16) Spring Breakers
Spring Breakers is hard to articulate into words. That’s meant as the biggest compliment, not only to the film itself but to writer-director Harmony Korine (who wrote 1995’s controversial Kids at just age 19).
A divisive, rule-breaking provocateur that many will refer to as an enfant terrible next to Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, and John Waters, Korine makes films that go one of two ways—they are either artlessly exploitative pieces of ego-stroking junk (1997’s Gummo and 2009’s Trash Humpers) or hypnotic, unforgettable pieces of art (his latest). Simultaneously transgressive and transcendent as a film can get, Spring Breakers is vividly shocking, alive, satirically pointed, poignant, and head and shoulders above anything else independent cinema’s bad boy has ever done.
An intoxicating shock to the system, one hell of a trip, and an audacious film that’s actually about something, Spring Breakers shakes you up, lingers in your mind, and might even outrage many who miss the point. It’s one of those misunderstood films that is not so easy to label or categorize, nor should it be when so many are misguided in their marketing anyway. Love it or hate it, one will probably never forget it.
Mission accomplished, Harmony.
17) May
Edgy new filmmaker Lucky McKee made his auspicious debut (and first screenwriting credit) with May, the underground answer to Re-Animator.
May is a weird, mousy veterinary technician with a lazy eye. When she was young, her nutso mother told her, “If you can’t find a friend, make one,” by giving her a glass encased porcelain doll named Susie (look but don’t touch!) that she still talks to as a young adult. Minus not having telekinesis, she’s pretty much Carrie White. May has more than just a few screws loose and heads off the deep end into madness and sadness, going to horrific lengths to steal parts from those who wronged her in order to sew herself together a friend.
May is one odd, sick, freaky little picture, and a cult film in the making to be sure. And as a psychological character study and horror show à la Frankenstein, it’s effectively disturbing, compelling, and stylishly directed. The unshakable opening image of a screaming May bleeding from having stabbed her eye will stick with you, as will the weirdly poignant last shot that might’ve been laughable if not in McKee’s subtle hands.