Movies Streaming This Week: Spring Break, Spring Break, Spring Break Forevverrrrrr

With “The Bling Ring” in theaters you can make a fun double feature now as its distant cousin, “Spring Breakers,” is now available through streaming (decide for yourself which group of girls are the craziest). There’s also the first Vimeo On Demand release, “Some Girl(s),” adapted from Neil LaBute’s play. We also highlight some of the best titles from one of the most polarizing film genres in recent memory.

NEW RELEASES

‘Spring Breakers’
Harmony Korine’s celebration of… (how do I put this…) youthful exuberance, is highlighted by the performance of Disney gals Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens along with a crunked out James Franco.
Why Watch It: If you haven’t yet, you should, if you have already you should again. That’s all I can say.
Available On: iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant [On Demand 7/9]

‘The Call’
Halle Berry plays a 911 operator who after learning that a killer from her past has abducted a teenage girl takes matters into her own hands.
Why Watch It: It’s directed by Brad Anderson (“Session 9,” “The Machinist”) so there have to be some redeeming qualities.
Available On: Cable On Demand, iTunes, VUDU

‘The Host’
The latest adaptation from the “Twilight” saga author Stephenie Meyer, Saoirse Ronan plays Melanie who in a future overtaken by body snatching beings tries save those closest to her.
Why Watch It: Mixture of that old TV show “V” and, of course, “Twilight.”
Available On: iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant [On Demand 7/9]

‘The Rambler’
Calvin Lee Reeder follows up his breakthrough debut, “The Oregonian,” with this trippy art horror starring Dermot Mulroney as an ex-con traveling cross-country to his brother’s and the strange trip he finds himself on.
Why Watch It: If you’re seeking something different in your moviegoing experience, this if for you.
Available On: Cable On Demand, iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play

‘No’
Oscar nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, Gael Garcia Bernal plays an ad exec who during a forced plebiscite in 1988 of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is brought on by those against Pinochet to build a campaign for the opposition.
Why Watch It: An underappreciated performance by Bernal, but decide for yourself.
Available On: Cable On Demand, iTunes, VUDU

‘Some Girl(s)’
The first Vimeo On Demand release (also in theaters), Neil LaBute pens this adaptation of his own play about a guy (Adam Brody) who on the eve of his wedding sets off on a cross-country trip to tack down his ex-lovers in an attempt to make amends with them.
Why Watch It: Great ensemble that includes Kristen Bell, Zoe Kazan and Emily Watson.
Available On: Vimeo

‘Redemption’
On Demand same day as it hits theaters, Jason Statham’s latest has him starring as a disgraced ex-special forces soldier who finds a new identity but it’s within London’s underworld, leading him to trying to right wrongs.
Why Watch It: Let’s face it, at this point a Statham plot doesn’t matter, as long as he’s kicking ass it’s worth the watch.
Available 6/28: Cable On Demand, VUDU

OLDIES BUT GOODIES (Mumblecore Edition)
It’s one of the most polarizing movie genres (even denounced by many of the filmmakers who have received attention from it), but there have been some interesting work that have come out of these intimate, low budget tales of twentysomething awkwardness. Here are a few.

‘Funny Ha Ha’
We should start from the beginning. This film about a recent graduate and her struggle to take the next step in her life launched the career of director Andrew Bujalski and pegged him as the “godfather of mumblecore.”
Available On: Amazon Instant

‘Baghead’
The other giants in this space are the Duplass Brothers, Mark and Jay. Three years after making their debut hit “The Puffy Chair,” they return with this mumblecore horror or “mumblegore” about a group of struggling actors who go to a cabin in Big Bear to write a screenplay and end up being tourmented by a their creation—a villain with a paper bag for a head.
Available On: iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play

‘Hannah Takes the Stairs’
Joe Swamberg’s breakout film brought together the major players in mumblecore (Mark Duplass, Greta Gerwig, Bujalski, Ry Russo-Young, Todd Rohal) in this love triangle that revealed the raw talent of Gerwig .
Available On: iTunes

‘Humpday’
Perhaps the genre’s crowning jewel, Lynn Shelton combines its collaborative ethos with a strong story to create a funny and touching look at male friendship, or what would be termed from then on: “bromance.”
Available On: iTunes, VUDU, Amazon Instant

