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Cocaine Bear

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Release: Friday, February 24, 2023

👀 Theater

Written by: Jimmy Warden

Directed by: Elizabeth Banks

Starring: Keri Russell; O’Shea Jackson Jr.; Alden Ehrenreich; Isiah Whitlock Jr.; Margo Martindale; Ray Liotta; Brooklynn Prince; Christian Convery

Distributor: Universal Pictures

 

**/*****

Touting a game cast, an interesting director in Elizabeth Banks and just enough gore to please Quentin Tarantino, Cocaine Bear has the ingredients to be a rollicking good time. Adding to the novelty is the opportunity to see Ray Liotta in one of his final roles. Frustratingly several less interesting elements compete for your attention in an already paper-thin narrative loosely based on a real event.

In September 1985 a small airplane trafficking cocaine from Colombia went down in southern Appalachia. The body of the pilot, whose parachute failed to open, was found in a Tennessee neighborhood and the goods scattered across the TN/GA state line in the wilderness. A curious black bear, some 300 pounds lighter than the impressive CGI behemoth we see here, happened upon the packages and was found dead soon thereafter, its stomach stuffed full of powder.

Notably no one was hurt or killed, which of course doesn’t make for a particularly eventful movie, so embellishment is needed. What if instead of dying the bear went on a rampage in search of its next fix? That’s the long and short of this willfully silly story. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It does, however, need to be entertaining but the sweet release that comes with watching an ursine coke fiend go apeshit is hard to come by, particularly in the first half. In fairness, Banks attempts to craft some level of humanity, but it also seems like she’s over-engineering a simple adrenaline rush.

The cast of Hollywood actors feels a little distracting for a movie taking place essentially on a hiking trail (we’re mostly hanging out at Blood Mountain, a popular hiking spot in northern Georgia) but the tradeoff is professional actors can make believers out of you, no matter how silly the situation. Stand-outs include Alden Ehrenreich moping around as a drug dealer with a broken heart, Margo Martindale juggling her romantic life with her duties as a Chattahoochee park ranger and Ray Liotta sweating hard from the heat he’s feeling from his concerned Colombian bosses.

Keri Russell gets an “emotional” arc as a single parent in pursuit of her runaway daughter (Brooklynn Prince), who skips school with her friend (Christian Convery) to have adventures in the woods, only to become the first (humans) to encounter one of the packages strewn throughout the foliage. Far less interesting is Isiah Whitlock Jr. as an overzealous detective in desperate need of a doggie sitter as he jumps jurisdictions to track down these dopey dealers.

At BEARly 90 minutes in length it is a surprisingly tedious wait for things to get good. You need some reason to care about developments but maybe a short film would have suited this material better. Cocaine Bear delivers what is expected in random bursts. However, the campiness Banks is clearly going for is reduced rather than enhanced by banal observations about relationships and the evils of drugs. At least the human-animal interactions make that of The Revenant look like a date with Winnie the Pooh. 

The bearable weight of massive talent

Moral of the Story: Just say ‘No’ to this crazy-but-not-nearly-as-crazy-as-it-could-have-been comedy-thriller. Cocaine Bear is a film at odds with itself — not quite camp enough to feel like a legitimate B-movie and too limited from a script standpoint to be considered anything other than a gimmick. The so-named Pablo Escobear looks good enough for a close-up though. Spectacular CGI work from the guys over at Wētā FX. 

Rated: R

Running Time: 95 mins. 

Quoted: “I trusted you! The state of Tennessee trusted you! The United States of America, it trusted you!”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited. 

Photo credits: http://www.imdb.com 

Stretch

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Release: Friday, March 21, 2014

[Netflix]

Written by: Joe Carnahan

Directed by: Joe Carnahan

Where this guy’s going, he’s definitely going to need roads . . . and a lot of luck.

Joe Carnahan’s Stretch is best enjoyed when your guard is down, when you’re in the mood for watching something that, taken scene by scene, makes little to no sense but is a perfectly harmless distraction when looked at as a whole. It’s messy and clunky and clichéd and occasionally poorly acted but the whole point of Stretch is embracing the ridiculous. If having fun in a movie is all that you require, jump in the backseat and buckle in for a wild ride.

