Cocaine Bear.

Review #1981: Cocaine Bear.

Cast: 

Keri Russell (Sari), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Daveed), Alden Ehrenreich (Eddie), Christian Convery (Henry), Brooklynn Prince (Dee Dee), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (Bob), Margo Martindale (Ranger Liz), Ray Liotta (Syd), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Peter), and Aaron Holliday (Stache) Directed by Elizabeth Banks.

Review: 

The beginning of a new month always lends itself to surprises and interesting things to talk about in film spotlighting. Such is the case with another March that attempts to spotlight female directors in film beyond just getting to the point. Elizabeth Banks became an actress because she found it interesting after giving it a try for a school play after hurting herself playing softball. She studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the American Conservatory Theater while acting in various plays. This continued throughout the mid-2000s with highlights in films and TV such as The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Scrubs (2006-09), and 30 Rock (2010-12). Banks first became involved in directing with Movie 43 (2013), serving as one of numerous co-directors before making a debut on a real movie with Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), having served as producer and co-star on the previous film. Cocaine Bear (2023) is the third feature film from Banks. The film was written by Jimmy Warden, which takes loose inspiration from the story of the "Cocaine Bear", an American black bear that spent a brief amount of time under the influence of cocaine, as the bear ate a large portion of cocaine that was in a jettisoned container (as one sees from drug trafficking, which was done by Andrew C. Thornton, who indeed died in freefall when trying to unload the cocaine into the wilderness); the film is set in the same year as the real-life story of the bear (1985), albeit with fictional characters.

You know, I wonder if the buzz for the film was similar to Snakes on a Plane (2006), a movie that has a catchy title involving animals. Honestly, what do you expect from a movie like this? The fact that the movie lives up to, well, the title of the film, is at least grounds for a decent time with comedy horror for 95 minutes. It is a movie that gives you a (CG rendered) killer bear on the loose that is meant to look ferocious, and it generally works out here in weird amusement. It is mildly funny without turning into vacant self-parody, giving what one exactly thinks they desire in the basic requirements of entertainment. The acting is mildly interesting, albeit in parts. Jackson and Ehrenreich have an interesting rapport together in the grand art of bickering and "old couple energy" that actually may make a more interesting bond than the one meant to be shown between Russell, who in of herself is decent; look, in a movie about a parent trying to protect their daughter in horror, what do you think is going to happen besides, well, you know? Actually, if you really want to be bold and ridiculous with a bear attack movie, putting one of the kid characters in peril may be the way to go, but that is just me (I also believe that if you really want more of these killer animal movies, they should be made in completely ridiculous genres, like a musical horror). What were we talking about? Oh, right: Liotta is my personal highlight, mostly because even in limited screen time he accomplishes the act of ideal horror-target in all the right tones (Liotta passed away shortly after completing his scenes for the film). Whitlock is a moderately amusing authority figure, complete with a vertical standoff. As a whole, the setup for the bear scenes are pretty decent, with no one really overstaying their welcome or killing a bit for too long, which is what you hope even in less ambitious movies. I think the actual fate of the bear body is far more interesting than what the film pulls: After the medical examiner had finished looking at the corpse, he wanted to make sure it was not wasted, so he had it taxidermized (so yes, a bear got stuffed after it died from cocaine). It got donated to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (near the National Forest where the bear died) before it got lost and found in a pawn shop before somehow making its way to a mall in Lexington, Kentucky. It almost clouds the other flaw that happens with a good deal of B-movies but seems more apparent here: it has a middling ensemble that seems guilty of having perhaps one too many characters for such a thin amount of interesting things for them to say, as if the movie should either have focused on a bear ravaging a family or a bear ravaging around while dopey fixers try to recover drugs. But hey, the movie accomplishes what it sets out to do: have fun showing a bear high on cocaine taking out disposable characters in disposable situations for moderate results. Man or woman as director, this generally means a good time for those who like what the movie is selling, though it will be up to the viewer to see what will actually endure in its memory after seeing it.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Welcome to Movie Night: Women's History Month III. This time we are going reverse-chronological, which means the month will end in the early 20th century. This means next up is Harriet.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Review #1888: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Cast: 

Andy Serkis (Caesar), Jason Clarke (Malcolm), Gary Oldman (Dreyfus), Keri Russell (Ellie), Toby Kebbell (Koba), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Alexander), Kirk Acevedo (Carver), Nick Thurston (Blue Eyes), Terry Notary (Rocket), Karin Konoval (Maurice), Judy Greer (Cornelia), Jon Eyez (Foster), and Enrique Murciano (Kemp) Directed by Matt Reeves (#1038 - Cloverfield and #1814 - The Batman)

Review: 

"I think that what I thought was this emotionality and being in the apes kind of inner lives, that's a reason to do this.  Like because you know the ending.  And so now the question is how do we get from here to there?"

