Featured Audience Ratings

• Carlos M

  
  With this unbearable, pointless turd that is all style and no substance, Harmony Korine attests to what an awful director he is, so obvious about everything that he is incapable of not hammering in our heads every single stupid element of this ridiculous idiocy.

• Greg S

  
  Four college girls head to Fort Lauderdale for a week of drinking, drugs and sex and end up teaming up with a local gangster for a crime spree. It's a crazy movie, a cross between "Girls Gone Wild" and LA DOLCE VITA for the ecstasy age; it works because writer/director… More
  Four college girls head to Fort Lauderdale for a week of drinking, drugs and sex and end up teaming up with a local gangster for a crime spree. It's a crazy movie, a cross between "Girls Gone Wild" and LA DOLCE VITA for the ecstasy age; it works because writer/director Harmony Korine has finally accepted that he's an exploitation movie director working with an arthouse movie toolkit, not the other way around.

• Kase V

  
  Harmony Korine deserves credit for being an honest and original filmmaker. He stays true to his vision and never compromises for his audience. That being said, 'Spring Breakers' is a loose and haphazard film. The plot is a little disengaging at times, but it is superbly well… More
  Harmony Korine deserves credit for being an honest and original filmmaker. He stays true to his vision and never compromises for his audience. That being said, 'Spring Breakers' is a loose and haphazard film. The plot is a little disengaging at times, but it is superbly well shot and atmospheric. The film is not a crowd pleaser, but give credit where credit is due and appreciate that Korine has incredible vision and flair.

• KJ P

  
  Over-the-top, dark, and at times funny, "Spring Breakers" is the type of film that is hard to watch, do to the brutality of the substance in the picture, but by the end, you will be able to appreciate it for what it is and I definitely did. Many scenes and lines of dialogue… More
  Over-the-top, dark, and at times funny, "Spring Breakers" is the type of film that is hard to watch, do to the brutality of the substance in the picture, but by the end, you will be able to appreciate it for what it is and I definitely did. Many scenes and lines of dialogue are repeated throughout the film, due to the unique editing techniques, and at first I found it annoying, but in the final act of the film it gave me chills. This film is very well directed and well acted, overlapping any flaws I might have had. I loved watching this film, but the substance is so real that I felt a little squeamish. Is it amazing? No. Is it great? To me, yes it is, but in the oddest way. So far, it's one of my favourites of 2013 so far!

• Mark B

  
  This movie had such great potential. If it just followed the compelling short description of the movie, instead of making that short description nearly EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE, it would be intriguing. This was the most tedious, redundant and gratuitous movie I've… More
  This movie had such great potential. If it just followed the compelling short description of the movie, instead of making that short description nearly EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE, it would be intriguing. This was the most tedious, redundant and gratuitous movie I've seen in a very long time. I expected the gratuitous ... it opened with an extended "Girls Gone Wild" sequence. But then it showed that sequence again, and again and again, then again, and again and again! This would be a "one-star" without James Franco. Once he is introduced you are captivated by his transformation into a wannabe gangsta rapper, especially given his tame, Disney-esque acting in "Oz, the Great and Powerful." But then the tedious redundancy corrupted even his performance. The cinematography is interesting but with little plot and the unrelenting repetitiveness, even that became another irritant. If they removed all of the redundant scenes I think the movie would have been 30 minutes long.

• Matt G

  
  Bleak, raw, and disturbing. Don't see this with your parent(s).

