Spring Breakers (Blu-ray + UltraViolet Digital Copy)

I wouldn't recommend reading this unless you've seen the film.The bright sun glistens off the bright blue water as the warm sand squishes between your toes. Laughter and joyful screams fill the air. The beer funnel is full again and you're up next. "Woooo!" echoes throughout the beach. Smiles surround you and everyone is inviting. This is Spring break. This is the dream. Though just as all dreams do it is sure to come to an abrupt end. Bright lights and neon swim wear can only last so long before the harsh world comes bounding upon you. How far would you go to make it last? What would you be willing to do in order to have spring break forever? These are just a few of the questions Harmony Korine posits in his newest effort Spring Breakers. A study on the youth culture today and how amoral and corrupt just having fun can become.Korine's nonlinear editing is a thing of genius here and really drives the film on. The constant foreshadowing and hints of the future assure that the tension never lets up and the view is never able to be at ease. Something isn't right here. Even through all the partying and seeming happiness something darker lies just beneath the surface. It will not be all laughter and smiles. Something will go very wrong. This feeling is met with truth as the film unfolds. Korine uses erratic dubstep music and quick cuts to illustrate the ever decomposing attention span of today's youth, then slowly eases the film into a more lingering and abstract statement on the moral decay of society at large.Selena Gomez and Rachel Korine do well with what they have to work with. Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and James Franco however knock their parts out of the park. In particular Hudgens and Franco.Hudgens' Candy is so disconnected from reality that when a friend who she's known since kindergarten is fearful for their lives and wants to go back home her first instinct is to roll her eyes. Her constant finger gun shooting is very telling. She wants to "have fun" and do whatever she wants no matter the cost. Life to her is a video game. A movie. Drugs, alcohol, mindless robbing, unlimited money and no consequences. Sound familiar? Almost like a description for the newest Grand Theft Auto video game. This is her perception. This is how she makes the world around her. This is her reality. A girl making out with another girl and dancing raunchy is considered edgy and when she sees this happening at a party her reaction is to gyrate around and scream in joy. Something that many girls would do as well, but this is only a small glimpse into her psyche. It's not the act that excites her it is the fact that it is edgy and considered by some to be wrong. Money excites her because of the power it brings with it. She, several times, becomes aroused in the presence of money. Of all the girls she is the one who seems to be the first and most accepting of Alien and his lifestyle. After Cotty has been shot and tells Brit and Candy that spring break is over Candy again seems to not care. Just as Faith wanting to go home this only interrupts Candy's fun. She just wants this annoyance to be over. Get back to the fun stuff. Get back to being bad."I always wanted to be bad." A statement made by Franco's Alien that completely defines his character. Guns, drugs, money and power are his American Dream. Alien's idea of having fun is robbing spring breakers and blowing tons of money at strip clubs. He is gangster rap fully realized and defined. As he tells the girls he is a hustler and a rapper. It is quite important that he lists them in that order. It's as if being a rapper comes with the territory of being a hustler and plays second fiddle to it. The idea that all gangsters and hustlers are also rappers means he has to be one as well. Music is not his first love nor why he does this. He just wants to be bad and rappers are "bad" so he must do it. Scarface is the ultimate bad guy so it plays on repeat in his house. He surrounds himself with what he sees as bad. The necessities of being a bad guy. Just as when he is explaining his back story he says it's the same old sob story. It doesn't matter. All that matters is being the baddest guy he can be. There doesn't have to be a reason why other than he simply wants to be. This is his ultimate downfall.Spring Breakers is worth seeing for Franco's performance alone. Hudgens performance, Harmony Korine's brilliant direction and hyper sensual style are just the icing on the cake. After seeing this for the second time it only got better. I expect the third time will only reveal more about this masterwork.10/10.

A must see... thought provoking and hard hitting. Keeps you at the edge of your seat till the very end!

Note: I originally posted this as a comment on another review that had boiled all the one-star reviews down to men in their early twenties who were either looking for a good time and didn't get it, or didn't like the social commentary it presented.I am 23, and I hated this movie. So far, you have got me. I did not watch this movie for a good time but rather because so many people said it was so bad, that one day at my friend's house I had to watch it when we saw it on Netflix. "It can't actually be the worst movie ever!" I said to him, but he assured me that it was. I had been under the impression that this movie was intended as a film for a 'good time,' as you put it, and I still thought that after viewing it, until reading your review just moments ago.I do believe you are correct on Korine and his intended message, but the film was just unpleasant. Many viewers may have seen what it was supposed to be and just didn't care, as with its cover and choice of actresses they did not go into it for moral complexities but just to see beautiful girls showing off their bodies. They did not get quite what they wanted. Personally, I could not have cared what this movie was about or what content was in it because the incessant repetition of lines and scenes (not to mention bad ones) and the scatterbrained timeline would ruin anything for me.For instance, Predator is one of my favorite movies ever. I love the over the top attitude it takes to so many scenes, the violent themes, and the classic Last-Man-Standing plot. While these are very different films, these elements are all shared with Spring Breakers. However, if you viewed all the scenes in a different order while listening to some one-liner rumbled by the heavily accented Arnold over and over and every ten seconds you got to watch five more seconds from the scene in which Arnold covers himself in mud, the movie would only exist to be laughed at. No one could enjoy it as a serious action movie and it would forever be given one-star ratings by people who did not enjoy watching it, regardless of how good it could have been.Most one-star reviewers apparently didn't feel a one-star movie was worth their time to write about and so you have short uninformative reviews that might not reflect their complex reactions.