‘Tiny Furniture’
Released after mumblecore became a cursed word in the indie film world, Lena Dunham writes, directs and stars in a touching semiautobiographical look at a girl trying to find herself after college. You kind of know how things turned out.
Available On: iTunes, Netflix, Amazon Instant, YouTube, Google Play

Categories: Columns, Streaming

Tags: Adam brody, Andrew Bujalski, Baghead, Brad Anderson, Calvin Lee Reeder, Dermot Mulroney, Emily watson, Funny Ha Ha, Gael garcia bernal, Greta gerwig, Halle berry, Hannah Takes The Stairs, Harmony Korine, Humpday, James franco, Jason statham, Jay duplass, Joe Swamberg, Kristen bell, Lena dunham, Lynn Shelton, Mark duplass, Mumblecore, Neil LaBute, No, Redemption, Ry Russo Young, Saoirse Ronan, Selena gomez, Some Girls, Spring Breakers, Stephenie meyer, The Call, The Host, The Rambler, Tiny furniture, Todd rohal, Vanessa hudgens, Zoe Kazan

SPRING BREAKERS (2012)

Tanggal Rilis : 22 March 2013 (USA)
Jenis Film : Comedy | Drama
Diperankan Oleh : Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson

Ringkasan Cerita SPRING BREAKERS (2012) :

Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine) dan Faith (Selena Gomez) telah bersahabat sejak sekolah dasar. Mereka hidup bersama di asrama perguruan yg membosankan dan lapar, di penjara setelah merampok sebuah restoran untuk membiayai liburan musim semi mereka untuk petualangan. Tapi mereka diselamatkan oleh rapper “Alien” (James Franco) pentolan obat dan pedagang senjata, berjanji untuk menyediakan gadis-gadis ini dengan semua sensasi dan kegembiraan liburan. Dengan syarat mereka melakukan beberapa pekerjaan kotor.

Sumber: http://film21terbaru.blogspot.com/2013/01/spring-breakers-2013-bioskop.html

[IMDb rating : 6.3/10]
[Awards : 2 wins & 1 nomination]
[Production Co : Muse Productions, O' Salvation, Division Films]
[IMDb link : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2101441]

[Quality : BRRip 720p]
[File Size : 550 MB]
[Format : Matroska >> mkv]
[Resolution : 1280x528]
[Source : 720p.BluRay.x264-PSiG]
[Encoder : nItRo]

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Why ‘Spring Breakers’ Is the Best Thing James Franco Has Ever Done

James Franco. American icon, he of the Academy Awards hosting letdown, the very same man who brought you Harry Osborne in the “Spider-Man” franchise. He’s an enigma, this Franco, appearing one weekend in “Oz the Great and Powerful” a kid-friendly PG film, and then the next in the extremely R-Rated “Spring Breakers.”

James Franco doesn’t do one thing, he does everything. And as the great and powerful Steven Colbert noted, James Franco is a renaissance man … who also might be a complete fraud.

Even the director of “Spring Breakers,” the delightfully named Harmony Korine, had this to say about Franco’s performance in the film:

“He didn’t want to rehearse. When he put in the cornrows and the gold teeth and I heard the accent, I was like ‘whoa.’ He was a maniac.”

The trailer pretty much speaks for itself, a collection of y’alls, leers, and threesomes:

You would be hard pressed to construct a trailer more bonkers than that even if I spotted you Dennis Rodman and a case of Four Loco. Still, if “From Justin to Kelly” has taught us anything, it’s that a spring break film can launch one’s career into the stratosphere. It’s all been leading up to this, his masterpiece, Franco imprinting on the world in a big way. As such, let’s take a look at the Franco’s seminal works, and why they can’t quite measure up to “Spring Breakers”.

Also check out: The Francography!

“Freaks and Geeks”
Why it’s great: Here’s where we first became aware of James Franco, though sadly this beloved series only lasted eighteen episodes. Who’s up for a cheeky Kickstarter?
Why it’s still inconsequential compared to “Spring Breakers”: The freakiness level on display here still aired on NBC. How risque can you get on NBC? Besides Jay Leno I mean.

“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”
Why it’s great: The Apes really brought the acting thunder in this film.
Why it’s still inconsequential compared to “Spring Breakers”: The drugs here turn apes into super apes. The drugs in “Spring Breakers” turn James Franco into Gary Oldman from “True Romance”. Checkmate.