• Nate Z

  
  Harmony Korine is the kind of filmmaker who I typically avoid. I haven't liked a single one of the movies the man has written or directed. This list includes Kids, Julien Donkey-Boy, Trash Humpers, and the detestable 1997 film, Gummo, possibly one of my most hated films. The man… More
  Harmony Korine is the kind of filmmaker who I typically avoid. I haven't liked a single one of the movies the man has written or directed. This list includes Kids, Julien Donkey-Boy, Trash Humpers, and the detestable 1997 film, Gummo, possibly one of my most hated films. The man has become an expert on depicting juvenile delinquents and the excesses of youthful folly, so I wasn't surprised that his latest writing/directing effort, Spring Breakers, followed suit. I was surprised at the names he was able to attract to the film. Former Disney Channel starlets Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens, as well as ABC Family's Ashley Benson, join Rachel Korine as a foursome of gals who long for the pleasures of a spring break getaway. They scrimp and save for months, plus also rob a restaurant, and take their sojourn to the sunny beaches of Florida. The girls run afoul of the law and are bailed out by rapper and wannabe gangster Alien (James Franco). Living large, and with handy access to a plethora of weapons, the girls get involved in the crosshairs of a turf war, but they won't let anything bring down their good times. When you break it down to its trashy molecular core, Spring Breakers is like an exploitation film as directed by Terrence Malick. Allow me to explain, dear reader. Much like that hallowed art house filmmaker, the plot in Spring Breakers is really a wispy, abstract concept, and the film is prone to repetition and redundancy, a triptych for the senses. There's plenty of overlapping dialogue that circles back and repeats itself, images that bleed into one another, and a plot that generally takes its cues from MC Skat Kat, namely moving two steps forward and then two steps back (is this reference too dated?). The rote dialogue, when not indifferently profane and nonsensical, is usually variations on, "Spring Break. Spring Break forever." I've just given you about a fifth of the entire movie's dialogue. It may have just been my theater's sound system, but I found much of the dialogue hard to hear and decipher. Perhaps it was Korine admitting that the things his characters say weren't worth straining to hear. As expected, this can get rather frustrating to sit through. It's not so much a movie as an experience meant to wash over the audience. Hence the nonstop dubstep score, provided by Skrillex, and the crashing imagery of tawny exposed flesh, gyrating bodies, neon lighting, fellating gun barrels, and excessive inebriation, all meant to bring the spring break experience to the consumer, that is, if most people's spring breaks involved lots of illegal activity. If Malick's movies are meant to serve as religious experiences, then consider Spring Breakers to be the equivalent of ingesting GHB. Let's talk about that paucity of characterization. Besides Faith (Gomez), a name a bit too on-the-nose for this sort of enterprise, there is zero I can say about ANY of the other three girls. They are completely interchangeable. They have no defining characteristics beyond their simple geographic placement within the camera frame. That's it. When Faith ditches the movie at the halfway mark, having the good sense to realize her supposed friends might not be the best influence, I wanted to go with her. I didn't want to be left with these vacuous and annoying characters. It's pretty clear the contempt that Korine has for his own female characters, constantly serving them up for ridicule. It makes the whole movie even less appealing. We're not supposed to like our heroines but it gets uncomfortable when the director seems to be constantly shaming them, rubbing our faces in how awful they are as people. With an absence of characters you care about, and a plot that feels like it keeps circling back, there's precious little to hold onto before you become anesthetized to Korine's exploitative navel-gazing. After Oz the Great and Powerful I didn't think I would utter these words, but thank God for the presence of James Franco. The man is so fully committed to his gonzo portrayal of a white trash wannabe gangster that you are downright thankful when he takes over the movie halfway in. At least we don't have to spend as much time with our empty-headed trio of ladies. Franco, perfecting an ominous drawl, is a cartoon of misplaced machismo, living the "gangsta" life he's seen parroted in pop culture (he has Scarface running on a constant loop on his TVs). He provides a jolt of energy to the movie, a second wind, and thankfully pushes the girls into greater conflict than part-to-party binges. He brings a real sense of danger to the film, and the descent into a criminal path couldn't have come soon enough for me. It's such an enjoyably whacked-out performance that I wouldn't be surprised if Franco may even be considered for some Best Supporting Actor nominations. There's something just so tiring and depressing about watching people trying to chase a hedonistic high rather than, you know, live their lives. In this warped sense of thinking, the all-encompassing term of "partying" is meant to be the divine state of being and anything