Directed by Harmony Korine
Starring James Franco, Selina Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine

Grade: D-

Who needs Reefer Madness when you have Harmony Korine films? His newest movie, Spring Breakers, plays like an R rated Christian propaganda film. Parents, if your kids smoke pot they will turn into murderous psychopaths who fuck older gross gangster men. (Note to parents: If your kid is a stoner psychopath, they’ll still be a psychopath if you sober them up.) Disguised as an edgy and gritty thriller, Breakers is really just an hour and a half long Ned Flanders nightmare. This is the kind of America that my grandparents are convinced exist because the liberals took Jesus out of schools. The screenplay reads like it’s written by someone who’s never done drugs, or met an actual black person, in their entire lives.
The story follows four girls, one who is actually given some semblance of a personality, as they rob a local restaurant in order to fund their spring break trip to Florida. Once on the beach, they party, have sex, do drugs and generally act like assholes. They get busted for doing drugs at a party and James Franco, a drug-dealing rapper who acts like a stereotypical black thug because he grew up as the only white kid in his neighborhood. The girls come stay with him, except for Selina Gomez because she believes in God so she’s the only one with enough sense to get out of that situation. The four girls are down to two. Then one gets shot in the arm by a rival drug dealer and suddenly everything gets a little too real for her and she gets on a bus and goes home too. That leaves the blond one and the other blond one. Their names aren’t important because they’re given no personality, other than that they seem to like drugs and they’ll probably have sex with you if you have some drugs. Asking these two girls to essentially carry this movie is a bad idea because they’re just so horrifically boring and uninteresting people. Finally, the girls go on a murderous rampage, because well, why wouldn’t they?

There are a few laughs in this movie, though almost all of them seem to be unintentional. Franco does get to show off his comedic improvisational skills at times though, particularly in a fairly inspired scene where he’s showing off the things his drug-dealing money bought him. This movie probably would’ve actually worked about a hundred times better if it was just a screwball comedy and they paired James Franco with Will Ferrell and one of the spring break girls were played by Aubrey Plaza. Because at least then the characters would be fun to watch and we could enjoy ourselves. As it is, Spring Breakers takes itself completely seriously, unless I totally missed the point, and tries to come off as a poignant social commentary on how stupid white girls are. Or something like that.

The greatest thing about this movie is that it even fails at its job of being a Christian propaganda film. With all its repetitive shots of titties and slutty girls, it just comes off as a somewhat artsy Girls Gone Wild video. Then by the end, it just devolves into a exploitation film. It’s basically porn for dudes who like pretty young girls in bikinis firing machine guns. If that’s your thing, though, there are far better movies for that. And the hilarious irony of Breakers is that while it strives to be a commentary on the objectification of young girls by all of society, all of society is only going to see this movie because you kind of sort of get to see Vanessa Hudgens naked. Yay.

Go see this movie!

Starring Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan

Directed by Ang Lee (Winner of the Oscar award for Best Director for this film)

Grade: A-

Life of Pi centers around a fairly simple question with complex answers. What matters more, the truth of a story or its merit? Especially if both stories convey the same devastation and heartbreak, but one adds moments of beauty and illumination and the proverbial triumph of the human spirit. This is dangerous territory because it’s so easy to cop out with ambiguity, but this movie never removes or shies away from the complexity and refuses to make things simpler even if it means denying us the traditionally satisfying resolutions we so often crave at the movies.

Suraj Sharma stars as Pi, the son of a zookeeper in India who, along with his family, relocates from India to Canada. On the voyage, though, something goes wrong. The ship sinks, and Pi is stranded alone out at sea. Well, he’s not really alone, there’s a full grown Bengal tiger in the lifeboat as well. A tiger in the boat and sharks consistently circling around the craft, neither is a very promising option. The story follows Pi along his journey out at sea and his desire to not just survive, but remain a good man. He seems resourceful enough, he could probably figure out a way to kill the tiger, named Richard Parker because of a clerical error, and in fact is even presented with a golden opportunity at one point but chooses to save the wild animal. Pi, who is a Hindu, Catholic, Muslim (“We get to feel guilty before hundreds of gods”), and raised by a father who values the secular world and rational thinking above the mystic. Giving into selfishness, even if it’s necessary for his survival is not an option. Throughout their time together they learn to tolerate each other. It’s not a Disney-esque friendship that blossoms, but rather a mutual respect, begrudging on Richard Parker’s part.