I'm sure you remember Ruper Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), the first reboot movie involving Planet of the Apes since the last time someone tried to do a new Planet of the Apes ten years prior. With the use of visual effects and performance capture by Weta Digital rather than prosthetics, it certainly made quite the impression in trying to make a new path inspired by Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel Planet of the Apes. Honestly, while I remember Rise being fine, I think I could only tell you that Andy Serkis was the best part to remember, if only because his motion capture performance (and occasional voice) really made the film distinct in not just being a mundane reboot/makeup show (of course, Serkis had considerable experience with capture in the previous years, so that helps). Wyatt did not return for this film, instead being replaced by Matt Reeves, director of films such as Cloverfield (2008) and Let Me In (2010), and the only cast members to return are Serkis, Konoval, and Notary (you may notice those are all performers for apes, and this is the case with the subsequent 2017 sequel). The film was written by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver (the latter two wrote Rise and also serve as producers on this film), with Bomback being brought in to do re-writes, as Reeves was not big on the original treatment (post apocalyptic San Francisco...with humans and apes pushing up power lines), favoring fir a story with Caesar at the forefront that spends a good chunk of its first quarter with him before eventually segueing into the "surprise" of human life (since remember that the humans suffered an airborne flu that spread worldwide in the c-sorry, Simian flu).

So yes, there are elements of previous Ape films (such as Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), for example), but there is something here that was sorely needed from the shallow or mild foundations seen in the last two features: energy. It has a pacing to it in its presentation of the similarities and differences that come with human and ape life (where you can see some American Sign Language utilized with certain quirks done), one that has an edge in handling the material with a useful main presence with plenty of credibility and presentation to go around. With a more balanced film of actors with and not with motion-capture, Serkis leads the ensemble with commanding presence, one that handles the dilemma present in both apes and humans in the battle of how one treats others (hint: co-existence is easy to say but hard to administer). One looks past the fact that Serkis (and others playing apes) had to act with a bunch of dots around his face and instead sees the talent shown by him in the art of showing dominance alongside conflict. Serkis has managed to evolve the character with his performance that mimics the evolution of the apes in the most fitting of ways, which makes the overall result all the more interesting. The rest keep up okay. Clarke makes a reasonable counterpart to the divide, well-meaning in trust when it is earned in ways that operate in similar fashion to the performance by James Franco in the earlier film (with regards to Caesar) without being a copy, and Russell and Smit-McPhee make okay companions to the human element (well, one is here for folks like the big orange primate, not kids and step parents trying to make friends). Oldman has only a select number of things to really do as a sort of caretaker, since Serkis has the show, but he does prove a useful adversary for what is needed in the long run, which also applies to Kebbell when he is paired against Serkis in terms of pain and aggression. As a whole, it shows plenty of perspective on its inevitable road to ruin. As a movie depicting the brink of war and a demoralized world, it's a pretty solid adventure. It runs through its 130 minutes with careful ambition to make involving drama for a useful epic. It makes most of an effort to stand apart from the number of sci-fi dystopias involving the usual suspects while inviting the question of what could happen next with Ceasar and beyond.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Review #1311: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Cast: 
Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Adam Driver (Ben Solo / Kylo Ren), Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Naomi Ackie (Jannah), Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux), Richard E. Grant (Allegiant General Pryde), Lupita Nyong'o (Maz Kanata), Keri Russell (Zorri Bliss), Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico), Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine / Darth Sidious), and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian) Directed by J. J. Abrams (#009 - Star Trek, #150 - Super 8, #665 - Star Trek Into Darkness, and #769 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

Review: 
Well, isn't this an interesting day. Nine years of Movie Night in written form, and I celebrate it with the ninth (and last) film of the Skywalker Saga (alongside being #98 in the Theater Saga). It sure has been quite a ride over these 3,287 days - basically a review every 2.5 days. The best is yet to come ahead for Movie Night 2020 (or Season X, if you will). If I am not mistaken, this may actually be the longest review yet. May the force be with you. 

