SPRING BREAKERS Review

SPRING BREAKERS Review

By Darin Skaggs

     “Spring break. Spring break. Spring break.”  These words are whispered throughout Harmony Korine’s new film Spring Breakers by James Franco’s character Alien.  All the characters take Spring Break to get away from their terrible lives and throw all cares out the window.

     The film is about four girls who are stranded at their college campus for spring break due to the fact they did not raise enough money.  After a while they get so bored and depressed about not getting to go to the beach they devise a plan to get money.  Their plan is to rob a diner.  They do and then take their riches and head off to spring break.

     The opening scene and all the other spring break scenes are filmed as what you hear happens on spring break just amped up 100 times more.  The scenes contain alcohol consumption, nudity and tons of drugs.  The scenes however are not a celebration of these acts.  The scenes are so uncomfortable and hard to watch that the filmmaker is trying to say how bad these acts are and how dumb these kids are being.  He spends the rest of the film telling us why these people are drawn to it.

     The girls, our protagonists, spend the first half hour being sad, bored and whinny about the fact that they could not go get away from their lives.  They come to the point of boredom to where they will do anything to getaway.  That includes robbing and being violent.  That is what the film is about, how being bored can be the most dangerous for the young.  Later during the film the girls are put into jail for doing drugs and under aged drinking.  They are later bailed out by Alien, a great James Franco performance.  He saves them and takes them in as his own.   This character spends his life like it is spring break saying that he does not care and wants to just be a bad person.  He does not care that all his siblings were killed while living like he is.

     There are two sequences in the film where the characters sing Brittney Spears songs because the themes are pointed to her.  She is a person who has done things it seems just out of boredom.  Like when she shaved her head, got married for a day and getting drunk several times.  These people look up to this kind of behavior and have the mindset “monkey see, monkey do.”  By the end of the film the filmmaker challenges how “evil” can a bored person get and how far can some people go before realizing their not acting right.

MAN OF STEEL Review

MAN OF STEEL Review

By Darin Skaggs

     The most popular movie genre is arguably the Superhero genre.  Last year saw what could be the greatest superhero movie ever made, Marvel’s The Avengers.  It had amazing action, humor, dramatic elements and suspense.  Any good superhero movie should follow this criterion as best it can.  One film that ignores that totally is Zach Snyder’s new film Man of Steel and the next reboot in the Superman franchise.

     The story is like the other Superman stories.  Superman or Kal-L is sent off his planet by his father because it is about to be destroyed.  At the same time the military leader of the planet Zod is sentenced to prison in some sort of black hole. Before that, Zod threatens to find Superman no matter what it takes. Superman lands on earth and is taken in by surrogate parents.  He then learns to cope with his unique powers and abilities. 

     The movie is full of great sequences but the film as a whole really falls flat.  The story of Clark, Superman’s earth name, is told through flashbacks.  These are the best scenes in the picture.  There is one where Clark as a young boy and he is seeing through peoples skin. Others include Clark saving his class from a sinking bus.  This brings me to the poor decisions that are made in the script.  And there are a lot of them.  Ma Kent played wonderfully by Diane Lane is a great character that you really care about. Pa Kent, who is played by Kevin Costner in his best performance in a long time. His character is the dumbest person, makes the weirdest decisions I’ve seen in a long time.  He is obsessed with not letting anyone know about his son’s powers.  He even thinks it might be better to let a bus full of kids die just so Clark’s secret won’t get out.  He also makes the single most stupidest decision possibly ever put to film.  Other characters make odd decisions as well.

     The heart of any superhero film is that these guys care about everyone.  Most of them don’t want anybody to die.  Batman in the Nolan films has a rule that he doesn’t kill anybody.  In The Avengers final scene they are doing everything they can to save everybody.  In Spider-Man 2 Peter Parker is at risk of losing his job as a pizza delivery boy, yet he saves two kids from getting hit by a car, even though if he is late delivering this pizza in a half hour or less than he will be fired.  In Man of Steel, Superman does not care.  He slams Zod into a gas station and it explodes.  I have to think at least five or six people would have been in there.  Yet Superman does not care.  In the final battle which goes on way too long, buildings are destroyed left and right.  Superman and Zod fighting is one of the most selfish acts of a superhero.  Superman rather stop Zod by slamming his face into glass, or throwing him into a building.  Even when Superman is thrown into a building, which then starts collapsing, you know with people in it, all Superman can do is keep fighting Zod.  He saves so many people in the beginning that I would think that he would care about the thousands of people dying in this final battle.

     The final battle is full of explosions and destruction.  There are so many times in the battle that invokes 9/11.  So many times that is uncomfortable.  It is invoked in The Avengers but it is done really well.  The attackers are attacking New York.  The Avengers do the best they can to stop them. It is what we wanted when 9/11 happened.  As the scene goes on though we realize it is what we had.  The Avengers are saving everyone they can, like the fireman and cops on that day. This film is just saying “Hey, remember that terrible thing that happened.  Well let me remind you.”  He shows us what it looked like but he does not say anything about it.  It feels like once Snyder stops introducing great actors like Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe, he just moves on to blowing stuff up.