Patrick Wilson and Chris Pine make the most out of a rather bizarre script that has the former playing a down-on-his-luck L.A. limo driver and the latter a bearded whack job with more secrets than the American government. The driver (a.k.a. ‘Stretch’) has recently been dumped by his gorgeous girl Candace (Brooklyn Decker, ouch) and, reeling in the aftermath, has allowed himself to spiral out of control again, though careful not to reignite his cocaine and gambling addictions from years past.

One afternoon Stretch is pulled aside by his boss who tells him that their main competitor is putting them quickly out of business by stealing their clients. Making matters worse is a $6,000 gambling debt he owes to a thug who promises some very bad things if he doesn’t pay up by midnight that night. Desperate, Stretch begs an employee named Charlie (Jessica Alba) to help steal clients from the competition — a mysterious entity known only as The Jovi — to help him keep his job and to raise the money needed to . . . um, keep his life.

Over the course of the evening Stretch contends with a litany of oddballs and lunatics, starting with a very unhappy David Hasselhoff who, lo and behold, is swept off his feet by The Jovi at the last second. In retaliation, Charlie directs him to a client The Jovi usually picks up, the one and only Ray Liotta. Neither of these dramatized cameos compare to the eccentric billionaire playboy/lunatic that is Chris Pine’s Roger Karos, whose outrageous physical appearance conceals the Hollywood hunk inside (save for the piercing blue eyes). Karos promises he will make Stretch’s efforts worthwhile if he commits to not only being his chauffeur, but to retrieving a briefcase from a certain someone.

Stretch is packed to the brim with absurdities, but they mostly exist in the visual presentation and a few chance encounters. Narratively — as a story of redemption — the film couldn’t be more pedestrian. Wilson clearly relishes the opportunity to cut loose, to become the “fire starter” Karos believes he can be. Wilson brings the fire in his performance, becoming the glue that holds together a lot of delicate pieces and thankfully he is quite the amiable fellow despite his history. As he journeys through the night, an eye on the clock as his midnight deadline rapidly approaches, Stretch receives a crash course in confidence-boosting. He transforms from a drunken pushover (or a fatalist, as Charlie describes him) to a man pushing over a lot of drunks to get to what matters most to him: delivering on his promises.

Carnahan certainly makes some trade-offs in his enthusiastic, over-the-top approach. There are a few moments where the goofiness is overbearing — do we really need the foreign subtitles placed beside a villain as he shouts his threats in perfectly understandable English? — and where the acting isn’t really acting, it’s shouting lines excitedly. It’s nonchalance. A good time to be a paid actor or actress. It may stretch credulity to the breaking point but ultimately the film manages to get to the end with minimal bumps and bruises.

Recommendation: If you’re looking for a quick Friday night jolt of entertainment, I suggest firing up Netflix and taking in all that Stretch has to offer: pure, unadulterated ridiculousness with fun cameos and an absolutely zany supporting role from Chris Pine. Fans of him and Patrick Wilson are sure to find them highly enjoyable.

Rated: R

Running Time: 94 mins.

Quoted: “If you like stories about chance and coincidence and fate, then here’s one you’d never heard. Boy meets girl. Girl almost kills boy by running a red light at rush hour. Boy is T-boned at over 60 miles an hour.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.imdb.com  

Kill the Messenger

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Release: Friday, October 10, 2014 (limited)

[Theater]

Written by: Peter Landesman 

Directed by: Michael Cuesta

Stories like this make me feel better about writing about less hardcore things than politics  . . . . like movies. Because even as a much-loathed film critic your work may come home with you, but it’s not likely to ever actually follow you home. (Unless, of course, your name is Armond White.) I don’t want to become Armond White.

Jeremy Renner puts down that fancy bow and arrow of his — at least for the moment, until Tony Stark screws up again — to pick up notepad and digital audio recorder in this grounded, tense drama about American investigative journalist Gary Webb, an ambitious man who ended up exposing one of the most controversial and disturbing sociopolitical developments of the mid-1990s and later would go on to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for the effort.

The American ‘crack epidemic’ of the 1990s, when compared to catastrophically violent and global paranoia-inducing developments such as 9/11 and the ensuing war on terrorism, might now seem something dangerously close to irrelevant; merely an irregularity in the rhythm of the cultural heartbeat. To dismiss as forgettable the moment in which the public became aware of certain facts involving the United States government and the sudden discovery of a massive influx of crack-cocaine on American streets would be to crush one particular journalist’s life work under the rubble of indifference. And in this case indifference might very well be worse than the reception that was awaiting him when he first broke the news.