else falls by the wayside of significance. I understand the movie is exposing a shallow and empty way of life but it can still be tiring to watch nonstop. You become numb to the onscreen antics. You become numb to the free-flowing spirits, profanity, and gratuitous nudity (there were literally six topless ladies onscreen before a word was spoken). Watching Spring Breakers, you have two options: give yourself over to the trance-like, self-destructive youthful fever-dream or sit solemnly, objectively observing how the outrageous become routine, and become dead inside. As much as it pains me to admit, being a non-fan of Korine's movies, there are a few moments in the movie that are actually surprisingly effective. The first is a hasty robbery of a small restaurant. We stay in the passenger seat of the slow-moving car as it spins around the building, and in the background we see the escalation of events, the girls smashing breakables and terrorizing the few patrons. It's one of the few visual decisions that felt, and here's a word you won't find anywhere else in relation to this movie, artistically restrained. There's also plenty of forced irony in the movie where a character's positive words will be counterbalanced by a visual contrast. Faith phones her grandmother and talks about her great time, even promising next year that she wants to take dear old granny along with her. Meanwhile, as the words play out, which will happen again at several redundant points, we see the girls engaging in behavior that would most likely not be granny-approved. Even if forced, and often redundant, it's still effective, as if Korine's hypnotic visual sensibilities. If nothing else, Spring Breakers is a good-looking movie with many pleasing visuals. I think I understand why my critical peers have lavished as much praise upon Korine's bacchanalia. They see a satire of this empty, nihilistic, party-all-the-time, damn-the-consequences lifestyle, the idiocy of youthful hedonism. The problem is that there's only a handful of moments in Spring Breakers where I felt that Korine actually achieved satire, one of them being a montage of robberies set to a Britney Spears song (beforehand we saw girls holding guns by the barrel and dancing in a circle). Those moments that struck me as satire were few and far between, because what I mostly left with was just another exploitation film. If this were meant to be satirical, the girls would not get away with it all in the end. Korine may intend to stand back in some ironic judgment of his own movie, providing himself an excuse for the lackluster plotting and characters. Here's the point: even if it was done intentionally, it still makes for a lackluster plot and characters. Saying, "I meant that all along," is not an excuse when the rest of the film fails to live up to your stated satirical intents. Allow me a moment to talk about the somewhat disconcerting treatment of, for lack of a better description, the sluttiest of our gals, Cotty, played by Rachel Korine. When I saw the last name of Korine I thought, "Is that the director's daughter?" Harmony Korine has been in the film industry for almost 20 years, so it was a possibility, and oh what a disturbing thought that was. Some cursory research proved that Rachel Korine was in fact Harmony's wife; there's a thirteen-year age difference. It's still uncomfortable that Korine would slot his own wife to portray one of the titular spring breakers, the only one from our posse who goes nude onscreen too (sorry skeevy Disney Channel and ABC Family fans). So when he's slut shaming these girls, mocking them with contempt, directing their gratuitous exploitation, he's also including his own wife in this distasteful characterization, making sure the camera has multiple opportunities to take in her exposed flesh. It's like he's serving up his own wife to the gods of spring break (a.k.a. young male ticket-buyers), and it just seems icky. When Spring Breakers came to a merciful close, the college-aged guy behind me remarked, "That's the weirdest movie I've ever seen." I replied, "Then you haven't seen a lot of movies, have you?" Korine's abstract, aimless salute to self-indulgence is a depressing experience that celebrates the worst in human beings, but weird it is not. I'm just tired of Korine's schtick. He presents trashy characters, prods us to ridicule them, and then gives them a lot of empty space to do dumb things for an hour and half, ultimately going nowhere and accomplishing little. It just so happens that Spring Breakers, his most commercial and accessible film, has attractive, nominally famous actresses partaking in the nastiness this time. I suppose there will be some appeal to a small swath of filmgoers to see former squeaky-clean Disney Channel gals cutting loose, behaving badly, and playing against (manufactured) type. For me, the very casting of these ladies was another sign of Korine's artistically bare ambitions. If he wanted to hold up the entire escapist spring break pleasure-seeking lifestyle for satire, then he needed to push harder. What's on the screen is rarely satire. Instead, it's just another careless exploitation film, replete with moronic characters we don't care about and a plot that would be charitably described as, well, a plot. Even Franco's calculated weirdness cannot save this film. Spring Breakers is a trip best avoided. Nate's Grade: C-

