Day: February 23, 2023

Not-Half-Bad “Bear” Is Too Silly and Insubstantial To Really Have Fun With

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As I began to glumly settle into an awareness of the kind of film Cocaine Bear is — a film that’s weirdly cottonball and barren but at the same time not a piece of shit and which is reasonably well-framed, cut, written and directed…as I took stock of what it was up to, I didn’t know what to make of it. Really…I was lost.

I can report that I laughed twice, which should count for something.

I honestly don’t know what to say except that CB is some kind of dopey–ass hybrid deadpan comic gorefest, and yet one that’s chortle-worthy at times and even touches bottom once or twice. “This is a wank, a waste of time,” I was muttering, “but it’s not that awful.”

I found myself lamenting, in fact, that director Elizabeth Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden had decided to go for dumb laughs — if they’d only committed to making some kind of dry, half-realistic ensemble docu-dramedy, CB might have amounted to something (though I can’t quite imagine what that would be exactly).

I’ll tell you this much — the late Ray Liotta plays it totally straight as a furrowed-brow drug dealer, and I felt really badly that he wasn’t allowed to play a nogoodnik of greater consequence, or at least that he wasn’t given better lines.

Alden Ehrenreich (whose hair is going gray already!) plays Liotta’s half-heartedly criminal son, and I swear to God he’s more compelling in this role than he was in Solo or Rules Don’t Apply.

The steadily low-key O’Shea Jackson Jr. is wasted, and that bummed me out. Ditto Keri Russell as a good mom searching the forest for her 13-year-old daughter (Brooklyn Prince, who of course looks nothing like Russell)…she also plays it straight like Ehrenreich and Liotta.

I just wish Banks hadn’t tried to goof her way through it. I wish she’d made this film in a Steven Soderbergh-type way. That’s all I’m saying.

Variety’s Cannes Caboose Report

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HE readers know that Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon will almost certainly have its big debut at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. So what follows is mostly water under the bridge.

I know that I popped in for a little taste on 7.26 (i.e., seven months ago) after Mike Fleming and Justin Kroll reported that Flower Moon would be skipping a late ’22 release in favor of “a possible ‘global showcase premiere’ at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.”

On Jan. 12 World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy reported that “two sources” had told him Flower Moon would play Cannes.

I was told privately on February 1st that this would indeed happen.

The last columnist to report same was Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman, on Monday, 2.20.

And now (Thursday, 2.23) Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy and Justin Kroll have posted a Cannes caboose story, timidly reporting that Killer Moon is “eyeing” a Cannes debut. Their story qualifies three times that the Cannes booking isn’t 100% firmed, but it is, I’ve been told. Plane fares and hotels are booked — done deal. Probably in an out-of-competition slot.

Pounding Nails With “Top Gun” Forehead

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Nearly three months ago bbc.com’s Nicholas Barber explained why Top Gun: Maverick is the only film that deservers to win the Best Picture Oscar….okay, he didn’t say that but he might as well have.

Barber also made it clear that anyone who votes instead for Everything Everywhere All At Once is a cinematic philistine and a sworn enemy of the Movie Godz ethos…okay, he didn’t say that but he might as well have.

Barber: “Top Gun: Maverick was a romantic-comedy-drama-action-thriller – which is another way of saying that it was simply a Hollywood movie that everyone could enjoy. To people who had stayed away from cinemas since before the pandemic, TG:M felt like a warm welcome home.

“Still, it was a bittersweet feeling — as if we were being welcomed home, but we had to leave again soon. Even while we were cheering, laughing and crying at the film, we were aware, on some level, that it was a one-off. Top Gun: Maverick won’t set any trends because it isn’t part of a trend. It’s unique, the last of its kind — just as its hero was the last of his. It marked the end of an era. But as long as the film was on the screen, we could tell ourselves that it hadn’t ended yet.

“The screenwriters put it best. ‘The future is coming, and you’re not in it,’ says Ed Harris says to Tom Cruise. ‘Your kind is heading for extinction.’

“‘Maybe so, sir,’ says Cruise. ‘But not today.'”

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Seth Rogen Needs To Slap This Kid Around

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Will you listen to this freshman kid’s voice? Remind you of anyone? Ben Shapiro‘s perhaps? The reedy-voiced kid says that he wrote “ALL LIVES MATTER” on a blackboard and was soon after told by school supervisors that this sentiment is politically problematic (i.e., racist). This is why we need Seth Rogen to school this little prick.

Unkind Cuts

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Herewith David Thomson ‘s assessment of Tom Hanks, written 22 years ago. The words are mean but Thomson isn’t wrong. Except, that is, when he writes that Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia (‘93) and particularly Hanks’ “Andy Beckett” performance don’t really convey “courage, convictions, or some resolution of what [the film is] about.” Perhaps so, but you know who does bring that stuff? Denzel Washington.

Posted on 4.14.15: