SPRING BREAKERS (2013) GUCCI MANE, SELENA GOMEZ & JAMES FRANCO (as Riff Raff?) DIR. BY HARMONY KORINE

I didn't see that one. But Korine will always have a special place in my heart because of Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy and, to a lesser extent, this one

I love Trash Humpers. It doesn't get better though... you get better.

This movie was a complete waste of time. Nice to hear that Verhoeven might possibly get a film off the ground in the near future, tho.

spring break... forever

this is one of those things where I just marvel that it was made. It was v consistent with Korine's other films - more about impressionistic images than plot, naturalistic performances that verge on grotesque - that someone thought they could make a blockbuster out of anything he does AND get him to cast A-listers, especially in the current film industry climate, is a minor miracle. Would that studios took more crazy gambles on ridiculous ventures like this. I don't know if I need to see it again or anything, but it achieved its aims afaict, a dreamy, dayglo teen girl fantasy of "being bad"

The high school/early college kids behind us at the theater being annoyed at the film became more hilarious with every exclamation

LOL Shakey are u serious?

what do u think

Like there is absolutely nothing challenging or outside of Hollywood about this movie, a few vastly overrated montages aside.

James Franco and Selena Gomez starring in a movie about rebellious kids? A movie that glorifies violence, sex, and money, often at the cost of it's own coherence? What a crazy gamble!

Good thing they hired a no-name musician like Skrillex to do the soundtrack, hopefully he will get some attention from this. This dubstep thing might catch on.

idk maybe you watch different Hollywood movies then I do but this resembles no typical major studio fare that I know of, either formally or visually. oh sure, the PREMISE seems like its garden variety mainstream fodder, but the delivery and execution are what counts, and this seems like one of those scenarios where studio execs greenlighted it strictly on the pitch of "Franco/Gomez Spring Break Crime Spree" w/out having ever watched anything Korine has ever made.

xp

I have no idea how the actual mechanics of the financing/production/distro of this got done but Harmony Korine's ouevre and style does not exactly have MAINSTREAM BLOCKBUSTER written all over it, it's hard to imagine his style having any appeal whatsoever to the movie's ostensible demographic (teenagers) cf mh's post

shakey otm

Right. This is a Malick movie with venereal disease.

It's amazing to consider if you watch Trash Humpers. But taken apart from the rest of his films, this movie in particular seems like the easiest sell of a lifetime.

Like, he probably didn't walk into an office with a copy of "Trash Humpers" on VHS, he probably came in with a photo similar to the one on the top of the thread and movie exec instantly starts seeing $$$.

Cliff Martinez did the score, iirc. There were just a few thematic bits based on that Skrillex song.

spraaaang breaaaaaaaaaak

the whole point is that the _concept_ is an easy sell, but very few people who'd be sold based on the premise would enjoy this execution

Adam, are you sure you're evaluating the actual film? It was released widely enough that someone assumed it'd target, I dunno, the same audience as Alpha Dog or whatever. For indie flavor-yet-accessible The Bling Ring came out in the same relative timeframe and it's a much different viewing experience

also, carl otm

anyone who thinks there is nothing challenging about this movie should have seen it in a theater full of confused selena gomez and vanessa hudgens fans.

he probably came in with a photo similar to the one on the top of the thread and movie exec instantly starts seeing $$$

this is exactly what's funny/amazing about it! that this tactic could even work, that Korine could basically trick a studio into making something like this by exploiting their own greed/ignorance/stupidity in the service of making something much artsier/stranger/interesting - that is not something that happens much anymore in the studio system.

xxp

s1ocki also otm

man, those kids behind us were so confused/angry

Eric H. do you think Korine's other stuff owes as much of an obvious debt to Malick...? Herzog is the other obvious reference point

xp

I guess my problem is I saw this w two Korine fans, and everyone I knew that saw it before were Korine fans.

That someone can exploit sex and violence to sell a movie is not a rarity. That the movie includes a few blurry montages does not make it artsy.

That someone can type words does not make them credible.

what mainstream director's work do you think this resembled - Katherine Bigelow? Michael Bay? Darren Aranofsky? Genuinely curious. I guess we can argue about the definition of "artsy" til the cows come home but Korine's aesthetic seems to be guided by predecessors and concerns that are largely outside of mainstream Hollywood (idk how mainstream you consider Malick, is he "artsy" enough for you?)

Don't know about Trash Humpers (still haven't seen it), but Herzog seems like the Korine 1.0 reference point. This is the upgrade.

