For the week of July 9th, Lionsgate is bringing Spring Breakers to Blu-ray. At first glance, this thriller seems like the outlier in director Harmony Korine's body of work; movies like Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy traffic in the ugliest parts of humanity, both physically and spirtually, and Spring Breakers is anything but ugly. It's a widescreen, candy-colored fantasy starring three Disney Channel/ABC Family starlets (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgins, and Ashley Benson), all of whom spend the majority of the movie wearing little more than skimpy bikinis. However, Korine is up to more than the glossy surface might suggest. Along with this year's great Pain & Gain, Spring Breakers puts the basest, most corrupt aspects of the American Dream under a microscope. Korine's heroines might look attractive, but they only care about having fun, and they're willing to steal and kill in order to pursue that goal. Special notice must go to James Franco's debauched drug kingpin Alien, who hides genuine menace behind cornrows and a ridiculous accent. He's the film in microcosm: ludicrous, funny, and deeply unsettling.
Jeffrey Kauffman calls Spring Breakers "a prime example of style over substance, but Korine is no mere empty headed showman. Any film which can combine the hyperbolic violence and wry comedy of Pulp Fiction with the dreamlike repetitive power of Last Year at Marienbad obviously has more up his intellectual sleeve than simple gimmickry. Spring Breakers tends to be overly ironic at the expense of actual character development too much of the time (an irony highlighted by the final voice over of the film), but buried beneath the rampant post-Modernist desconstruction Korine exploits is much the same message that pervaded Where the Boys Are: reckless behavior can get you killed."
July 9th also sees the Blu-ray release of Dead Man Down. This violent drama is the English-language debut of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo helmer Niels Arden Oplev, and like that 2009 Swedish feature, Oplev has structured Dead Man Down as a throwback to the film noirs of the 1940s and 1950s. Here, a damaged young woman (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Noomi Rapace) blackmails mob lieutenant Victor (Colin Farrell) into killing a man for her, though her plan unravels once Victor's own personal demons begin to emerge. It's all very dark, and Rapace and Farrell are brilliant (Farrell, in particular, does a lot with a stock part), but Dead Man Down ultimately proves less compelling than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The script by Fringe showrunner J.H. Wyman tosses in plot complication upon plot complication at the expense of coherence, and Oplev can't give these pulpy trappings the same humanity he afforded his Dragon Tattoo adaptation. Still, Dead Man Down remains fitfully entertaining, especially for those viewers needing a neo-noir fix.
Martin Liebman's Blu-ray review says that the film has "a pulse, but it's faint. Dead Man Down is at least a well-crafted and occasionally compelling picture, but never is it remotely riveting or anywhere in the ballpark of 'new.' It flounders through character cliché, generic emotions, visually snazzy but nevertheless routine shootouts, and drags through a tedious middle stretch. The performances, save for the miscast Terrence Howard, carry the movie better than any other element. This is another in a disturbingly growing library of absolutely forgettable films, films that are neither awful nor for any reason memorable."
The 1989 actioner Cohen & Tate is another noir update, albeit one that derives inspiration from a decidedly non-noir source. Directed by Near Dark scribe Eric Red, Cohen & Tate watches as two hitman (Roy Scheider and Adam Baldwin) kidnap a young boy (Harley Cross) who has witnessed a mob execution; however, things definitely don't go as planned once the child begins pitting his very different captors against each other. This is a violent little picture - and the Blu-ray contains deleted scenes that are even more graphic than what made it into the theatrical cut - which makes it all the more surprising once you realize that Red has used the picture to stage a retelling of O. Henry's classic comic tale, "The Ransom of Red Chief." The shift from humorous farce to bloody thriller might seem implausible, but Red pulls it off, thanks to some tough direction and a great, soulful performance from Scheider.
Finally, TV-on-Blu-ray gets another addition through the release of Portlandia: Season Three. This IFC sketch comedy - the brainchild of comedian Fred Armisen and former Sleater-Kinney bandmember Carrie Brownstein - has entered its third season with increased confidence; in addition to the show's characteristic one-off bits, Armisen and Brownstein have shown a willingness to take multiple episodes to develop their sketches and characters creations, which include Kyle MacLachlan's wonderfully batty Mayor of Portland, ineffectual liberal couple Peter and Nance, and Chloe Sevigny's difficult roommate Alexandra. Admittedly, Portlandia isn't for everyone, and there are times when its humor is too arch or self-referential for its own good. But it's always consistently, interestingly odd, and it's worth the effort to tap into its comic wavelength.
Jeffrey Kauffman notes in his Blu-ray review that "there's perhaps a more thoughtful consideration of plot development as the show moves into its third year. This might be most noticeable in longer arcs as with that concerning the Mayor, but there are minimal steps in the same direction with regard to some of the other recurring characters...The show perhaps continues to be an acquired taste, much like the city it parodies. Too often Brownstein and Armisen seem to be just a little derisive rather than playfully satirical, something that tends to give Portlandia a sometimes slightly bitter edge, at least at times. The show has more often than not been overly twee and precious, winking so hard at its tendency to mock self-important snobs (or SNOBs) that it doesn't seem to realize it's become a bit self-important as well. Still, the show delivers solid, if not exactly gut busting, laughs, and Armisen and Brownstein continue to create some of the most delightfully daffy characters in television comedy."