Steven Seagal probably fell off the pop culture radar around 2002, the last time one of his own headlining vehicles (HALF PAST DEAD) made it into theaters. In the years since, his A&E reality series STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN and his jokey supporting turn as a villain in Robert Rodriguez's MACHETE (2010) have alerted the general public to his continued existence, but only hardcore denizens of the DTV gutter know that Seagal's been consistently cranking out a ton of low-budget and mostly terrible actioners, starring in no less than 25 nearly interchangeable straight-to-DVD titles in the 12 years since HALF PAST DEAD served as an unintentionally prophetic description of his big-screen career. Seagal doesn't seem to be well-liked by his peers--he was never invited to take part in any EXPENDABLES entries--and the only time he makes the news now is when he releases a hilariously awful blues album or is seen hanging out with his close personal friend Vladimir Putin. Most of Seagal's DTV titles are thoroughly worthless, with the once-engaging action icon setting new benchmarks in apathy by letting his obvious double handle everything from strenuous fight scenes to simple shots where his back is to the camera and he answers questions by nodding. If you see enough of these, you start to notice that it's frequently only really Seagal if he has a close-up or if it's a two-shot and he's talking, and even then, sometimes the co-star is much shorter and "Seagal"'s head is out of the frame. There were even a few instances in the mid-2000s where his performance was badly dubbed over by someone else for some unexplained reason. Seagal puts the bare minimum amount of work into most of these productions but, like a broken clock being right twice a day, a couple of them have been accidentally decent, like 2009's THE KEEPER and 2010's A DANGEROUS MAN, the latter being better than most of what he had in theaters during his late '90s decline before 2001's EXIT WOUNDS gave him a very brief comeback.
A GOOD MAN is typical of Seagal's straight-to-DVD output. It's hardly the worst of the lot, but that doesn't exactly merit a recommendation. Rather than being aggressively shitty, it's merely predictable and boring, with Seagal as Alexander, codename "Ghost," an ex-covert ops guy living off the grid in "Eastern Europe" (like many of Seagal's movies these days, this was shot on-the-cheap in Romania) after a raid on a Middle East terrorist compound went south two years earlier. Ghost involves himself in the troubles of attractive neighbor Lena (Iulia Verdes) and her kid sister Mya (Sofia Nicolaescu), whose safety is jeopardized by their American half-brother Sasha's (Victor Webster) involvement with Russian mobster Vladimir (Claudiu Bleont). Sasha owes Vladimir a ton of money via a debt accrued by his late father, and Ghost sees this as the perfect opportunity to start a war between Vladimir and terror cell financier Mr. Chen (Tzi Ma, best known for the Coen Bros. remake of THE LADYKILLERS), who was responsible for what went down in the Middle East two years earlier. A GOOD MAN offers everything you expect from modern-day Seagal: the star using a ridiculously affected and completely inappropriate accent, thankfully abandoning his N'awlins drawl of recent years but resorting to an even more ludicrous-sounding hip-hop dialect that sounds like Drexl Spivey after a root canal. This leads to a mush-mouthed Seagal shouting things like "All y'all muthafuckaz," and "I wondah how much pussy he get?" proving that at no point during filming did director Keoni Waxman pull his star aside and remind him that he's 62 years old. There's also the now-standard Seagal fighting style, which consists of being there for the close-ups and sticking his arm out so a bad guy can run into it while Waxman shakes the camera around to simulate "fighting action" before cutting to actual fighting with "Seagal" shot from behind as his younger and more svelte double does the heavy lifting. Finally, about an hour or so in, we get another signature move in the modern Seagal repertoire: the mid-film sabbatical where he disappears for 20 or more minutes while a co-star--in this case, Webster--advances the plot and gets a bunch of action scenes. Seagal stars in a lot of movies, but he's one of the laziest actors in the business and A GOOD MAN does nothing to counter that reputation and halt his ongoing free-fall into irrelevance. (R, 103 mins) DOM HEMINGWAY (UK - 2013; US release 2014)