“127 Hours”
Why it’s great: This might be Franco’s best performance in which he doesn’t wear a gold grill and indiscriminately fire off handguns.
Why it’s still inconsequential compared to “Spring Breakers”: His co-star in “127 Hours” was a rock. Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens are much better than a rock. Nicer, too.

“Tristan + Isolde”
Why it’s great: Hahahahahahahhahaha. … History?
Why it’s still inconsequential compared to “Spring Breakers”: Sorry, just seeing if you were still paying attention (wipes tear away from eye). Sidenote: Don’t ever watch “Tristan + Isolde”. The film feels shorter than the opera on which it’s based, and that opera was written by Wagner.

“Milk”
Why it’s great: The inspiring true story of Harvey Milk, James Franco helped portray the rampant discrimination same-sex partners faced in the ’70s.
Why it’s still inconsequential compared to “Spring Breakers”: It’s hard to argue that even a dramatization of the life and times of Harvey Milk is less consequential than “Spring Breakers,” but it’s not hard to argue that at no point in “Milk” did anyone shout “Bikinis and Big Booties Y’all, that’s what life is about!” We rest our case.

“Spider-Man”
Why it’s great: Sadly, it’s not, but it is consequential, simply based upon the box-office returns.
Why it’s still inconsequential compared to “Spring Breakers”: No one in the franchise is named “Alien,” as James Franco is in “Spring Breakers” and thus we rule your Spidey art invalid. Also, The Green Goblin wears a horrible face-mask, whereas “Spring Breakers” proves that a nice shiny grill is always the right way to go. Remember kids: Always.

In the cold light of day, it’s easy to surmise that we might never see a better version of James Franco than the one we see this weekend. He’s a man in full, perhaps not the Franco we want, but definitely the one we need. Spring break, you guys. Spring break, forever.

Laremy wrote the book on film criticism and was too busy getting ahead on the next semester’s assignments to go to spring break.

Categories: Features

Tags: Harmony Korine, James franco, Spider-man, Spring Breakers

Review: ‘Spring Breakers’

Review originally published on September 8, 2012 as part of Film.com’s coverage of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.

“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.” – Coco Chanel
“B*tches ain’t sh*t but hoes and tricks.” – Dr. Dre.

Years ago, I saw a cartoon in an alt weekly that’s stuck with me. A performance artist is doing something absurd. Someone shouts something to the tune of “you can’t hide your lack of creativity by intentionally acting dumb.” The artist cheerfully fires back, “all response is valid!” It’s a can’t-lose proposition, and that’s what Harmony Korine has on his hands with his brilliant/putrid satire/pornography. It’s shallow, it’s boring, it’s poignant, it’s clever, it’s poorly acted, it’s intentionally poorly acted, it has no story, it has marvelous scenes, it is artful, it is hallucinatory, it is shoddily put together. All response is valid.

“Spring Breakers” is the story of four nearly nude, nubile girls bored with their deadbeat college, so they rob a diner to pay for a trip to Florida. Once there, they get high and get laid (which is kinda what they were doing up at school) but now they do it on the beach. The cheap hedonism is an epiphany for them and it gives them a purpose in life.

It would be easy to dismiss “Spring Breakers.” Lord, I’d like to. Anything that exploits women this ruthlessly begs to be dismissed. (And, sorry, Disney Girls Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Vanessa Hudgens, you may think this is your ticket to an adult career, but this isn’t “Ruby in Paradise” and none of you are Ashley Judd.) Unfortunately, there are moments, somewhere in the cannabis haze of day-glo bikini buttocks and cocaine-topped nipples where an abstract expressionism starts to seep off the screen. The swirl of horny jocks, skanky girls and inadvisable behavior mixed with booze, bongs, bling and ridiculous signifiers like wiggers and bronys all starts to become. . .beautiful.

Luckily, for Korine’s sake, nothing in this tale of three bad girls and their one wayward Christian friend on a crime and promiscuity bender is meant to be taken literally, or all that seriously. At times the jokes are obvious – like an appearance before the bench in quite skimpy bikinis. How you’ll take some of the other flourishes, like the fact that most of the girls’ dialogue simply describes the action that just happened, or the endlessly repeating vague platitudes (a technique also seen in Korine’s “Trash Humpers” and “The Fourth Dimension”) will be entirely up to the viewer.