That, in case you were wondering, was a tidal wave of overwhelming doubt, hissing criticism and public shunning. It would all culminate in Webb’s questionable suicide ten Decembers ago.

In 1996 the San Jose Mercury News, the modest city paper Webb reported for, published his most ambitious work, a three-part, 20,000-word exposé generously detailing the corruption within the CIA as it related to Nicaraguan rebels (or Contras). It asserted the profits made off of the black market distribution to susceptible Los Angelinos (and one can only imagine how far beyond) went to funding, and perhaps even arming and supplying, the rebels. Though, Webb doesn’t quite point the finger directly. His work suggests members within the CIA were aware of the situation, and that President Reagan shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to allow for the transactions to occur. Beyond the ego this publication, now infamously known as The Dark Alliance, is where trouble would begin in earnest for Webb.

As the titular ‘messenger,’ Renner amps up his intensity. Sufficiently a leading man — an oddly amiable one at that — he’s distinctly human but there exists beneath the surface a machine set on overdrive. Clearly something compels this character that surpasses familial duty, a persistence that doesn’t allow a father and husband to sleep well at night. Why can’t he stop digging deep into extremely treacherous affairs? Or perhaps the better question: what, if anything, would motivate him to cease and desist? If nothing else, Kill the Messenger goes to prove the lengths required to secure that most coveted of career affirmations.

Cuesta manages to set the performance against a satisfactorily researched background. We travel to dangerous prisons, hold casual (and not so casual) conversations with incredibly dangerous and idealistic extremists, and we flirt with the opposition as much as we shun our friends. Even if we pass through many security checkpoints with a little too much ease and conveniently skip through certain plot details, the development is sufficient enough to leave minimal questions about the actual investigating part. His supporting cast — Rosemarie Dewitt (who plays Webb’s dutiful wife Sue), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (as Webb’s editor Anna Simons), and Oliver Platt (who takes on the role as Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos) — all contribute thoroughly. Unfortunately Ray Liotta and Michael Sheen are wasted in cameos.

Considering the big picture, Renner’s staunch determination conflicted with more than his readers and the general public. When personal relations and friendships become involved, this is where Michael Cuesta’s directorial limitations are exposed as the slump into depression and the subsequent loss of virtually all personal and financial value are hardly unexpected. Not that these things aren’t difficult to experience. This is what really happened (an approximation, anyway). It’s just as incredible to watch how one story, a single idea can consume a person.

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3-5Recommendation: Kill the Messenger offers a strong lead performance for an often overlooked and steadily rising talent (original casting choices favored the likes of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise — yawn). A not-so-subtle indictment of an American society (and of news outlets most damningly) that doubted a single journalist could dig up this much dirt on this many people possessing this much power. For aspiring journalists, this movie might be a must. Not necessarily for the reminding about ethical boundaries and how not to cross them (Webb’s whistleblowing strategy is certainly not a good example) but more so for a clear illustration of the difference between healthy and unhealthy obsession.

Rated: R

Running Time: 112 mins.

Quoted: “I thought my job was to tell the public the truth, the facts; pretty or not, and let the publishing of those facts make a difference in how people look at things, at themselves, and what they stand for. . .”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

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Release: Friday, August 22, 2014

[Theater]

Okay so there apparently is a major self-destructive streak in me, for I went to see the purportedly ill-advised Sin City sequel and walked out a happy customer. Perhaps more so than I rightfully should have been, too.

Has it really been ten years since the last time we wallowed in the streets of Frank Miller’s sick and twisted imagination? (Actually, it’s been nine but who’s counting?) Point being, its enough time for a follow-up film to be rolled out to the sound of crickets chirping. Moderate fans of the first have all but forgotten that there ever were plans on revisiting this place. Diehards likely even struggled to maintain a reasonable level of optimism. Everyone else simply went about their lives.

See, these aren’t the kinds of films that really move the viewer. And A Dame to Kill For had no intention of changing that, but in a twist of irony it kind of did. It moved people to the point of total disinterest. I had five people in my screening on opening night. Five, myself included. And I didn’t go to the crappy theater at the mall this time, either. Grossing a measly $6.4 million over the weekend (approximately $22 million less than its predecessor), one of its competitors that was already three weeks into its own theatrical run, Guardians of the Galaxy, perhaps snatched that up within a couple of showings over that weekend alone.

