‘Aggro Dr1ft’ Review: Harmony Korine Plays With Our Heads in Hard Reset on Filmmaking Rules

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Got trauma? A global alien invasion is all it takes for emotionally scarred Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) to sort through her issues in “No One Will Save You,” an extra-terrestrial creature feature cut from the same cloth as M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs,” where the jump scares are secondary to an earnest (but far less effective) portrait of coping with guilt and grief. Building on the novelty value of 2020 debut “Spontaneous” (in which a bunch of teenagers inexplicably start to pop like pimples), director Brian Duffield sets multiple creative challenges for himself and mostly succeeds — well enough to attract eyeballs to this buzz-worthy Hulu release, at least.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The loftier and more dangerous the goal, the finer the line that separates the Guinness Book of World Records from the Darwin Awards. At a certain point, surviving is the only real difference. Do-or-die marathon swimmer Diana Nyad dreamed of swimming from Cuba to Florida.

Depending on who you speak to, Aggro Dr1ft has either been a hideous blight on the fall festival circuit or… Well, currently, there’s not exactly a consensus on what there is to love about Harmony Korine’s in-your-face fantasia, a nightmare vision of Florida made all the more hellish by its refusal to resemble anything you might expect even — or perhaps especially — from the director of Spring Breakers.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Four years ago, before COVID turned everything upside-down, a new Asian masterpiece world premiered virtually unnoticed at the Toronto Film Festival. I’m referring to “A Sun,” a multi-faceted Taiwanese family saga from director Chung Mong-Hong that seemed to shift and evolve as it unfolded, challenging what audiences though they knew about the characters.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Early in his career, comedian Kumail Nanjiani did a bit about a new drug called “cheese,” which, if you break down the ingredients, turns out to be Tylenol PM mixed with heroin. “So really, it’s heroin,” he joked. “Heroin’s doing the heavy lifting.” That line was going through my mind as I watched “Pain Hustlers,” a garish and, yes, mostly painful Big Pharma satire from director David Yates, who (“The Legend of Tarzan” aside) spent the last 15 years making increasingly convoluted Harry Potter movies.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic While it’s easy to imagine lawyers screaming “objection, your honor!” to the exaggerated courtroom theatrics of “The Burial,” good luck convincing audiences that this David v. Goliath legal showdown between a small-time Southern funeral home operator and an unethical Canadian billionaire should have played out any other way.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Does it count as a white savior movie if the white character is the one who needs saving? In “Next Goal Wins,” the world’s top-grossing indigenous director, Taika Waititi, retells the story of how American Samoa went from having the world’s worst soccer team to, well, not the worst. While a white man was involved, the movie — which suggests how a film like “Cool Runnings” might be made with 30 years’ more cultural enlightenment — is mostly about how their coach (Michael Fassbender) needs an attitude adjustment. Come to think of it, that’s essentially the formula for most white savior movies.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Just when you thought Nicolas Cage’s filmography couldn’t get any weirder, along comes Kristoffer Borgli’s “Dream Scenario” to mess with your head. Cage plays a character you probably wouldn’t notice in real life: Paul Matthews. Schlubby, balding, in wrinkled pants and brown leather loafers, he’s a tenured professor at a university you’ve never heard of, droning on year after year about collective consciousness and the wisdom of the herd.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If the prospect of being stuck in a New York City taxi with two characters for roughly 90 minutes doesn’t sound like your kind of movie, then you’re seriously underestimating “Daddio” writer-director Christy Hall’s ability to keep you riveted for the entire ride. There’s a challenge you could give any first-time filmmaker: Using a yellow cab as the only location, make a film that challenges people’s expectations of how men and women relate to one another.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic It’s not easy to upstage Martin Luther King Jr., but that’s exactly what leading man Colman Domingo does in “Rustin,” a movie named for the civil rights pioneer who gave King the platform to speak his most famous four words: “I have a dream.” That day, Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the man standing just over King’s right shoulder — quite literally, his right-hand man — was one Bayard Rustin.

Ellise Shafer Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft” received a 10-minute standing ovation after its premiere at Venice Film Festival, despite a flurry of walkouts. Though some audience members left as soon as the experimental action film finished (and at least 25 departed before that), Korine’s hardcore fans stuck around for a rousing 10-minute ovation. As Korine greeted the crowd and did a happy dance, chants of “Harmony! Harmony! Harmony!” rang out.

Ten years after “Spring Breakers,” the neon pinks and greens of Harmony Korine’s mainstream breakthrough return in an Internet-inflected and even more abstract ode to the thug life, with seriously mixed results. To call “Aggro Dr1ft” stupid or silly isn’t wrong, but it is missing the point.

Marta Balaga Venice Film Festival’s red carpet swapped glamour for politics on Saturday, hosting a flash mob in solidarity with the Iranian people, fighting against repression, as well as filmmakers who are being oppressed – and arrested – because of their work. Such as “Leila’s Brothers” director Saeed Roustaee, recently sentenced to six months in prison for showing the film in Cannes. He has also been banned from making movies.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Don’t let the word “bike” fool you. In Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders,” the wheels in question are choppers — good, all-American motorcycles, built from the ground up by tough guys in leather jackets — and the “club” they’re a part of is really more of a gang.

Harmony Korine has said he embraced AI technology for the making of his new experimental film Aggro Dr1ft which world premieres Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

Ellise Shafer Harmony Korine arrived to the Venice Film Festival press conference for his latest film, “Aggro Dr1ft,” wearing a devilish mask inspired by the movie with a cigar in hand. Korine was joined by “Aggro Dr1ft” visual effects artist Joao Rosa and Eric Kohn, the newly announced head of film strategy and development at his company EDGLRD. All three sported horned masks with bee-like eyes — Korine’s was yellow while Rosa wore a white mask and Kohn donned a black one.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Flannery O’Connor saw folks in a way few writers did. She saw through them, past their petty prejudices and hollow pieties, to the less civilized selves they so desperately tried to keep under wraps.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic It’s almost cosmic, the way kids start out as nothing more than a twinkle in their mother’s eye. Then they’re born into heavenly little bodies, orbiting the adults who made them like tiny moons, until such time that they overcome their parents’ gravitational pull. So it is with “Janet Planet,” one of those intensely personal portraits of childhood that we’ve come to expect — and appreciate — from A24, the indie studio behind “Moonlight” and “Lady Bird” and “Aftersun” and “Eighth Grade” (the example this one most resembles).

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Harmony Korine used to be a movie junkie, someone who’d watch anything and everything. These days, when people recommend a movie, “I’ll look at it and I feel nothing, like dead inside,” says the guy whose own films, from “Spring Breakers” to the controversial screenplay for Larry Clark’s “Kids,” are nothing if not disruptive. “Watching a lot of this shit, you really feel the algorithms,” he says the day before receiving the Pardo d’onore Manor prize at the Locarno Film Festival.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic It’s hard to say whether Wes Anderson’s sensibility is perfectly suited to that of Roald Dahl or the other way around. Whichever it may be, the “Fantastic Mr. Fox” author’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” seems to have found its ideal screen incarnation in the “Fantastic Mr.