Also Check Out: Stars Take the Red Carpet at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival

“Spring Breakers” is the type of movie where you wonder when it’s actually going to kick in and start, then you check your watch and see it is nearly over. The first third of the movie is just a curvy rear-end of bad behavior shaken in your face. Then the girls get busted. (They spend a lot of time with dozens of hot young boys and girls writhing and destroying hotel rooms.) They are bailed out by James Franco, an absurdly cornrowed gangsta with platinum teeth.

“Look at my sh*t!” is his mantra, as he excites the girls with his conspicuous consumption. It is a wonderful, dreamy monologue, the inner voice of a grunting, illiterate barbarian.

Twice on the soundtrack, we hear Gomez’s call home to her grandmother. “We found ourselves here. It’s so beautiful.” The juxtaposed images the first time are of lewd prurience, and it is up to you to decide if this is to be tskked or accepted as just “kids having fun.” The second time, however, the adventures have turned more dark, more surreal and more violent. By the end, our spring breakers are wearing pink ski masks and gunning down drug kingpins in a blood ballet.

The big question is if this is art or if this is b.s. I guess I’m an easy mark, cause I’m inclined to call it art. Some of the sequences, with evocative music by Cliff Martinez and Skrillex, really work. Other times, however, it fails and fails hard.

The acting is quite poor. Korine may be nuts, but I don’t think he intentionally asked for bad performances. Also: the shtick of repetitive dialogue sometimes feels like he only shot a few lines from different angles and decided he needed to use all of them to pad this flick out to 90 minutes. Gomez’ character just up-and-disappears and, I swear to you, I would not be surprised if it was because the actress only had a few days for “Spring Breakers” and had a prior commitment. The film’s scenario (I won’t even call it a script) is so free-form that changes like this don’t really matter. “Act like you are in a movie, or something,” the girls tell one another.

The odd thing is, for a picture like this, one whose purpose, I believe, is to be critical of our consumptive culture, a film that’s eating itself is kinda perfect. All response is valid.

Grade: B-

Categories: Reviews

Tags: Harmony Korine, James franco, Jordan hoffman, Selena gomez, Spring Break Forrreevverrrr, Spring Breakers, Toronto International Film Festival, Vanessa hudgens

What’s the Big Deal?: The Virgin Spring (1960)

One good way to make a novice horror fan’s head explode is to tell him that Wes Craven’s first film, the notoriously sleazy exploitation shocker The Last House on the Left, was based on a movie by Ingmar Bergman, the boring Swedish guy. It sounds like an absurd juxtaposition, like being told that Faces of Death was based on Shakespeare. (It wasn’t. It was based on Oscar Wilde.) But Bergman’s The Virgin Spring did indeed inspire Wes Craven, and was controversial in its own right when it came out. Why does Virgin Spring continue to interest movie buffs more than 50 years later? Let’s put a toad in a sandwich and investigate!

The praise: The film won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film (it was only the fifth year that category existed) and was also nominated for its costume design. It won the foreign-language Golden Globe as well, and received a special mention at the Cannes Film Festival.

The context: Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), the son of a stern Lutheran minister, had a lot of questions about God. For example: What’s up with God? And: What is God’s deal? Many of Bergman’s films grappled with these questions. The first such film — and the first of any of Bergman’s works to gain significant attention in the United States — was The Seventh Seal (1957), now an icon of foreign cinema. (You know the one: man plays chess with Death, etc.) This was followed by Wild Strawberries (a classic in its own right), The Magician, a couple films made for Swedish TV, and then The Virgin Spring.

Released in Sweden in February 1960 and the United States nine months later, this retelling of a 13th-century folksong was immediately controversial for its graphic depiction of a rape and murder, and for the revenge which follows it. The film was banned in some places, and in the U.S. the rape-and-murder scene was edited. Naturally, this only helped at the box office, with people going to the film just to see what all the fuss was about.

The New York Times added fuel to the fire with a disapproving review: “Mr. Bergman has stocked it with scenes of brutality that … may leave one sickened and stunned…. [The rape and murder] is a brutish and horrible offense, which Mr. Bergman has represented for all the hideousness and terror it contains.” (And this was the edited version!)