• Mark H

  
  Spring Breakers is an intriguing film. What initially starts out as a superficial focus on hedonistic desires evolves (devolves?) into a nightmare come to life. The visual sequences build on repetition to the point where the audience is desensitized to all the wild partying. At first… More
  Spring Breakers is an intriguing film. What initially starts out as a superficial focus on hedonistic desires evolves (devolves?) into a nightmare come to life. The visual sequences build on repetition to the point where the audience is desensitized to all the wild partying. At first all the attractive young coeds in various states of undress threatens to become a part of what it ultimately condemns. Even when the girls are in a college classroom their minds are focused on less academic pursuits. But just when you acclimate to the debauched surroundings, the director ratchets up the intensity. There are scenes that have such an uneasy feel, they degenerate from a lighthearted good time into horror within seconds. The picture grows dark. It's that ability to juggle a rapidly shifting narrative that makes Spring Breakers such a fascinating watch. It's much more than what the trailers promote. It dares to show the consequences and for that reason, Spring Breakers deserves your attention. fastfilmreviews.wordpress.com

• c0up  

  
  'Spring Breakers'. A hyper-sexualised, dream-like look at the choices the youth of today contend with. I'm scared for them.

• Kevin C

  
  Knowing Harmony Korine, I can sense the seething critique of youth culture his film tries to convey. But, without any knowledge of his personality or past works, Spring Breakers comes off as a confident, visually and sonically arresting, albeit unfocused, criminally simple satire.

• Markus R

  
  From the writer/director of "Gummo" comes...For many of you, that's probably all you needed to know in order to be dissuaded from seeing "Spring Breakers". That said, for as much as I hated EVERY SINGLE ONE of Harmony Korine's prior films, "Spring… More
  From the writer/director of "Gummo" comes...For many of you, that's probably all you needed to know in order to be dissuaded from seeing "Spring Breakers". That said, for as much as I hated EVERY SINGLE ONE of Harmony Korine's prior films, "Spring Breakers", starring James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and even Gucci Mane, while problematic, is more than just ex-Disney channel girls in bikinis or boobs for days. The story Korine attempts to tell actually has a lot of potential, in conjunction with some beautiful camera work and underscored with a fascinating script. It's just too bad that he almost ruins it, simply because he can't get out of his own way. The Story: "Spring Breakers" is a tale of two halves. In the first half, which belongs to Selena Gomez's character Faith, we get a story about four college girls whose goal is to have the most memorable spring break imaginable. This particular storyline is quite strong, with an interesting "pure girl corrupted by the big city" motif. But once James Franco's character Alien, a more thugged-out version of Kevin Federline takes the reins (about 45 minutes in) that particular storyline goes right out the window. The second half follows this white rap sensation, as he sets out to corrupt these girls (or maybe it's the other way around). But while the latter half of this film is forcibly injected with a shot of adrenaline, headlined by a larger than life performance from Franco, it unfortunately contains such flawed storytelling, that it all becomes a bit tiresome, repetitive and just downright weird; especially during a scene of simulated oral sex and a montage scored by James Franco singing a Britney Spears ballad, that is sure to have audiences snickering in disbelief. Here are a few more issues with this film: 1.And this is a problem which plagues almost all of Korine's past films. There is only about 30 minutes of actual plot here. Not to say that the 30 minutes isn't well thought out, but by default everything else comes off as an overlong, desensitizing music video montage, set to repeat. This aspect may be the most detrimental to the viewing experience because it causes a 94 minute film to seem like a 120 minutes, as "Spring Breakers" overstays its welcome. 2.As I mentioned before, Korine has a nasty habit of not being able to get out of his own way. In the case of "Spring Breakers" this translates into Korine's Spike Lee-ish tendency to stop the progression of his story dead in its tracks, in order to make continuous points. This technique of pumping the breaks on a film to make a point about sexuality, or violence or violent sexuality, or sexuality in violence, completely takes audiences out of the film, and slowly mutilates the plot. In short, as Korine stops to make more and more visual points with extensive montages, the more audiences completely forget about the story itself. 3.As creative as I thought this storyline to be, it still doesn't erase the fact that the situations and dialogues Korine creates are overwhelmingly exaggerated in order to make a point everyone in the audience should already be aware of. Example: In "Gummo" he makes his white trash characters extremely physically and emotionally filthy; or extremely white trash, and in "Spring Breakers" he makes his skanks skanky to the extreme, by putting them in constant states of undress, no matter what the situation. But we get it already! I don't need another boob montage. 4.Being an admitted hater of the High-Defness in movies of today, when Korine makes a movie like "Spring Breakers", which, at times, looks like a big budget Michael Bay film, and uses Top 40 hits as his soundtrack, he is obviously trying to make a condescending point about beauty and the American culture of today. But to your average viewer who hasn't had the displeasure of sitting through "Julien Donkey-Boy" or "Trash Humpers", "Spring Breakers" may come across as uncomfortably free formed and simply too strange, with no context to pull from. The Acting: With all of its flaws, the acting from Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens was a high point within some of the messier portions of this film. But the real star of the show is Franco, in a performance which admittedly took me a few minutes to get into, but ends up as the best performance of his career; and maybe worth the price of admission alone. Final Thought: Writer/director Harmony Korine is essentially the creepy kid with the camera from "American Beauty". He claims to be attempting to find beauty amidst the filth of the world, but in reality he comes off as a provocateur/non-conformist, who seems to have a distain for the subjects in his films. And that all would be fine, if he just presented a coherent story, that wasn't disjointed with his form of ultra experimental filmmaking. With that said, "Spring Breakers" is Korine's most accessible film, with his most coherent (and deepest) storyline to date. So, while I thought a lot of this film was too over-the-top for its own good, there is stuff here that I liked very much; enough to recommend that people see this film, but only if you know what to expect. Written by Markus Robinson, Edited by Nicole I. Ashland Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus

• Sunny D

  
  'Spring Breakers' may be unrealistic, but it's definitely entertaining. Harmony Korine directs this sexually-infused thriller, and uses quick cuts and tinted shots to keep the audience's attention. While it's beautifully filmed, the script has some very shaky… More
  'Spring Breakers' may be unrealistic, but it's definitely entertaining. Harmony Korine directs this sexually-infused thriller, and uses quick cuts and tinted shots to keep the audience's attention. While it's beautifully filmed, the script has some very shaky moments, but overall Korine's flick is a fun watch, and probably the best movie of 2013 thus far (not saying much). Grade: B-

• Jonathan H

  
  We're long overdue for a critique of the "Me Generation" -- who are generally aimless, entitled and value being cool above anything else. Spring Breakers is an effective satirical, hedonistic fever dream, but considering who was at the helm, I couldn't help but… More
  We're long overdue for a critique of the "Me Generation" -- who are generally aimless, entitled and value being cool above anything else. Spring Breakers is an effective satirical, hedonistic fever dream, but considering who was at the helm, I couldn't help but wish the film would have gone further with its indictment.

• Sanjay R

  
  I went in with low expectation, and they were not met. This film is 1% coherent story and 99% pointless montage. Very little is accomplished in this unorganized fantasy. There are two five minute homages to Britney Spears, and those aren't even the most pointless scenes is the… More
  I went in with low expectation, and they were not met. This film is 1% coherent story and 99% pointless montage. Very little is accomplished in this unorganized fantasy. There are two five minute homages to Britney Spears, and those aren't even the most pointless scenes is the movie. You could sleep through a good portion of this film, and not miss much.

