Cocaine Bear

What’s It About, Del Boy?

Cocaine Bear
USA 2023 Universal
Directed by Elizabeth Banks
UK cinema release print

To probably quote many other critics, I’m sure, Cocaine Bear is a movie which very much does what it says on the tin. It was a film I mainly got interested in from the buzz surrounding the title (I had a similar attraction to the movie Snakes On A Plane for the same reason) and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Also, I don’t really know Elisabeth Banks as an actress but I did like the previous movie she directed (and starred in), the 2019 reboot of Charlie’s Angels (reviewed here).

Okay, so call me naive (I’m sure a lot of you will call me that and worse) but I went into Cocaine Bear not realising it was an out and out comedy. I mean, I knew it was based... or in this case perhaps ‘inspired’ is a better word... on a true incident in 1985 and I knew there was never going to be a shred of reality or truth to the way the real life events were depicted. Two things are true... one is that, while dumping drugs out of a plane, a man’s parachute failed to open and he died from the fall. Two, a bear ate a quantity of the cocaine he dropped. Those are the only two things that this movie shares with the actual incident, as far as I can tell. In reality, the bear died from the consumption of the narcotics within five minutes (and is now stuffed and displayed somewhere).

This film is about the rampage of the bear as she goes to protect her two cubs from interfering humans and, mostly, tries to find more cocaine to consume. It’s also about various disconnected bunches of humans who find themselves in the forest (or park as they are in the US, from what I understand, not bearing any resemblance to UK parks so much... at least not the ones I know). Of these humans, my ‘favourite performances of the movie’ shout out go to Kerri Russell as a mother trying to find her teenage daughter, Alden (Han Solo) Ehrenreich as a grieving member of a drug cartel who has been sent to the forest to find the drugs along with his friend played by O'Shea Jackson Jr. and, last but by no means least, Scott Seiss... who I just found out is exactly the person I thought he reminded me of in only his second ever part in a movie. Seiss, it turns out, is the man who does those ‘angry retail guy’ sketches and posts them on YouTube and twitter... and yeah, this guy definitely deserves to be in more movies after his hilarious performance in this, I would say.

Lastly, Ray Liota is also in this film and he gets a dedication in the end credits (stay for two post credits scenes, by the way, if you want to catch every drop of the movie). Ray plays the nasty guy who wants his drugs back and sends his boy to get them. It was his last movie role before he died, one week after recording his ADR for this one.  

And it took a while to grow on me, truth be told. As I said, I was expecting more of a modern, retro exploitation film than a comedy and comedy certainly isn’t my favourite movie genre (unless it’s got The Marx Brothers or Woody Allen in it, you’re going to have to work hard to get me to stay). So for the initial set up, I was less than comfortable with a film that was obviously being played for laughs with some quite broad comedy but, after a while, I began to get on board with it. After all, it’s competently put together (with a caveat I’ll get to) and it’s well acted by a whole host of comic performers... it’s too long to list all of them here. For me though, I really got into it when the emergency Ambulance showed up with Scott Seiss on board as one of the paramedics, partnered up by the equally excellent  Kahyun Kim. The scenes which follow their arrival are quite funny and pulled me into things, for sure.

It is a fun movie and, yeah, I was rooting for a lot of the humans to survive it. That being said, I thought the film was edited in a peculiar manner. There are gaps where it’s implied what’s happened in scenes cross-cutting between sets of characters rather than seeing the actual things happening, making almost unnatural jumps in the narrative. Now, I really don’t mind not being shown everything and filling in the gaps for myself without being spoonfed data but, I dunno, a fast paced comedy movie seems to need those kinds of moments more, I would have thought. My first thought was that it was a level of competence, or lack of, in terms of what ended up on screen and my initial assumption as I was watching was that the crew hadn’t been able to capture all the footage they wanted. However, there’s a really odd editing decision later on where a flashback to a scene we didn’t see is suddenly cut into a conversation (leaving me completely baffled for a minute as to what I was watching) and I realised that coverage wasn’t the problem, this was an artistic decision on the part of the director. So, yeah, it’s not the way I would have gone with the movie but the film doesn’t lose much clarity from this approach and it works just fine, I guess.