Writer/director Richard Shepard scored an acclaimed indie sleeper hit with 2005's THE MATADOR, with Pierce Brosnan as a lethal assassin and all-around bad guy having a crisis of conscience when he befriends nice-guy salesman Greg Kinnear. Shepard explores somewhat similar territory--at least the redemption aspect--in DOM HEMINGWAY, which opens as strong as any film this year with an introductory rant by the title character (Jude Law) and a punchline that won't soon be forgotten and sets the tone right from the start that it's not going to be playing things safe. Law is all maniacal bluster, fusing elements of Dennis Hopper in BLUE VELVET, Ben Kingsley in SEXY BEAST, and Lee Marvin in POINT BLANK into one memorable madman. Safecracker Dom is released from a British prison, where he's been locked up for 12 years after refusing to rat on crime boss Ivan Fontaine (Demian Bichir). Teaming up with his best friend/handler Dickie (Richard E. Grant), Dom heads to St. Tropez to collect the money he feels Fontaine owes him for his work and his silence. Unfortunately, Dom can't keep his volcanic temper in check and ends up endlessly insulting Fontaine, his girlfriend Paolina (Madalena Ghenea), and Dickie. He succeeds in making amends, and Fontaine gives him more money than he ever expected. After a drunken car wreck results in Paolina running off with his money, Dom makes his way back to London and tries reconnecting with his estranged daughter Evelyn (GAME OF THRONES' Emilia Clarke), who resents him for spending 12 years behind bars and not being there when her mother--Dom's wife--was dying of cancer. Evelyn has a young son with whom Dom tries to get acquainted, and while he wants to go straight, he shoots his mouth off and ends up tangling with Lestor (Jumayn Hunter), Fontaine's chief rival and a man who has a score to settle with Dom.
DOM HEMINGWAY starts off so darkly hilarous and gloriously foul and profane that it's dispiriting when it veers off into the realm of feelgood redemption dramedy at its midpoint. Law's performance--one of his best--keeps things afloat but the shift in tone is cumbersome, to say the least. It's hard not to laugh at Dom incorporating James Taylor lyrics into a bile-soaked tirade that also has him threatening to "throat-fuck" Fontaine, but it's awfully difficult to buy him getting all misty over the grandson he never knew shortly after. It's not that a sociopath like Dom can't find genuine emotions of that sort deep within himself--it's that the film doesn't feel genuine in the journey of its central character. Dom is whatever the plot needs him to be at any given time, and even Evelyn's change of heart about her dad doesn't really ring true. The first half of DOM HEMINGWAY is outrageously entertaining, but it fizzles once Evelyn enters the story and never regains its footing. It's too bad because until the film starts stumbling and bumbling, it features some of the finest work of Law's career, and he gets some excellent support from Grant as his perpetually suffering yet always loyal sidekick. It's not always successful, but they make it worth seeing. (R, 93 mins)
Written and directed by Harmony Korine. Cast: James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane, Sidney Sewell, Thurman Sewell. (R, 94 mins)
After writing the script for Larry Clark's controversial KIDS (1995), Harmony Korine became an indie icon of sorts with his own directing efforts, ranging from the repugnant (GUMMO, TRASH HUMPERS) to the merely unwatchable (JULIEN DONKEY-BOY). While Korine has his defenders, I've never made it all the way through any of the films he's directed. The surprise with SPRING BREAKERS is not only that it's a Korine film in multiplexes nationwide, or that it has name actors, including the subversive casting of Disney good girls doing very bad things, but that it shows that Korine can indeed make a real movie once he decided to quit dicking around. It's by far his most commercial film yet, though still not for all tastes and certain to alienate most mainstream audiences, but it's filled with such dazzling visuals and garish colors (Korine is working with cinematographer Benoit Debie, who's shot films by Gaspar Noe, Fabrice du Welz, and Dario Argento), propelled by some memorably quotable dialogue, some very Steven Soderbergh-inspired editing, and a propulsive, constant score by Cliff Martinez (another Soderbergh fixture) and Skrillex, that it's an exhilirating, adrenalized, and very cinematic experience, miles ahead of anything Korine's done in the past or even seemed capable of doing. At 40, it's possible that Korine has finally grown up. SPRING BREAKERS is unexpectedly inspired, frequently brilliant, and one of the year's best films.