• William D

  
  I never would have believed Harmony Korine would be capable of making a boring film. But lo and behold, his new film "Spring Breakers" is just that. Incredibly boring. It has almost no content, almost no script, laughable acting, as well as repetitious and dull direction.… More
  I never would have believed Harmony Korine would be capable of making a boring film. But lo and behold, his new film "Spring Breakers" is just that. Incredibly boring. It has almost no content, almost no script, laughable acting, as well as repetitious and dull direction. This is a complete dud. It really makes one wonder about Korine. Perhaps he's losing his creativity -- and his ideas. It grieves me to say that because in 2008 (after seeing his magical, mystical, bizarrely overlooked film "Mister Lonely") I was saying that Korine was a genius and America's greatest filmmaker. My hunch is that he is still a genius (one never loses that) but that he is losing his instinct for the cinematic medium. Or losing faith in the medium? I honestly suspect that Korine was crushed (disillusioned?) by the fact that "Mister Lonely" was appreciated by almost no one. I feel that experience may have, at least on some levels, made him bitter and caused him to stop pushing himself. His films since then, "Trash Humpers" and "Spring Breakers" (note the similarity in the titles), have been so bad as to be disastrous -- almost intentionally so. ****************************** "Spring Breakers" looks like it was conceived 20 years ago: a parody of the nihilistic strain in American youth culture at that time. The film is so 1993. It especially sets its sights on white students from third-rate colleges glutting on Gangsta Rap and flooding to Florida in the spring to show off their taut bodies. There they revel in Budweiser-fueled debauchery. Beer bongs! Shots! The opening sequence of actual spring breakers is the most valuable part of the film. It only lasts about two minutes, but I found it unforgettable. There you can see Korine's masterful eye for capturing American emptiness. His use of slow-motion there was sublime, as was the music. After this opening, we meet our protagonists: four female students at an unnamed mediocre college. Any College in Anywhere, USA. These colleges all look the same, and all the students look the same, trying hard to get their degrees without ever learning anything. Trying to find a way to get a good grade without reading a book. College students who loathe learning. There's something distinctively American about that, is there not? One of the girls is somewhat different (the one played by Selena Gomez). She is Christian, not white, and she appears to have a moral compass in fairly good working order. She doesn't perfectly fit in with the other girls, and that will factor into the story lately. The girls' chief goal is to save up enough money to go to Florida together for spring break. They fail. What to do? Commit a crime. I won't give away the details of the crime, but I will say that this is the second-best sequence in the film. Korine films it in an innovative way, and it is disturbing. Watching pretty all-American girls slip down the rabbit hole of depravity is gripping, disturbing cinema. It's in moments like this that you see the old Korine, with his extraordinary power to reveal American social rot with just a glance of the camera. The girls get to Florida, and the debauchery begins. Korine pulls no punches. The way these white-bread kids raised in suburban shopping malls defile themselves and destroy hotel rooms is nauseating. When the girls get arrested on minor charges, they are bailed out by a drug dealer and rapper, played by James Franco in a ridiculous, over-the-top performance that doesn't work at all. It reminded me of Joaquin Phoenix's nearly-career-destroying performance as himself in "I'm Still Here" (2010). It's so bad that you can't even laugh. Korine has always been at his worst when trying to do comedy. His instinct for tragedy is superb; his sense of comedy is among the worst I've ever seen. Why didn't Korine hire Woody Allen to play this role? He would have gotten the same result. It's so bad that it was honestly hard to look at the screen. I really feel for Franco. He's not a great actor by any means, but he is trying to do meaningful work. He probably trusted Korine completely. At times it seemed Korine was trying to humiliate Franco. But worst of all, the Franco character is just boring. One girl leaves, but the three remaining ones join his posse and become stand-out killers. By this time, the emptiness and repetitiousness of the story have become overwhelming, and I'm sure that few in the audience were even watching the screen. But there was one worthwhile sequence in the second half of the film. Franco and the girls are in his back yard at night. He is playing piano and singing a Britney Spears song. The actual Spears song then takes over the soundtrack, and we watch the girls caress assault rifles and sawed-off shotguns while wearing pink ski-masks -- again in slow motion. Something about those pink ski-masks was powerful. We're used to seeing male sociopaths in cinema. Seeing pretty young girls in this role is bracing. But three or four good sequences (a total of 10 minutes of screen time) aren't enough to hold up a film. Ninety-five percent of "Spring Breakers" is atrociously bad and plain-old boring.

• Aaron N

  
  Candy: Spring Break forever! Spring Breakers has a very easy hook, by providing us with the image of young college girls in bikinis, wearing ski masks. The high concept phrasing is just as simple: a group of college girls rob a store in order to fund their spring break. The cast… More
  Candy: Spring Break forever! Spring Breakers has a very easy hook, by providing us with the image of young college girls in bikinis, wearing ski masks. The high concept phrasing is just as simple: a group of college girls rob a store in order to fund their spring break. The cast consists of young girls, best known for their family friendly image, which is done very intentionally, as I find it key to note that the film is sly and satirical in what it's depicting. The film is also very aggressive in terms of its filmmaking style, but in a way that makes for a hypnotic viewing experience, regardless of how much I enjoyed the film. Spring Breakers presents a barrage of boobs, butts, sex, drugs, and criminal activities, but beneath its colorful and explicit surface, I found a film with a thesis that I would consider fascinating. read the whole review at thecodeiszeek.com