I didn’t see this Life of Pi in 3D as I’m not a particular fan, but nevertheless this was one of the best looking movies I’ve ever seen. The CGI, while not always completely believable, though I believe intentionally so, is far more satisfying and well executed than any summer blockbuster of the last year anyway. If you get nothing else from this movie, see it for the visuals, it’s very much worth your time.

My only real complaint about this movie is the book endings. While Irrfan Khan does a great job as the adult Pi recounting his story, in fact the haunted but contented look in his eyes is pretty spectacular, I was a bit bothered by the presence of the writer. First off, it feels a bit cliché, as it’s something that’s been used time and again. Second of all, and maybe I’m reaching a bit, why did the writer have to be white? This is a movie all about Indians, well mostly, and though they’re in Canada during the telling of the story, it feels a bit manipulative. It’s as if by making the writer white, it’s assuming most of the audience is white and that makes this story about people from India hanging out with wild animals while stranded at sea so much more exotic. I don’t really think it needs to be any more exotic, let the story speak for itself. Overall, a small complaint, I just don’t like when I feel like I’m being pandered to.

The ambiguous ending, often used as a cheap tactic to trick people into thinking the film’s smarter than it is, is actually perfect. If you think of Pi as a man of many faiths, all of which he holds to be true, then you can see that both of his stories contain the truth, because all stories (i.e. religions) contain truth, if not a universal one, then simple some truth
we need.

Buy this movie!
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=8855214&style=movie&frm=lk_Somedamnfool

Directed by Sarah Polley
Starring: Michelle Williams, Luke Kirby, Seth Rogen

Grade: B+

Let’s face it, character studies do not make good popcorn movies. They don’t tend to be terribly exciting and they’re not particularly funny either. Long stretches of quiet drag out followed by moments where you have to rush for the control to turn the volume down because you’re suddenly completely started by the noise, thus spilling greasy popcorn all over your new ironically phrased T-shirt you just scored from the Salvation Army. What these kind of movies do though, at least the good ones, is find a tense note and push it all the way to the brink until you can’t stand it any longer. Take This Waltz, directed by Sarah Polley, uses sexual tension to this effect, and does it well. The meat of the film revolves around an emotional extramarital affair in which the two characters use every ounce of restraint they possess to not physically touch each other, though it’s clear that symbolically the deed is already done. The tension these two feel is so palpable it becomes too much for the audience to stand, much less the two characters on screen.

The film centers around Margot (Michelle Williams) who has a good marriage in seemingly every facet except for a lack of sex. I wouldn’t even say there is a lack of intimacy, because Margot and her husband Lou (Seth Rogen in a rare dramatic turn) are very affectionate in a quirky, demented way. But the lack of action between the sheets is all too apparent and every attempt at rectifying that ends in failure and resentment on both parts. Enter dreamy Daniel (Luke Kirby). He’s everything Lou is not: cynical, mysterious and far better looking. Margot meets Daniel on a trip to Toronto, shares a plane with him and they are both surprised to learn he lives virtually right across the street from her. Convenient, yes, but the film is good enough to overlook this impracticality. The two begin having secret rendezvous where they flirt and even talk bluntly about all the sex they would have if she wasn’t married, but they never act on it. Lou meets Daniel and likes him. He invites him over to their house for a party. He pieces together what’s been happening eventually but is far too nice of a guy to have the explosion moment we’re used to getting in these kinds of movies, instead he backs off. Lou is not willing to fight for her, and Daniel is. Maybe that’s the message here, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Michelle Williams is fast becoming one of the best young actresses working right now. People who only remember her as the girl from Dawson’s Creek are doing themselves a disservice. She turns in an amazing performance in this movie as a character so full of angst, toward just about everything in this world, that she has to work up courage in order to seduce her own husband. Seth Rogen, meanwhile, definitely has limits. He’s an incredibly funny man and plays a great everyman. Most of this movie requires him to simply a sweeter version of the same character he usually plays, but when the script calls for him to do some heavy lifting, Williams is acting circles around him. Luke Kirby is good in his thankless role. It’s thankless because it’s virtually impossible not to dislike this guy. He’s a decent enough guy going through his own moral quandaries, but the fact that he’s leading Margot away from Lou, who’s just so fucking nice, makes us resent him.