I love this film. I don't think a sequel will be a good idea; like the sequels to other pretty good indie films (ginger snaps, american psycho) it's totally unnecessary and will likely abandon the art of the original for the trashy aspects.

lol this made enough money to get a sequel financed?!

artsy

that news was what precipitated the thread revive

s1ocki otm, full theater of kids got reaaaaaaaaal quiet real quick

precipitated the thread revive

oh right, sorry I got distracted immediately by seeing all those other names in that "article"

I don't know. It's a sad state of affairs when the best argument for a film is that 'they actually got away with having a big backing from Hollywood or whatever'. Um. no. Comparing it to other Hollywood/Blockbuster movies makes Spring Breakers seem very appealing. Put it in the category it belongs. If you do that, it fails miserably.

I mean, talk about the movie, not that Korine et al fooled Hollywood and mocked the fans it wanted to appeal to. If anything, that makes this movie even more crappy. You mocked kids who have a pretty low IQ level. Congrats.

Plus, I can imagine at some point this was pitched as a PG-13 Girls Gone Wild. "Sex sells, guys! Plus our audience loves dumbed down plots and eye candy. It's a no-brainer!"

Meh.

Are you guys really amazed that an R rated movie would shock Disney kids?

how does this movie mock its audience?

@shakey

anyone who thinks there is nothing challenging about this movie should have seen it in a theater full of confused selena gomez and vanessa hudgens fans.

― socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, May 7, 2014 10:26 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

plus, i'll add there is a sense of mocking because of the movie's disingenuosness. I can't imagine Disney kids being too well-versed in irony or the so-called 'depth' of the message some purport it to have. At the end of the movie, it is just pure indulgence and goes into fantasy land trying to shock, which it also falls short of.

i purchased my ticket knowing full well that I was paying to see a Harmony Korine movie; majority of the audience I saw the movie with paid to see a James Franco and Vanessa Hudgens movie, and I honestly felt bad for them...the trailers were cool, that's why they were there, but how do you explain to a bunch of high schoolers who even if they are super into bikinis and guns that this REALLY isn't the movie you think it's going to be. i don't think anyone is *mocking* them itt

teenage audiences were hella confused by the movie. that's just a fact. no judgement.

i didn't say it was mocking them

its disingenuous to pretend this is somehow identical to other uh "hollywood" movies

xp

ya, but see vegemitegrrl's comment wrt HS'ers

idk there's a lot of things that aren't really that subversive to me, that I found funny, that would still seem somewhat subversive to me if I was 18. The gun-fellatio play, maybe.

i think i would've loved this movie in high school. it has plenty of bikinis and guns.

the cool preacher scene was so great and that particular xian subculture i've never seen before on film

its disingenuous to pretend this is somehow identical to other uh "hollywood" movies

My point isn't this at all. It's that to call this movie somehow a brave and unexpected thing for Hollywood to bankroll do is eyeroll.

I reserve the right to applaud any film that exposes mainstream audiences to approaches and techniques and ideas outside the norm, even if (maybe especially if) it does so under false pretenses. Challenging audiences is a good thing imo, people should try it more often.

As for the film itself, like I said, I felt like it worked, it achieved its goals - it's a dreamlike teengirl fantasy of transgression and wildness where nothing bad happens to them and they are in charge. It reflects the exaggerated, melodramatic, hormonally charged mindset of its protagonists. It's a mixture of childish fantasy (everything is colorful and SUPERHAPPY!) and a distorted vision of what it means to be an adult (sex/drugs/violence) all blended together in a garish, disorienting fashion. It goes over the top and is both funny and ridiculous in doing so. It maintains an atmosphere of being young and fucked up and all the hazy, nauseating, and sometimes seemingly profound impressions that go along with that. I've never been a teenage girl on spring break but this seems to capture that "I AM PARTYING OUT OF BOUNDS! LOOK AT MEEEE" vibe really really well.

xxp

I don't think this movie not being what teenage audiences expected = mocking the audience

Haneke mocks his audience. This film doesn't really address its audience directly.

that was kind of the draw to me, the things that read as entry-level subversive or shocking but are probably thing Harmony Korine imagines on his way to the toilet in the morning

akerlund, assuming he's not changed since I saw music videos he did and Spun, might be a good follow-up if he doesn't take it seriously! I got the feeling from Spun that his m.o. is saying "whooa, look how fucked up this is (isn't that kind of cool)" while spinning the camera around a lot

I mean, Spring Breakers 2, from the mind that brought you the music video for Prodigy's "smack my bitch up" sounds about right

But I can't imagine him getting the scenes like s1ocki mentioned right. Korine really did a good serene, yet still ridiculous, religious group