     Zach Snyder hits you over the head with his 9/11 imagery.  He also, maybe even more so than 9/11, hits you over the head with Christ imagery.  Some of the Christ parallels are so grown worthy it takes you out of the film.  At one point his father tells him to save earth, he agrees and floats away with his arms in the Jesus on the cross position.  There are countless things that happen, like he’s 33 or that he is a unique birth. There are too many parallels to be smart and just comes across as annoying.

     Man of Steel is one of the most anticipated films in a while and sadly a big letdown.  Well that’s what you get when you give the director of Sucker Punch and Legend of the Guardian: The Owls of Ga’Hoole a big, possible the biggest, superhero franchise.  It’s big, dumb and with very little jokes that by the nature of the film just seems out of place.  The film is one of the biggest messes I’ve seen in a while and a waste of two and a half hours of film watching.

THE BLING RING Review

THE BLING RING Review

By Darin Skaggs

     We are an obsessive humanity.  We are obsessive about clothes, cars, movies and celebrities.  We look up to the good ones and when they fall we judge them for what they’ve done.  We watch them like flies on a wall.   In Sofia Copella’s new film The Bling Ring it takes a look into the mind of the celeb obsessed teens and what the rating obsessed public is doing to them.

     The story goes as so, a teenager named Marc moves to a new High School and befriends a girl named Rebecca a trouble maker, Nicki and Chloe best friends that are always getting into mischief.  They bond and eventually decide to start robbing celebrity’s houses.  They check when they will be out of Hollywood and then go into their homes and take what they please.

     The film is about what celebrity obsession does to the young.  So much of celebs these days do so little for so much.  These kids thrive to have that.  They take money, clothes, art and alcohol.  That is all they do.  They become rich and have new things just for this.  They don’t really work for it.  All they do after is party and sleep, much like other celebrities that are super famous these days.  The main famous person they steal from is Paris Hilton.  She is a person that becomes famous for acting bad, then having a reality show where she did not really do much.  Rebecca’s idol, which she also steals from in the movie, is Lindsey Lohan.  There is footage of her downfall where she gets busted for drugs and liquor.  The worse Lohan gets the worse Nicki gets.  She gets meaner, more destructive and eventually betrays the people who consider her friends.

     The performances in the film are amazing, some of the best of the year.  These people act like teens that don’t see any consequences to their actions.  Others are very paranoid about getting caught and are aware of the consequences.  The star of the show is Emma Watson who plays Nicki.  She does not care what happens but when authority comes around she acts all innocent.

     When the group finally does get caught, their friendship is tested.  Some deny everything they did but not what the others did.  Some tell all and rat out others to get an easier trial.  It is another theme of the film with celebs not getting in trouble for their sins because of who they are to the public eye.  These kids don’t want to be in trouble so they do what they can to get out of it or make their punishment less difficult.

     Sofia Copella, an amazing director of films like Lost in Translation, The Virgin Suicides and Somewhere, makes another great achievement to her discovery.   I do not know why she was influenced to make this film but I’m glad she did.  One of the better films of the year and a real treat to watch.

      

SAFE HAVEN Review

SAFE HAVEN Review

By Darin Skaggs

     Almost every year there seems to be a film that has a love story, there is a conflict that threatens the relationship, something way over dramatic.  Then there is a happy ending.  These films are all based on popular books by Nicholas Sparks.  Films like these include The Lucky One, Dear John and now the new Sparks film Safe Haven.

     The film is about a lady named Katie.  She hurt maybe even murdered someone.  She spends the first act running away.  There is a cop, Tierney, who is obsessed with finding her. Katie gets to a small town and tries to settle down.  While there she meets Alex, a good looking, good hearted man with an adorable child.  Huh I wonder if they’ll fall in love.  During her time there she also meets a friend named Jo, a kind hearted woman who gives out some advice to Katie.

     Like most of the other Sparks films the second act of the film is almost an extended montage of the two leads falling for each other.  They flirt; someone makes fun of them for glairing too long while the other person is walking away.  This one is cheesy just like the rest and does not really try to do anything to earn a heartwarming relationship. 

     The confusing and mystery aspect of the film is what did Katie do to have the feeling to run away.  The whole time, based on how the cop feels about her and some misleading flashbacks, it feels like Katie is a bad person.  Despite what unravels in the last twenty minutes I do not want Alex and his kid to date a murderer so the love story aspect is not something I am rooting for.  Much like other Sparks films the “villain” character is one note.  He is, for some reason just evil. He does not have any nice characteristics that would make you believe in the previous relationship with the main character.

     For the first three/fourths of this film I was ready to just write it off as another boring light hearted chick flick.  Then something weird happened.  Something crazy.  I won’t go into spoilers, but the film which has been relatively light hearted takes a major dark turn.  There are events that happen to these characters that would be traumatic and some might need therapy after it is all said and done.  Also this film has two unnecessary plot twists.  One you could see coming, but the last one comes totally out of left field.  It has almost nothing to do with the story and could have been left out of the film and had the same result.

     Safe Haven lags for most of the film then takes a crazy turn.  This makes it uneven and bad film.  It tries to do something more exciting than a love story that is threatened by small moments that the characters take too overdramatically.  It tries something new but still falls as flat as the other Sparks films.  It is almost worth watching though for the ridiculousness of the twist. Almost.