A standout performance comes from Sarah Silverman. She only shows up in a few scenes, probably a good thing. A recovering alcoholic, she dreads the inevitable relapse that always seems to come to the afflicted, and provides virtually all the insight in the film. She sort of serves as the voice of the audience in some ways as she spells out the subtleties that we might not have picked up on. “New things get old,” she tells Margo at one point. It’s fairly early in the movie, but by the end we realize this is probably the most important piece of dialogue. It might seem heavy handed but the rest of the film plays it so close to the vest that it’s nice to have something concrete to latch onto.

Overall this is not a story interested in satisfying conclusions. It’s also not a love story, not really. It’s about unsatisfied lives and trying to find happiness wherever you can.

Buy this movie!
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=8587887&style=movie&frm=lk_Somedamnfool

Grade: A

Is murder ever justifiable? Should a man be condemned for his entire life because of one bad moment? These don’t sound like questions a comedy would normally tackle, but Bernie is a question of moral ambiguity disguised as a screwball, black comedy. The movie is based on a true story, for whatever that’s worth anymore, and because of that it doesn’t pretend to have any definitive answers. We know a murder took place and who committed the act, but we don’t know for sure what the motivations were or what the relationship between the murderer and the murderee was. This forces us to tackle these questions with our own logic, our own morality and our own experiences.

The title role is played by Jack Black in one of his most restrained performances. Gone are all the boisterous and obnoxious qualities that have made him famous, and instead we get an effeminate, awkward man who seems to spread good will wherever he goes. He is a mortician who caters to every need and whim of both the deceased and the bereaved. The town of Carthage, Texas adores him for his kind spirit. Most seem to either think he’s gay or asexual, though some seem to have quiet theories about what he does with the old widows that he comforts.

Enter Marjorie Nugent (Shirley Maclaine), a recent widow whose wealth is only outdone by her malice. Bernie befriends her, much the same way he does all the women, and starts enjoying the perks of being a rich, lonely woman’s friend. They go on exotic vacations together, staying in first class hotels, he learns to fly a private airplane and spends a great deal of his time and her money up in the air. He finally even obtains power of attorney so he can spend her money at his leisure. Then he kills her and hides her body for nine weeks, only being discovered when her granddaughter leads the police in a search of her home when Bernie isn’t around, in an icebox.

This seems mostly cut and dry, and to the town sheriff (Matthew McConaughey) it is. A gold-digger gained the trust of a rich old widow, gained power of attorney, then killed her and enjoyed her wealth all to himself. Except the movie gives us enough evidence that it might not be that simple. Bernie might’ve been a genuinely good guy who snapped after being harassed by a mean old woman for far too long. The town refuses to believe he’s capable of such a thing, and even if he did do it, which he did, he admits it freely once caught, he should be forgiven because of all the good he did for the community.

Black and Maclaine bring humanity to what could have been stock characters. If we don’t know who exactly Bernie is, then that’s okay, because this is the kind of movie that could inspire passionate debates over several rounds of beers.

I’ve talked about three of the characters in the movie but I’ve failed to mention the fourth and maybe the most important one: The city of Carthage. The structure of the movie moves through a compilation of interviews with the citizens of the small town. They are eerily realistic and though they employ all the clichés of typical southern small town people as seen by Hollywood, they come off as real viable human beings. They’re probably the best part of the movie, at once hilarious and a bit terrifying. Their faith in Bernie goes beyond any possible atrocity he may have committed because he’s one of them and they’ve seen the good he’s capable of.

The last thing I want to point out is that this movie is in fact a comedy, and it succeeds there too. So forget all that shit about moral dilemmas and conundrums and whatever other pretentious things I said, and just know that it’s pretty goddamned hilarious.