How did you picture the last Star Wars movie in a trilogy was going to end? That's a question you can now ask three times and get three different answers. One trilogy conclusion had the burden of closing the loop on what was thought to be a six film saga while also sealing up loose ends of its own. Another trilogy conclusion had the burden of ending its story with its beloved characters that made for a worthy space fantasy adventure worth telling again and again. This trilogy conclusion has the burden of sealing a trilogy of trilogies once and for all - 42 years and nine main films with various actors tasked with interesting (for the most part) characters and worlds. Some landed better than others, but there are plenty of people who can say they grew up with a Star Wars trilogy, for better or worse. It is the journey that counts in the end when it comes to Star Wars, really, where George Lucas used his imagination alongside inspiration to cultivate a film all those years ago. He loved his comic books, his fairy tales, his Saturday morning serials, and he loved creating a mythology for a new generation. Everything gets picked apart in the age we live in nowadays, but it doesn't diminish the basic core of what made this series endure for so long. It will be nice to have a rest from these films for a little while, I must admit. After five films in five years, one can appreciate something else taking over the landscape for a bit (for those who refer to television, I have my own things to cycle through). This may seem like an elegy for Star Wars, but it really isn't. I am trying to express my train of thought when it comes to the realization of seeing a saga come to a close yet again and how it ended up following up not just its "polarizing" predecessor film (The Last Jedi, which I ran out of time in regards to re-watching it before doing this) but the others as a whole. Look, the last film had Leia pull herself out of space through the Force and then decided to kill off its big bad villain suddenly (complete with a jump to lightspeed to obliterate a ship because...[BLANK]) and wrote itself into a corner with mawkish sentiment. An intriguing corner, but still a corner that is not easy to pull out from without some sort of effort.

Could it really do a better job at closing a saga that Return of the Jedi did three decades prior? Honestly, it didn't. It sure tries hard to seal it all into a big ball of entertainment, and I applaud the effort - but the film is a mess. However, I enjoy big messes when there is enough positivity to go around (or camp), and this has that in spades. It becomes evident right from the very opening, where text crawls say the dead rise and get things rolling with quick editing and plenty of shots to go around. This is a 142 minute movie (somehow being ten minutes shorter than its predecessor), yet it sure feels like a big roller coaster ride that doesn't want to end. It tries to please everyone and may very well have a different kind of result. That doesn't mean it will go down as a monumental thing to ridicule, it just means it will go down as something to argue for/against when it comes to imagination for a space opera about laser swords and space beliefs. At a certain point, one has to wonder if this is meant to be a comeback on the scale of Elvis, where fan service deliver greatest hits very much like Abrams' previous work in this trilogy - wrapped with a tinge of bittersweet fervor. You know it is the end, I know it is the end - but it wants to throw everything at the void to make sure the end doesn't come easy. If the last one was inherently too ham-handed to stick to its principles in the face of the past, this one is inherently determined to glue everything together to land certain twists down without making too much laughter come out than needed. Allow me to use one pop culture analogy here: this is essentially the equivalent of when Homer Simpson tries to build his own barbecue pit and frantically tries to build it before the wet cement makes it stick permanently, just replace the grill with story toolbox and Homer with...you get the idea. Seriously, the film has four credited writers: Abrams and Chris Terrio for the screenplay while the story credit went to Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow (the initial director slated to direct this film before leaving production due to creative differences), Abrams and Terrio.

Golly, there sure a whole bunch of actors and characters present. Some are given their time to shine, some are thrown in there all of a sudden, some are given a bit less to do from before, and some are somehow back in the thick of things (for better or worse). You really have to just roll the dice and see what works and what doesn't, honestly. I didn't so much see a bad performance as I saw actors trying their hardest to stick through a big sprawling adventure with plenty of skepticism and fear circling around. I find that the best ones to come out of it are Ridley and Driver, a duo with their odd own kind of bond of vulnerability and fear over who they think they are and what they must face to step forward beyond their doubts. They definitely do well when it comes to lightsaber fighting, graceful despite rocky environments like a bit of water to get in the way. Granted, their paths seem a bit easy to draw out, where I wonder if it had been better to have swapped the focus to Driver as the main focus (or perhaps better framing to have a trilogy that spans more than a year in movie time). Boyega and Isaac try to fend off being wooden with humor, which goes off okay. They felt better together four years prior with the seventh film, but I do find myself at least going along with them on essentially a scavenger hunt, where characters pop out to wedge their own part to play, because I suppose one needed to try and give some sort of backstory/shared thing for people we just met to people we barely know much of through three films. It is quite striking to see Fisher appear on screen for a few minutes (in the sense just as much as she did for the other two films), where the re-purposed footage of her works for what is needed and gives her a fair way to make farewell without going overboard. It is nice to see Daniels get a bit more scenes to chew upon for another trip down the lane for our favorite fussy golden robot, who delivers a chuckle or two that is welcome here. The sudden new blood of Ackie, Grant and Russell prove alright, moreso for the latter two in that one can seep right into an obvious villain trap without having to get outside and the other can just wear a mask and beat some nobodies for a bit. Gleeson, Nyong'o and Tran seem like they drew small straws when it comes to "Who gets to be in another Star Wars film but doesn't have much meaningful things to say?" (which proves amusing if thought as essentially being Jar-Jarred out of importance). McDiarmid and Williams return to their roles with ease, in that neither have to really move too much to deliver their lines to serve the plot, where it is nice to see them again, if not for the camp of the former and the smooth charm of the latter. Granted, it barely makes sense to see either come back - but why not? The film feels like a whole batch of why nots. One might wonder how much of this is a hand-wave of what happened before - the jokester in me is slightly delighted at the idea of shaking the head-turning predecessor, even if that means more predictability. A good adventure is all that it takes, and this does fine with that. It won't be the kind of thing that inspires navel gazing or anything when it comes to analysis, but always take to heart four words: It's just a movie. Turning off my brain a bit for some ridiculous things in a Star Wars film didn't give me a headache as it did just help my throat get some chuckles.