All in all, after about a half an hour into the movie, I have to say that I had a pretty good time with Cocaine Bear and would certainly recommend it to my friends who like comedies. I’m still in two minds as to whether I’ll follow this up with a Blu Ray purchase a little way down the line (maybe when it hits the sales). But, a good evening at the cinema at any rate and, if drug fuelled bear rampages played for comic effect are your thing, you will definitely want to give this one a go.

Charlie's Angels 2019

Charlie-vous Fancy?

Charlie's Angels 2019
2019 USA Directed by Elizabeth Banks
UK cinema release print.

Wow... before I say anything else, the new Charlie’s Angels movie is not without some minor problems but, honestly, it’s a great movie and I can’t understand why it’s got so many negative reviews from people. It’s frankly a little weird that there are just so many one and two star reviews on the IMDB, for example. Seriously, enough people hated this thing so much that they decided to take the time to vent negatively about it? Well... it almost seems like there’s some kind of bizarre secret agenda against the movie but I’m here to say that the naysayers are dead wrong about this one. I had a blast with it but... now I’ve got that out of the way, like I said, there are a few problems, albeit minor problems... so I’m going to go right in here and tell you about the issues I had with it. But first, a little emotional context...

I remember when the original Charlie’s Angels TV show came out in the UK around about 1976. I would have been twelve and I think I was one of the few boys who watched it. I don’t know why... I already wanted to sleep with some of the Angels at that age so I couldn’t quite figure out why the other kids at school of my sex weren’t all over this one too but, well, it was just mainly a girl thing, somehow. Pretty bizarre. I watched odd episodes here and there, didn’t follow it religiously but I did like the shows I saw.

Cut to the 21st century and McG’s two Charlie’s Angels movies. I loved these and think they’re absolute masterpieces of cinematic magic. The beautiful and constant colour palette changes from scene to scene, the sense of fun and the chemistry between the girls was all absolutely brilliant and I’ve never been able to figure out why we didn’t get another three or four of these.

So, I would have to say my expectations were a little low on this new one because a) I knew it couldn’t top the sheer artistry and perfection of the McG movies and b) the word of mouth on this one was awful. The one thing which did give me hope is that one of the, relatively, younger generation of Hollywood composers who I like a lot... Brian Tyler (see my review of his first concert here) has done the score for this. Indeed, I had the CD in my hands before the movie even opened over here... so I at least knew the music was probably going to be pretty good. I’ll get to that later.

So there I was, hopeful that the film could be okay but really not expecting much from it. And, for the first ten minutes of the film at least, that expectation was sadly on the nose. The opening scene which is the usual ‘conclusion of an adventure’ sequence that the Bond films pioneered and popularised back in the 1960s is here as expected and, although it gets the male chauvinist stuff out in the open fairly on, the action in this lead-in looks like it’s either been too aggressively edited so you can’t see what’s going on or it's maybe cutting around performers who can’t fight in the hopes it may look like they’re kicking ass (which is something a fair few Hollywood movies have done in recent years, unfortunately). Then, when I was expecting a revamped old school homage to the Charlie’s Angels TV show opening like in the McG movies, I instead got a terrible dose of imagery which, may, have been origins of the leading characters... or maybe not. It was going way to fast for me to process and there was some terrible, blary, loud pop singing going on behind the visuals. I was pretty fed up by this point.

However, against all the odds, the film then proceeded to win me over fairly hastily. The three main girls in this... Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska are all pretty amazing and have some really good chemistry. They are ably supported by various people playing ‘Bosleys’... among them Patrick Stewart, Djimon Hounsou and the writer/director Elizabeth Banks as the ‘main Bosley’ of the movie. And a special shout out to Luis Gerardo Méndez playing a ridiculously cool guy named Saint. For every comment I see that the film is trying to make men look stupid all the way through... well, yeah, maybe that’s a bad agenda but, honestly, this character more than makes up for any of the bizarre, ‘man demoting’ sexism perpetrated by the writers here so... yeah, not a problem.

Okay, so the film by this point is stepping up the pace with some really cool action sequences and some nice humour in the right places. Once again the film purposes itself as being a sequel to all incarnations that have gone before it and not a stand alone reboot. In fact, there’s some terrible and obviously 'deliberately tacky' photoshopping of Patrick Stewart with various incarnations of the Angels through the years, which is a nice touch.

