Spring Breakers

Director: Harmony Korine
Writer: Harmony Korine
Starring: Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Rachel Korine, James Franco
Release Date: March 5, 2013
Length: 1 hour 32 minutes

In 1994, Quentin Tarantino gave us what we can now look back on as the best movie to describe the phrase ‘WTF’. Pulp Fiction, with its original and wacky writing was the most surprising film ever. After walking out of my second screening at the Toronto International Film Festival this year though, Pulp Fiction will have to lose it’s WTF title to Harmony Korine’s disturbing and stupefying Spring Breakers. However, just because it shocks audiences doesn’t mean it amazes them.

Up until a month ago, Spring Breakers seemed to me like the newest and most aggravating Disney project with its headliners Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson.  Throw in the name Harmony Korine though, and we are dealing with a completely different film. Korine, best known for writing the groundbreaking and controversial KIDS when he was nineteen years old, specifically chose the girls with the screaming fan bases of twelve year olds, so that their innocent faces would seem all the more shocking when doing what his script entailed.

The film opens with Skrillex music blaring over ten minutes of topless kids on spring break. It shocks and disturbs you in every way possible, and just when you think it’s enough, it keeps going. As you will realize later though, those ten minutes set the tone for the movie perfectly. From that moment on, nothing will shock you, just intrigue you.

The plot, or what there is of it, goes as follows. Four college girls, fed up with their dull small town lives, rob a chicken joint to go on the most ecstasy filled blissful spring break ever in Florida. When down there, they get pulled into the underground illegal world of tourist-robbers and gangsters by the part time rapper, Dangerous (James Franco with grills and dreadlocks). The story pretty much stops at the premise. To some that might be a weakness, but to Korine, it was an advantage.

During the TIFF Q&A, Korine stated he wanted to create a film without much dialogue and more like a sensory experience. Audiences must know that when walking in. This is a music video-like trance and does not follow any familiar formulas. Spring Breakers benefits from being unlike any film you have seen before, but detriments from the audience’s bewilderment when it is finished. It’s Scarface meets Britney Spears and if you buy into what Korine is selling, you’re good to go. If not, you can be assured to still notice the films artistic merit.

Aesthetically, Spring Breakers is an incredible achievement. Korine’s cinematography is simply beautiful with vibrant pinks and yellows to remind us of the sunny and dream-like feel of Florida these girls are entranced by. The constant use of slow motion establishes the high the characters are enjoying and maintains a consistent pace throughout. Korine uses repetition of lines, shots and music to panic you during the fall of that high when the film becomes more Scarface than Britney. The editing is the most skillful medium of art in Spring Breakers, using intercutting shots of the next scene to foreshadow a tone change in the story. 

The combination of Skrillex’s constant electronic beats with this surreal filmmaking results in cinematic brilliance caught between being disturbingly bloody and hilariously pop-like. The perfect example is when Spears’ “Everytime” plays over a robbery scene of violence and machine guns. You simultaneously laugh and feel sick.

The acting only thrives on Korine’s messed up atmosphere with doses and doses of weird improvisational dialogue that will again either scare or amuse you. For example, James Franco is guaranteed to have you howling with laughter, especially when he’s screaming about the different stuff he owns. “Look at all my s***! I got shorts in every colour!”.

It can always be argued that the use of female nudity in films is sleazy and misogynistic, but Spring Breakers isn’t like a horror movie, when the female victim just happens to have her top off when she is alone. Korine’s minute long shot of a slo-mo bum shaking seems to manifest his fascination with this grand number of kids who lose all senses for a week or two in their version of paradise.

Despite all of Spring Breaker’s graphic violence, nudity, use of drugs, alcohol, sex, etc, Korine uses no sense of the term “shock value”. Instead, he entrances you so much that every time a character goes further and further into their spring break activities, the feeling is gradual and organic. By the time the movie has reached an ultimate high of impropriety, you manage to somehow comfortably watch without a single cringe.

That may not be true for everyone but if you do get into it, you throw all caution to the wind and just enjoy. That being said, Spring Breakers is most definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, to say the least, as no Harmony Korine film is. He repeatedly states that he does not make movies for everyone to see, just for his specific audience. If you fall under that audience, you will be pulled into the trance and if not, you could easily sit there, offended by almost everything. Either way, let us just hope people know what they are walking into come this film’s release.