Those who have seen The Virgin Spring may be amused by that description, in much the same way that we are fascinated by our grandparents’ overreaction to Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips. By the standards of cinema in 1960 — when even married people slept in separate beds, remember, and gunfire rarely produced blood — the pivotal scene in Virgin Spring was indeed shocking. But there would be mainstream studio films by the end of that very decade that would depict rape and murder in more graphic detail, and for more prurient and salacious reasons. The Times makes it sound like Virgin Spring is some kind of grindhouse shocker, like it’s — well, like it’s The Last House on the Left.

American critics were generally kinder to Virgin Spring than the Times’ Bosley Crowther was, but Swedish commentators were dismissive. Bergman usually traded in symbolism and allusion; here, for once, everything was plain and simple (as befits the story’s folk origins), and Bergman’s countrymen were unimpressed. Moreover, Sweden in 1960 prided itself on being a modern, secular society, and the spiritual and theological issues in The Virgin Spring were embarrassingly old-fashioned.

The movie: In ye olden medieval times, a fair young maiden named Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) is traveling through the forest to a church when she’s attacked by three herdsmen. They rape and then kill her. Coincidentally, the villains later that night seek shelter at the estate of Karin’s parents (played by Max von Sydow and Birgitta Valberg), who learn what has happened to Karin and exact revenge.

What it influenced: Wes Craven’s directorial debut, The Last House on the Left (1972), takes its basic scenario from The Virgin Spring. Craven changed the underlying ideas, though. Where Virgin Spring is concerned with questions about God’s justice and mercy, Last House on the Left acts on the assumption that God doesn’t exist, making such questions irrelevant. And so while Virgin Spring ends with Karin’s father begging God’s forgiveness for his vengeful actions against his daughter’s killers, Last House on the Left ends with the parents simply lost in the horror of what has happened. They don’t feel any moral or religious remorse, but they ain’t exactly happy, either. Virgin Spring is hopeful; Last House is nihilistic. Bergman and Craven used a common story for two very different purposes.

In addition to being remade in 2009 (with Craven serving as producer), Last House inspired plenty of copycats in the 1970s heyday of grindhouse/exploitation films: Last House on the Beach (1978), Night Train Murders (1975), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Thriller: A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One-Eye) (1974), and so forth. These generally played up the “sweet revenge” aspect, moving further away from the intent of Virgin Spring (which, to be fair, most of those filmmakers weren’t emulating anyway; they were looking at Last House). If Last House is the son of Virgin Spring, the Last House copycats are more like great-nephews of it.

What to look for: Though its descendants tended to be sensationalistic and cheaply made, The Virgin Spring is calm and polished, clearly the work of a serious filmmaker. (I don’t mean to detract from the merits of exploitation films; I just mean that the intentions are very different.) Bergman drew inspiration from Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), which also dealt with rape and revenge in a medieval forest. Both films employ the “Shakespearean weather change” device, where nature seems to respond to an unnatural act: the torrential rain in Rashomon, the sudden snowfall in Virgin Spring.

God is mentioned constantly throughout the film and figures prominently in the characters’ lives and motivations. Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom), the pregnant, sultry servant girl, asks the Scandinavian god Odin for help in the film’s opening moments. This is followed immediately by a scene of Karin’s pious mother and somewhat reluctantly pious father praying to the Christian God. Christianity was relatively new to medieval Sweden, but it was catching on fast, and its adherents were zealous indeed. Great emphasis is placed on virginity, with Ingeri’s illegitimate pregnancy serving as a visible reminder of her sinful nature.

What’s the big deal: Bergman considered The Virgin Spring to be one of his lesser films, but it has an important place in his evolution as a storyteller. Most of his films in the 1960s would deal with similarly weighty themes of God, faith, and spirituality, and you can see him laying the groundwork for that here. The basic scenario of Virgin Spring is so primal and easily understood — revenge against those who have harmed a loved one that it fits naturally into numerous other stories told in other genres. Unlike most of those films, though, this one considers the question of whether revenge, however understandable it may be, is truly justified.

Further reading: Bosley Crowther’s appalled review in The New York Times is a good read. For contrast, here is Time magazine’s glowing approval (which mistakenly refers to Karin and Ingeri as sisters; Ingeri is clearly not a blood relation, though she may have been considered a foster child). Mark Bourne’s DVD review gives some good background too, and here is Peter Cowie’s introductory essay from the Criterion collection.

Related columns:

What’s the Big Deal?: The Seventh Seal (1957).

What’s the Big Deal?: Rashomon (1950).