I suppose me going on to say that Hartigan (Bruce Willis) is back but only for a paycheck won’t help anyone still on the fence about seeing this. Sure, Bruce’s here, but he’s literally in the background. Instead we get a new group of desperados born and bred in the filth of two of Miller’s graphic novels. He, along with returning director Robert Rodriguez, merges the titular novel with one called Just Another Saturday Night, along with two new stories created solely for the film. We first stumble upon a returning hard-man in Mickey Rourke’s battered and bruised Marv, who is seen picking himself up in the wake of a car crash. He starts recounting the last things he remembers and what brought him to this new low point. This part represents the second of two graphic novels used for the story.

Then, some new blood. Joseph Gordon-Levitt appears out of the blue (okay, the black-and-white) as a cocky but composed card player whose good fortune seems to know no bounds. Unfortunately, neither does his ego as he pits himself against one of the most ruthless scoundrels in all of Basin City — the one and only Senator Roarke (Powers Boothe). The Senator is back and more ruthless than ever, making it his personal mission to track down Johnny and reclaiming the money he “stole” at the game. Yeah, it doesn’t end well for Johnny.

And finally we come to the third main thread in Josh Brolin’s Dwight (played by Clive Owen in 2005), a man with a horrific past now doing his best to stay sober. That is, until the titular Dame comes into the picture, tempting Dwight back into a life he thought he had successfully gotten out of. Eva Green in this film doesn’t fit the description of ‘femme fatale;’ she doesn’t even epitomize it. She’s something else entirely, and it’s terrifying. (Well, I say ‘terrifying;’ others might have another word for it.) Macro-psychotic? Sexy? What?

Let’s actually talk about that for a second. How does A Dame to Kill For compare in its thematic presentation? If you recall, the day Sin City was released wasn’t exactly a red letter day for actresses the world over. Violent, sloppy and misogynistic to a fault, the movie indulged in sequences that had Jessica Alba’s hips gyrating, Rosario Dawson cleavage-ing, Devon Aoki compensating for her looks by just being a raging lunatic. But back then the over-the-top toplessness was. . .and forgive me for saying this. . .unique to the production design. The sheer lack of boundaries in terms of violence and sexuality contributed to the experience that was a solid graphic novel adaptation. Fast-forward nine years and the fact that Eva Green spends 90% of her scenes naked just comes across as sleazy and lazy.

Fortunately Nancy Carrigan’s story has an ever-so-slight silver lining to her dark cloud. Slipping into despair, the concubine chops her hair, mars her face with shards of glass (if women aren’t going to be sexy, they may as well destroy those useless good-looks, right?) and ultimately abandons her post dancing at the bar. Thank goodness. She makes moves to overcome her own personal hell, following Hartigan’s selfish act of suicide. Nancy then decides to partner up with Marv, who similarly has seen enough of this dirty old town.

Audiences clearly have already reached that threshold. But in the same way I find Rodriguez’ and Miller’s need to overcompensate for truly original storytelling with even more sexually explicit imagery and brutal violence an act of desperation (watch for an amusing cameo from All-State insurance guy Dennis Haysbert as Manute. . .and what happens to his poor eyeball), I view the mass amount of negativity heaped upon this release similarly desperate.

No, this is not Frank Miller’s Sin City, but it’s the next logical step and it is still a Frank Miller creation. It’s just too bad those who cared enough had to wait this long. There’s something to be said for the amount of power this trio of stories has likely lost after nearly a decade laying in wait.

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3-0Recommendation: An all-around consistent film in terms of appealing to its uniquely deranged fan base, A Dame to Kill For steps up the intensity of its thematic elements in an attempt to draw in fringes of a general interest audience. It may have failed in that regard, but for returning customers there’s enough to like here to warrant a ticket purchase, if not then definitely a rental at some point. On the other hand, if there was anything that put you off in Sin City, you probably could avoid this.

Rated: R

Running Time: 102 mins.

Quoted: “Never lose control, never let the monster out.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com 

The Iceman

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Release: Friday, May 3, 2013 (limited)

[Redbox]

General Zod ain’t got nothin’ on this dude’s ‘tude. . .