Let me sort out some of the bad now.

The action editing in some scenes still looks like it’s trying to hide a lack of fight training... unless, as I said earlier, it’s a deliberately choppy style which doesn’t quite come off. This is unfortunate but it’s not evident in all of the action scenes and they’re still quite exhilarating to watch, nonetheless. Like the previous incarnations, there’s a big emphasis on fun in this movie, even without the ‘colouring book’ cinematography. There were other sequences in the movie which didn’t quite make sense in the edit to me... however. I felt I was being asked to make certain leaps in understanding which I could have done without in simple things of the ‘how did that person suddenly wind up in that vehicle?’ variety. It did look like the editing was trying to make up for some accidentally un-filmed footage now and again but, thankfully, these moments were few and far between.

The only other problem I had was the horrible and ‘mixed in way too loud’ pop songs which punctuate the film at quite a steady lick. They seemed to be the driving force behind some of the montage sequences when, frankly, it should have been the other way around (I mean, McG’s sometimes terrible needle drop music choices were at least supporting the scenes they were being used in, I thought). Again, though, this is countered with... oh , wait, I’ll save the genius of Brian Tyler for a little later.

One thing which, briefly annoyed me was a stupid plot twist which was revealed halfway through the film. I knew it was coming, the audience knew it was coming and... it was so obvious that it enraged me when it happened. Except... turns out the audience are being ‘played’ at this point. Not going to say anymore about that because it would constitute a spoiler but lets just say I so fell for the writer/director’s art of distraction that I was pleasantly surprised (yes, I know, I was surprised... it happens now and again) when the truth of the situation was finally brought to the foreground.

And all this with... oh yeah... Tyler’s score. He’s great at creating the soundscapes for these kinds of films and, though I was hoping for more of the original 70s Charlie’s Angels theme in it... it only makes a brief appearance in an ‘homage’ closet scene... I have to say that the score for this one really knocks it out of the park. It’s got a strong melody line and it mutates into good solid action scoring on a dime. To hell with Brian Tyler, though, for giving me a score which wouldn’t leave my head after the film had finished and wouldn’t let me sleep that night because my brain kept playing it back while I tossed and turned under the sheets. In fact, I’m still humming it as I type. Absolutely first class work from this composer and I can tell this is going to get a lot of spins on the CD player this month. Nice composing from someone who has fast become one of the ‘greats’ of Hollywood scoring.

So, there you go. Not much more to say on this one. Brilliant cast, good chemistry, fast pacing, some mostly good action and a brilliant score... if you can get through the opening ten minutes without turning off, I think you’ll find the new incarnation of Charlie’s Angels is a cinematic delight. And if you want to see a cameo from an old character from the original show, not to mention various other cameos, stick around for the six mini scenes which play out during the end credits. This is a definite Blu Ray purchase for me when it comes out and... well... I just wish I had time to fit in another cinema screening of this one but it’s the wrong time of year for that. Go see it if you can though. With a few tweaks it could have been a masterpiece... instead it's just a really fun, entertaining movie. And who can argue with that?

Brightburn

Tyger Tyger

Brightburn
USA 2019 Directed by David Yarovesky
UK cinema release print (brutalised by collusion with the BBFC).

Brightburn is a movie produced by James Gunn, written by his brother and cousin - Brian and Mark Gunn - and directed somewhat brilliantly by David Yarovesky. The film takes place in the fictional town of Brightburn in Kansas and it’s clear that the location is this story’s Smallville. This is one of those 'superhero goes wrong' stories (like Chronicle, reviewed here) but it’s a concept which hasn’t been done too often on film... although, to be fair, it’s probably been done to death in various books and comics over the decades.