• Glenn G

  
  Better known as the Disney-defiling film in which Harmony Korine goes all narrative on us, SPRING BREAKERS has been birthed ostensibly to tell us what we already know, that Spring Break Celebrants are the worst people on the planet. Artfully made (after all, this is an experiments… More
  Better known as the Disney-defiling film in which Harmony Korine goes all narrative on us, SPRING BREAKERS has been birthed ostensibly to tell us what we already know, that Spring Break Celebrants are the worst people on the planet. Artfully made (after all, this is an experiments film at heart), SPRING BREAKERS tells the story of some small-town college girls who rob a restaurant in order to bankroll their bacchanalian trip to St. Petersburg, FLA where they can beer bong and boot shake themselves into some sort of epiphany-laden, life-changing creatures. Of course, it doesn't go well, especially when James Franco comes into the picture as Alien, a hilariously gold-grilled rapper who brings new meaning to the word Gangsta. Franco does some fantastic work here, especially in what will likely become his trademark, the "Look At My Shit" speech. Love or hate the film, you won't be able to forget Franco's performance. Using unconventional techniques like fractured narrative, repetitive dialogue used once onscreen and in voiceover another, swooshy, drug-addled images, slo-mo shots of bouncing tits for days and a rather annoying tendency to employ a gun-cocking and/or firing sound as a transition between scenes (the first 3 times were effective but then it just stopped being cool). It all plays out like a fever dream bastard child of MTV SPRING BREAK and NATURAL BORN KILLERS. Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine (the director's wife), do vivid work here. While not called upon to do much more than act slutty and do copious lines of coke, it works. Gomez gets to dig a little deeper here than the others, as the good girl who questions everything, and she has some range. Hudgens just plays stripper girl the whole time, and as a High School Musical-shattering exercise, she nails it! There are truly memorable images throughout this film - the girls doing drunken handstands in their dorm hall, bonding on the beach, or lolling in pools with the camera bobbing above and below the waterline, an upside down final kiss, or the recurring image of partygoers jumping up and down on the beach. Nothing, however, can top the benchmark moment of this film, when Franco sits at a piano to sing a Britney Spears ballad and is joined by the girls, all covered in pink knit masks and sporting submachine guns. It's a wonderful juxtaposition of innocence and deprivation and will stay with me forever. I wish the film didn't recycle footage and dialogue so often, as it could have been shorter, but Korine is in charge of his storytelling here and knows exactly the effect it all will have on you. He's somewhat of the Mad Genius of Art Films. Having seen the trailer for Sofia Coppola's THE BLING RING at the screening I attended, I can only look forward to that double bill playing at the New Beverly Cinema some day. They look like the exact same movie.

• The Movie W

  
  Four college friends, Faith (Gomez), Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson) and Cotty (Korine), desperately want to get out of their dull town to enjoy the bacchanalia of spring break in Florida. To raise the cash, the girls, Faith excluded, hold up a fast food joint with toy pistols and… More
  Four college friends, Faith (Gomez), Candy (Hudgens), Brit (Benson) and Cotty (Korine), desperately want to get out of their dull town to enjoy the bacchanalia of spring break in Florida. To raise the cash, the girls, Faith excluded, hold up a fast food joint with toy pistols and hammers. Off they head to Florida where they "find themselves" through days of wild partying. When the cops bust up one such gathering, the girls find themselves jailed with no money to bail themselves out. Seeing an opportunity, local hood Alien (Franco) posts their bail and introduces the girls to his glamorous, but dangerous, lifestyle. Offering Middle America a look at its daughter's Facebook page, controversial director Korine's latest is a day-glo hued pastiche of parental nightmares. Like a Dead Kennedys song, there's something to offend conservatives and liberals in equal measures but few won't find their feet tapping along to its primal rhythm. When Godard said that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun, he didn't mention that said girl required clothing. In this post-exploitation world, the idea that seeing hot young girls kicking ass in bikinis might appeal to a large portion of the cinema-going public is hidden away in the background like a teenage girls abortion. With this attitude, before a single frame of 'Spring Breakers' had been screened, many critics had already decided that Korine was either making a condemnation of the lifestyle choices of America's youth or a celebration of it. The truth is he's really doing both at once. The critical reaction to 'Spring Breakers' tells you more about the current state of society than the film ever could. Audiences cheer every week as the latest male action star guns down countless goons but when it's a teenage girl pulling the trigger it provokes outrage. In 2013 there still exists a double standard whereby women are expected to conform to some notion of being "lady-like". Where is the outrage at the obnoxious behavior on display in "lad-comedies" like 'The Hangover'? What's really bizarre is that some critics find the bare breasts on display more offensive than the violence. God forbid they should ever visit a French beach or a Danish city park. Korine seems to make the point that America's teens have two horrific role models: the "gangsta" types like Alien or Jesus freaks like the one we see instructing Faith at the movie's start. While both are a menace, the latter is the more dangerous as kids eventually grow out of their obsession with the former. Alien employs the same sort of coercive tactics as the preacher but Faith finds him creepy and immediately wants to leave. It's telling that she's been happy to indulge in all manner of wild partying but as soon as a few black guys show up she wants out. It's a brilliant condemnation of the "wigger" lifestyle of cultural appropriation which currently dogs the youth of, not just America, but the world. Middle class white people love to indulge in "ghetto" culture but prefer if they can do it without having to actually interact with black people. It's the reason for the success of the Rolling Stones and Eminem, and it's why we get patronizing films like 'Beasts of the Southern Wild'. "Spring Break is when the scum arrive", Franco remarks. The scum he refers to are those who like to holiday in Cambodia. Those who party hard for two weeks before entering the cloistered convent of middle-class mediocrity. The real beasts of the southern wild.