The great Michael Shannon assumes the role of a paradoxical contract killer/family man, Richard Kuklinski — a man who proves that possessing two faces is only gonna get ya twice as hurt. And twice the jail time, in all likelihood — the real-life serial killer ended up with a double-life sentence for his murders of more than 100 people. Yes, you read that correctly.

The place: northern New Jersey. The time: circa 1954, when Kuklinski first got involved in the New York mafia, and over the next 30 years he would go on to murder dozens and dozens of men — only men — most of which were simply next on his list and some of whom had irritated him in some way. Using a variety of weapons which included guns, knives, tire irons and cyanide, Kuklinski was successful in evading the authorities for so long since his methods would often change and his tracks were constantly covered up. His nickname ‘The Iceman’ was earned due to both his incredible lack of emotion or concern about what he was doing beyond the fact he was only “doing his job,” and because he often froze corpses in freezers to eliminate any chance of the police being able to determine time of death.

While it may not be the best compliment one could pay Shannon, the guy’s got the perfect mean mug to really pull off a role like this. Unsurprisingly, he’s electrifying. Terrifying. He gives Ray Liotta a great run for his money in this movie — a man I’d be willing to name-drop in the same conversation with Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci as best gangster/mafia personalities ever to grace the screen. It’s also a great treat getting to see Shannon carry a lead role for once.

Shannon does a spectacular job portraying the apparent bipolarity that the real killer suffered from: in one moment Kuklinski is a doting, loving husband and father of two perfect girls; the next, he’s dismembering his victims and disposing of their bodies into the river. The ease with which he slips in and out of his professional and personal lives is quite chilling. Unfortunately, one can’t exactly say that the events contained herein are unpredictable. The Iceman does fall into formula quickly, and deeply. (There’s only one way a film like this can end.) Still, it’s all about style points here.

In the earlygoing we see Kuklinski trying to pay back the money he’s just recently lost after miscounting the number of boxes of pirated pornographic films he’s meant to deliver. His boss, the greatly-feared Roy DeMeo (Liotta), is at first rather annoyed with Kuklinski’s mishandling; then, once he gets to know the guy a bit better, he learns that “the Polack” — as he so refers to him from here on out — has an unusual ability to stay calm, cool and collected during murders. Having passed the “first test,” DeMeo enlists Kuklinski’s services. Kuklinski never looks back.

What unfolds is a grisly story of a man working to feed his family and provide a roof over their head, by whatever means necessary. However, it proves impossible to maintain this precarious balancing act forever. One afternoon after ditching his plans to tick off his next target on his hit list — opting to take his wife who had recently fallen ill to the doctor’s office — police swarm his home and he  is arrested on-sight. The movie portrays this as quite the epic struggle, and at the moment, it’s quite an emotional event. You nearly feel sorry for the man. That’s all attributable to an astonishing performance from a consistently brilliant actor.

There’s a number of riveting performances here as well. Ray Liotta as the mob boss DeMeo is reliably threatening — no disappointment there. Captain America (a.k.a. Chris Evans) reveals his darker side, stepping into the role of fellow contract killer/psycopath Robert ‘Mr. Freezy’ Pronge, who disguises his true profession by driving around in an ice cream truck. Few things are more unsettling than seeing a twelve-year-old corpse frozen in the same freezer as the ice cream treats. Evans all but disappears inside the role (and the make-up). Even James Franco shows up for a brief bit and pours his heart out.

Though it’s not the most inventive story you’ve ever seen, the film is performance-based and ends up benefitting quite a lot from the leads and its contributing cast. The methodology of and the circumstances surrounding its titular character are more than compelling enough to justify an immediate search on Wikipedia for some more background information on the guy. The real story is almost too shocking to be true.

This is a crazy world we inhabit.

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3-5Recommendaton: If you are a fan of Michael Shannon, you’ll find The Iceman to be perfectly acceptable viewing, even if it contains more than enough murders to warrant the ‘R’ rating alone — never mind the blood and language. For those who are a bit squeamish and/or not the largest fans of grisly crime-dramas, this might not be your movie. However, there is a more general appeal to this movie in that it provides a rare treatment of the mentality of a serial killer. How The Iceman manages to simultaneously paint the man as a decent father and as an efficient contract killer should be motivation enough for a wider audience to seek this out.

Rated: R

Running Time: 105 mins.

Quoted: “Do you see the Iceman crying?”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com