Spring Breakers (2013)

★★★½
Did Harmony Korine ever attend spring break? I wondered that as I watched Spring Breakers, a movie that could be seen either as an exaggerated account from someone who absorbed the imagery of spring break through years of watching spring break movies or an accurate on-location report from a real spring break gathering but amped up to highlight the hedonistic nature of the annual event. Someone could come away with either interpretation or maybe another that I haven't considered yet. Korine is a cinematic wild child who doesn't shy away from excess, so the spring break setting is the perfect place for him to indulge in his tendencies. He walks a tight rope here, and this time he pulls it off. I've seen Gummo, which featured a fragmented narrative about the residents of a poor town, though it was unsatisfactory because his camera was more fascinated with behavior than providing any insight into that behavior. The unreliable narrator seemed to distance him and us from his subjects.

Abandon (2002)

★★
With all the recent films featuring twist endings, Abandon comes across as pretty bland. Part of the fun of watching this kind of film is to replay the movie in our minds to connect the dots and see if the story played fair. Movies like Angel Heart, The Sixth Sense and Memento engage our thought processes and are impressive for their execution. Abandon doesn't inspire any kind of mental rewinding. The movie is presented in a straightforward manner before arriving at a conclusion that is weak and barely requires a double take.

The Hunger Games (2012)

★★★½
The Hunger Games books carry the label of dystopian young adult fiction, but much like Robert Heinlein's juvenile novels (Have Space Suit—Will Travel is a standout), Suzanne Collins's stories have broad appeal that reaches well beyond the Y.A. demographic. She writes at a very high level and incorporates complex themes into a fast-paced narrative focused on combat and survival. Series protagonist Katniss Everdeen is plucky, cunning and resilient. She navigates a deadly contest planned and manipulated by gamemakers who have accepted the yearly sacrifice of children as a part of life. Their world of Panem consists of a highly centralized and authoritarian capital city (called the Capitol) and its 12 districts of varying degrees of poverty and disenchantment. Collins advances the plot efficiently and succeeds in simultaneously conveying Panem's geopolitical environment and maintaining a clear focus on Katniss's journey.

Nope (2022)

★★½
Capsule Review

I'd like to believe Jordan Peele is the newest innovative horror movie director on the scene, and perhaps when he has a larger body of work, we can recognize him as such and acknowledge a few weaknesses along the way. It's not like John Carpenter and Wes Craven always knocked it out of the park. His latest film, Nope, is a little bit of sci-fi and a little bit of horror. It involves a U.F.O. that hovers over a Southern California horse ranch and the owners (brother and sister played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) who try to record it. The Haywood siblings are also dealing with the negative fallout from the death of their father and a nearby Old West theme park owner who wants to buy their land. The players are all in some way involved with the mysterious U.F.O., which has certain rules that don't seem to be followed consistently enough to get a good grasp of how it works. Uneven pacing takes momentum out of the movie. It's an okay effort that doesn't match the ominous dread of Peele's debut Get Out.

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Die My Love (2025)

★★★½
Capsule Review

Lynne Ramsay's Die My Love is a scorching and uncompromising examination of a woman's mental deterioration starting with her postpartum depression and following her through a maddening descent into the darkest recesses of her mind. The sequence of events unravels. How much is authentic? Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson star as Grace and Jackson, who move into an old family home and aim to start a family there. After the birth of her child, Grace experiences depression and boredom, but she also exhibits odd behavior like crawling on the ground and hallucinating. While the movie progresses more or less in a linear fashion, there are seemingly unrelated sidesteps in the narrative and drastic jumps in time that illustrate Grace's fragmented state of mind. Lawrence's performance is stellar. John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence is a clear inspiration, but Ramsay's movie stands on its own with its surreal imagery to carry it.

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