Looper

Director: Rian Johnson
Writer: Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt
Release Date: September 28, 2012
Length: 1 hour 58 minutes

   On July 26^th, Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling, the directors of the Toronto International Film Festival stated that the opening night film for 2012 would be Looper, a fast-paced action flick about time travel, starring Bruce Willis.  Not exactly what festival-goers are excited to hear when they’re used to seeing foreign and independent features scouted by TIFF’s large group of programmers from the world’s most obscure crevices. Bailey and Handling defended their choice by stating that Looper is a smart, thrilling film written and directed by the very talented Rian Johnson, whose more independent work has been shown at the festival before. So did the titular movie live up to it’s honour? 

The highly illegal invention of time travel is only soon to be invented. In the future of 2044, crime bosses send their captives back in time to be killed by loopers, assassins who keep quiet and receive a grand amount of money in return. The use of time travel is so prohibited that the crime bosses find the loopers in the future and send them back to themselves to be wiped clean from their records. The very stylish and very affluent Joe has been stashing half his pay away for the day he does the notorious deed, so he can fly to France to live the rest of his life. When the time comes though and his victim is without a headcover, staring at him dead in the eye, Joe is thrown off his game and gets knocked out. Joe must now find his older self, kill him and avoid being terminated by his employers for failing to perform his job as well. While attempting to pursue both impossible tasks, Joe stays with a tough mother, Sara (Emily Blunt) and troubled son he meets outside of the city, where he believes older Joe will find him for the reason he returned to the past.

Although Willis get’s the leading credit, the person who has the majority of screen time is Joseph Gordon-Levitt who in essence, becomes a younger embodiment of Bruce Willis in this film. Willis is quick and enticing as our main protagonist, but he doesn’t have to do any of the hard work to create the likeness. From the way Gordon-Levitt walks, talks and holds his stance, the similarity is almost creepy, making the confrontation scene between older Joe and younger Joe in the diner, all the more entertaining.  The actors who steal the show though are the most unlikely. Blunt shines in arguably her best and strongest performance yet, as a resilient, authentic single mother who is written with equal importance. She is no bond girl, but a well-developed character of extreme severity to the story. Somewhere between Johnson’s original writing and Blunt’s gifted acting, we are simply amazed. The actor who plays her son though, Pierce Agnon, proves to be a tough competitor for scene-stealing, as the disturbed and precocious Cid. Often when lines are written for children to sound more mature, it comes off as unrealistic and unconvincing but this kid makes it work and we never doubt his irregular wisdom for a second.

The characters are only one of the many elements that makes Johnson’s layered and smart script so laudable. He makes the smartest action flick for the everyman and so easily spans all genres of film. Yes, we are given a thrilling, suspenseful, load of adventure, but we get an emotional drama, a subtle love story and even the most genius moments of humor when needed. The plot manages to be complex and cleverly interwoven without confusing or catching us off guard with twists. Every time there is an exciting turn in the plot, it feels gradual and understanding to the audience. Johnson does not make his story predictable but fills us with curiosity from the beginning so our minds can speculate all the different routes the film will go in.

You become so absorbed by the thoughtful script and relatable characters, that you almost forget the film is technically science fiction. Rian Johnson has redefined the once cheesy genre. Though the thought of time-travel reminds most of Marty McFly and Doc Brown, Looper’s slick dark atmosphere avoids cliché, while simultaneously not taking itself too seriously with provided appropriate humor. The film doesn’t just take place in the future to have flying cars and time travel, either. Johnson has created an incredibly well thought out and smart futuristic backdrop to year 2044. There are realistic, interesting and creative elements of the future Johnson has imagined.

 The beyond intelligent action of Looper that keeps you on the edge of your seat is as equally celebratory as the profound characters, who stay with you long after the credits roll. The film thrives on all it’s talent of actors, including the intimidating but funny Jeff Daniels as Joe’s boss and the underrated Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood, Ruby Sparks) as Joe’s co-worker and good friend, Seth.

Looper gives movie lovers much more than the typical fun action flick we asked for and Handling and Bailey gives TIFF-goers much more than expected. This is not TIFF making a choice to attract commercial audiences, but TIFF making a choice to have the most captivating opening night film in years and a hell of way to start off this year’s jam-packed fest.