Parfait

Bel film e attrici fantastiche.

Edición correcta aunque con pocos extras. Buena calidad de imagen, aunque se aprecia grano en algunas escenas. Película para pasar una tarde.

Don't get why people hate on this film. As soon as I saw the trailer on TV when it was it theatres I knew it had to be good. Unfortunately didn't see it then as I was 17. Fast forward 3/4 years later I regret not seeing it sooner.The cast is superb especially James Franco, who takes a break from starring in s***ty stoner films to give a performance that I can see in time will be the role which will define his career the same way Travis Bickle defined Robert De Niro's.And it's not just the cast that is perfection, the music, the cinematography, the acting all deserve a round of applause.

Les anciennes critiques du film ayant été déplacé sur un article de décoration en bois (logique n'est-ce pas?) je reposte ma critique du film ici à l'occasion de sa sortie en blu-ray:Vendu comme un thriller sexy pour ados adeptes de teen-movies corsés, Spring Breakers pouvait au moins compter sur la réputation de Harmony Korine, réalisateur hors norme et porte parole d’une jeunesse marginale et désaxée, pour attirer l’attention. Collaboration entre les starlettes de Disney Selena Gomez et Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson une des vedettes de Pretty Little Liars et le caméléonesque James Franco casté en gangsta-rappeur, Spring-Breakers ne pouvait n’être qu’un film hors norme et si on l’attendait original et déjanté, on ne l’imaginait pas aussi réussi.Il n’est pas si jeune Harmony Korine mais c’est pourtant l’un des rares cinéastes à avoir parfaitement cerné la jeune génération américaine dans ses travers comme dans ses aspirations pour pouvoir l’illustrer à travers ses modèles les plus exubérants. A divers niveaux les quatre ados de Spring-Breakers sont toutes des marginales en quête d’elles-mêmes, dérives extrêmes d’une génération digitale définit par la pop-culture qu’elle consomme, déconnectée d’une réalité à laquelle elle ne s’identifient plus et en quête d’un impossible espace-temps d’irréalité qui leur ressemble. La Floride du Spring-break leur semble alors être un endroit d’une « grande spiritualité », ironique ? Sans doute mais se serait se méprendre sur les intentions du film que de ne le voir qu’à travers une lecture satirique quand Korine affiche une vraie tendresse pour ses héroïnes hors-normes, préférant plutôt souligner les défauts d’un monde inadapté à ses personnages, déchirés entre ses extrêmes, sex drugs & rock’roll d’un côté, fanatisme religieux de l’autre. Dans cet univers étrange, les trois barbies de la télé font mieux que de casser leurs images à coup de scènes trashs et sexy. Korine choisit plutôt de les afficher dans leurs errances, ivres et à la dérive devant une caméra qui captent chez ces actrices une beauté triste et mélancolique et une détresse émouvante.On est bien sûre toujours dans le stéréotype et dans le fantasme, comme si les quatre filles étaient entrées dans le petit monde en toc qu’elles regardaient jusqu’à là à travers la lucarne et où le sexe et la violence sont monnaie courante. Même Alien (James Franco), rappeur à ses heures, petit blanc dans une ville noir, forgeant son identité de gangster en regardant Scarface en boucle sur son écran plat, apparaît comme un gamin pommé de plus, ayant perdu le sens des réalités, préférant nager dans ses liasses de billets et jouer avec ses gros flingues de dessin animés sans jamais tirer une seule balle. La violence et la mort, finalement rare dans le film, frappent alors là encore par leur irréalité, apparaissant dans des plans stylisés à l’extrême et dans des séquences au ralenti où les filles canardent la scène comme dans un jeu vidéo tendis que les corps tombent sans qu’on ne voit jamais une goutte de sang. Spring-Breakers est un peu une relecture trash d’Alice au pays des merveilles dans laquelle les filles passent, le temps des vacances, de l’autre côté du miroir, à l’ombre de la réalité et sous la caméra post-moderne et mélancolique d’un Korine pastichant Mallick, faisant fie de l’unité temporelle et de la trame narrative pour s’adonner à de longues séquences quasi-oniriques sur lesquels les pensées de chacunes se mêlent à la bande son electro (sublime com