At least the effects work themselves out pretty good. Sometimes you really need a bunch of flashing lights on a stormy dark world to really make something ooze out well, really. You don't need spoilers to know that the film will fling whatever it takes to make things work - a Skywalker has to stand triumphant after all. It isn't like anyone actually thought this would end on a downbeat note (much like how Lucas liked his happy ending for VI) - by golly one has to sell this product somehow (besides, Rogue One wedged in hope even with its downbeat stuff). One does tend to get tired of saying "X was better than Y", so I'll try to refrain from said comparisons too much. What we have here is an okay sequel trilogy, packed firmly between what was done before through Lucas and others - and that's okay. I'll probably look at these films in retrospect as ones that had their moment in the sun and did what they thought made sense - churning some nostalgia and Internet frothing for better or worse. They aren't the best or worst things to happen to the franchise, that much is for sure (a statement one could even see someone saying about the previous trilogy). Everything moves in a flash to get to some sort of point that matters, and I liked more than what I shook my head at. If you want to see something with space action and a bunch of things that relate to the stuff of the past, go right on ahead. If you want something a bit deeper or perhaps more fitting for the end of a space opera, consult oneself first. In my heart I enjoyed this weird little film, but I know the rating it really does deserve - it's an average film, but at least it isn't a complete mediocre one for the books.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Mission: Impossible III.

Review #1109: Mission: Impossible III.

Cast: 
Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Owen Davian), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Billy Crudup (John Musgrave), Michelle Monaghan (Julia Meade), Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Declan Gormley), Keri Russell (Lindsey Farris), Maggie Q (Zhen Lei), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Eddie Marsan (Brownway), and Laurence Fishburne (Theodore Brassel) Directed by J. J. Abrams (#009 - Star Trek, #150 - Super 8, #665 - Star Trek Into Darkness, and #769 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens)

Review: 
It is interesting to look back at the first three Mission: Impossible films and look at how each stand out clearly from the previous one despite being popcorn spy flicks. It's also interesting to see the gap between these films, in that this one was released six years after the previous film (with this year's release of the new film being the sixth in the franchise that has spanned 22 years). I try to not make it a habit to compare a film sequel to the one before it every single time, but it is pretty obvious that this one is an improvement in nearly every single way from the earlier one, and it manages to improve in aspects from the first installment. Perhaps it is the infusion of different writers in Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci & J. J. Abrams, with the former two previously being responsible for their work on The Island (2005), while Abrams had created television shows such as Felicity, Lost, but most importantly Alias, which Cruise had watched episodes of prior to offering the directorial job to Abrams. The opening scene certainly helps spark interest with the tension that it inspires from Cruise and Hoffman, that's for sure. The parts with Cruise and Monaghan manage to come off well together, having a bit of refreshing nature to them that is different to the conventional elements in its spy nature without becoming a cloying detriment nor becoming something overtly cliche. As one would expect, it is nice to see Cruise again in the role, with a clear confidence and clear action look that you would expect from before while also seeming fresh and welcome. Hoffman proves to be a serviceable adversary for the moments that require it, with his motivation being at least somewhat clear to breeze through. The group of Rhames-Rhys Meyers-Maggie Q are fairly useful to watch paired up with Cruise in the plot, being capable in any scene (action or small moments of interaction) for comfort. Monaghan does fine for the part written. Crudup plays his role quietly, but it serves the job alright. Russell and Pegg each don't have much time, but they make fair impressions ultimately. Fishburne rounds out the cast with a fairly watchable chief role that cuts the corners you would expect. While the film may not have the highest of stakes to it, it never gets bogged down by complicating its plot or pretending to be anything that it isn't. At 125 minutes, the film runs itself at a fine pace with its action and plot by making sure that neither gets lost too far in its own excitement, being a fair piece of entertainment.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.