• Kevin M

  
  It's sad to see so much confusion and negativity when it comes to Harmony Korine's new shocking and hypnotic film Spring Breakers. It may appear to be another "Project X" with no meaning other than "let's party", but there is a lot more than meets… More
  It's sad to see so much confusion and negativity when it comes to Harmony Korine's new shocking and hypnotic film Spring Breakers. It may appear to be another "Project X" with no meaning other than "let's party", but there is a lot more than meets the eye here. What I took from it is that there are consequences, often severe ones, to every action, and sometimes you just have to let out all of your craziness before proceeding with anything morally "good". James Franco stars in what is by far his most strange, otherworldly, and "alien"-like performance of his career as a money-driven gangster who calls himself Alien. He's really fun to watch and quote back. The soundtrack is absolutely sublime as well: the songs are perfectly chosen and the original score is moody and atmospheric. The film is also very colorful and vibrant, partially in-thanks to the Florida location. I went into this film expecting some pretty crazy material, but what I found was even crazier- I would rather not spoil just how crazy it is, because that's one of the things that makes Spring Breakers so fun to watch: the shock factor. And it's not like the characters portrayed here by Franco and actresses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens do not exist... Alien claims he's "not from this planet, ya'll," but people like him are indeed here on this planet, and that's one of the many reasons this film exists, to show the public what society can look like, as if holding up a mirror to it. There is something strangely poetic about James Franco playing the piano and singing a Britney Spears song while girls dance around him wielding assault rifles: perhaps because it is treated like poetry. Korine knows exactly what he's doing and what he's trying to say here: he is very smart about this. I really enjoyed Spring Breakers- it kept me entertained and kept me thinking way after the credits rolled.

• Jeff B

  
  Though not as shocking as the H'Wood spin doctors would have you believe, the excellently directed Spring Breakers isn't just a trip...it's sometimes a trip to bountiful moviegoing. Sometimes, stars go dirty on film as if acting out in a public sort of tantrum. And… More
  Though not as shocking as the H'Wood spin doctors would have you believe, the excellently directed Spring Breakers isn't just a trip...it's sometimes a trip to bountiful moviegoing. Sometimes, stars go dirty on film as if acting out in a public sort of tantrum. And sometimes, stars go dirty because they actually have the chops to get down with their bad self. Whatever the reason the cast of Spring Breakers chose this project, the results work because their director has enough verve to present a story that's somewhat more than just a exploitative B-Movie. In this R-rated thriller, 4 broke best friends (Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, et al) anxious to cut loose on their own spring break adventure hold up a restaurant for quick cash and never look back, eventually hooking up with Florida drug and arms dealer (Franco). Former Disney stars Gomez and Hudgens dirty themselves up pretty well as does James Franco, who looks so skeevy that you'll want a tetanus shot just to watch him on-screen. The true star proves to be director Harmony Korine, who imbues the action with an expert intercutting of edits that helps the drama slow burn into a flick that's part cautionary tale and - almost - part immersive experience. Bottom line: Breaking Not Bad.

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