For a while, Korine fashions the film as a hard-R MTV Spring Break special, with copious amount of alcohol, drugs, partying, and the requisite jiggle and gratuitous nudity. But slowly, a style emerges and the plot kicks in as we follow four college students and their desperate attempt to get to Florida for spring break: wild girls Candy (Vanessa Hudgens of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL), Brit (Ashley Benson of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS), and Cotty (Rachel Korine of...uh, her marriage to Harmony Korine), and their more conservative, devoutly Christian friend and not-very-subtly-named Faith (Selena Gomez of THE WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE). With only $300 in spending money between the four of them, Candy, Brit, and Cotty decide to rob an all-night diner called the Chicken Shack, using squirt guns and sledgehammers (an extremely impressive continuous tracking shot where Korine and Debie keep the camera in the car with Cotty, who drives slowly in front of the restaurant as we see masked Candy and Brit's mayhem through the Chicken Shack's windows and then make their escape out of the side exit). Faith doesn't approve of their methods, but wants to go to Florida, so off they go where it's a non-stop party until they get arrested in a raid at the motel.
It's here where the film really takes off, with the introduction of James Franco as Alien, a drug-dealer and aspiring rapper who bails them out of jail and comes off like a walking cliche: he's got a teardrop tat, neck tats, cornrows, wears a gold grill, he's decked out in assorted bling, has a pit bull, a house full of guns, a grand piano on his back patio, and gets an epic "Lookit my shit!" monologue that must be heard to be believed ("I got shorts!" and "I got SCARFACE on repeat! Constant y'all!" "See these guns? See these Franklins! Lookit my shit!"). Uncomfortable among Alien and his gangsta friends, Faith catches the first bus home but the other three become partners in crime with Alien and get involved in his turf war with former friend and now rival Archie (Gucci Mane). Alien calls this area his home and doesn't have much use for the throng of spring breakers ("every spring, the scum comes"), but he finds kindred spirits in Candy, Brit, and Cotty after a bizarre KILLER JOE-esque scene where Candy and Brit make Alien fellate two loaded guns at once.
SPRING BREAKERS is a surreal, hypnotic fever dream that may not exist in any kind of reality (it doesn't seem plausible that Faith, despite her willingness to drink and get high, would hang out with the other three), and even in their criminal exploits, the girls are constantly saying "It's just like a dream" or "It's just like a video game." While the plot itself likely isn't meant to be taken seriously--though there could be an argument made about Korine's misanthropic world view and the girls being coddled, overprivileged, and spoiled, with no idea of the world they're entering--the film is so well-crafted and compelling just on a visual level, with no shortage of audacious "Why the hell not?" set pieces like Franco's haunting piano rendition of Britney Spears' "Everytime," Franco's instant-classic monologue, and, well, everytime Franco's on screen really. It's easy to mock Franco when he does his "James Franco" things, but it's a performance like the one he turns in as Alien that justifies the hype he was getting as far back as his days on FREAKS AND GEEKS. Perhaps recognizing that there was only so far he could take the "Disney girls gone wild" element (Gomez doesn't strip, but the other three do nudity, and Hudgens and Benson have a swimming-pool threesome with Franco), Korine essentially lets Franco take center stage, and it was probably a smart move. In short, nothing Korine has done before has indicated what he accomplishes with SPRING BREAKERS, managing to deftly balance style, swagger, downbeat drama, dark comedy, social critique, and revenge thriller all in 90 minutes. From the visuals to the music cues (Ellie Goulding's "Lights" is the perfect closing credits tune for this), SPRING BREAKERS demonstrates a startling maturity of Korine from self-indulgent enfant terrible to a genuinely gifted filmmaker. The year's still young, but this is my favorite 2013 film so far.