This one, in fact, is not afraid to wear it’s influences on its sleeve and there are many references in origin and similarity to the famous DC comic book character Superman. This is because the movie makers really don’t want you to forget this here... it’s what the film is really about. In fact, this is almost, in some ways and in all but copyright evading names, characters and situations only, a typical example of a DC Elseworlds comic book writ large on the big screen. To further extend that analogy, this time in a Marvel comics concept, it’s a What If...? story. Except the premise here, as you will no doubt know from the iconography of the crashed spaceship with it’s infant cargo landing in Kansas in the trailer, is... “What If Superman Had Crashed On Earth As An Infant But, Instead Of Choosing To Use His Alien Powers For Good, He Goes Psychotic At The Age Of Twelve And Uses Those Powers To Kill People In Fairly Unpleasant Ways”. Except, you know, Brightburn is a lot shorter title and really works a whole lot better, I suspect.

Now, this is very clichéd, to be sure. All the set ups within the plot such as the main antagonist’s personal Kryptonite (nicely saved to a point where it becomes tenuous as a weapon by the end of the movie) and the way the central antagonist, young Brandon Breyer (played with an impressively sinister demeanour by child actor Jackson A. Dunn), is shaped by negative experiences at school and also the influence of the remnants of his alien heritage reprogramming him... are easy to spot coming a mile off. Both Elizabeth Banks and David Denman as his parents, Tori and Kyle, are equally impressive as two individuals who want to do right by their son and fail to see him, at first, as the psychopathic alien monster he has become. Everything falls into place nicely but...

... but it is still very clichéd and there aren’t any real surprises. But here’s the thing with that... Brightburn is still a very interesting and completely entertaining film and, since it’s one of the first to really get to grips with this on the big screen (and especially within an almost strict Superman template)... it really does need to be clichéd and play to those expectations to keep the audience interested in the characters. To keep the audience in suspense. Which it does, in no uncertain terms.

One of the director’s ways of doing this was, it seemed to me, a little odd. In that, he takes an overtly voyeuristic stance. He’ll go from an establishing shot and either cut or move the camera to take you in further to pull you into a scene but... and here’s the thing... he does it a lot and, sometimes, even within a scene that already playing out. So he’ll cut away from the mother, say, to bring the camera back from another, distant vantage point... and then slowly pull you back to her again. Normally this might be a little distracting but the way he manages to pull it off here, without really popping the audience out of the action... indeed, using this technique to draw them in further... is very well executed and I’m wondering now if this particular way of shooting around a scene, which gives the camera a very distant, fly on the wall kind of voyeuristic atmosphere, is something this particular director does in every film he works on.

Also, there’s a lot of cross-cutting between two separate scenes in this, almost too much... and he uses this to accomplish two things. One is the obvious thing where he uses two adjacent sets of events to make a visual metaphor about some subtext of the film but, the other thing he does with this... and I guess it’s kind of a traditional thing to use this way of editing things together but it really works well here... is to build suspense when you don’t know just how close the lethal boy is to walking/flying into the other sequence and letting loose his child-like wrath.

Talking of which, when he does let loose said wrath, it gets pretty grim and disturbing. Now I knew before I went to see this that the film has been edited for violence in two places by the film company in collusion with the accursed BBFC in order to get it a lower, 15 rating. Normally I would just boycott the film accordingly but, like Aquaman before it, I was very interested in seeing this so, in those kinds of instances, my cinema trip basically becomes a window shopping trip. I know I’m not really watching the film but I can see roughly what it looks like so, when the US edition of the Blu Ray comes out, which will be an uncut version, I can just import it over and have that version instead (and probably before it even gets released in this country, I suspect). So yeah... definitely one of my ‘try first’ before buying the real deal trips and, in regards to this film, yeah I’ll definitely be grabbing a US edition of the film at some point.

Now I’ve got that out of the way.... even with those two cuts here, the film is still truly gory and violent. It’s not just the normal grimness you get when you see a young, sinister kid committing murders... these are elements of goriness which are especially graphic with human flesh and bone mangled into something it’s not supposed to be on characters who, more often than not, don’t die quickly. Now some of those set pieces you will see coming... every kid has wondered just what Superman could do with his heat vision if made angry... others you won’t, especially in terms of lingering on the violence and playing with it once the initial physical assault is committed. There’s a lot of bloody demise here so I’m truly interested in seeing what the BBFC suggested the company removed. Time and heinous US postal fees will tell soon enough, I guess.

So, yeah... really not much to say in criticism of Brightburn, to be honest. At least not in terms of negative criticism. The audience I saw it with were on the edge of their seat and I thought this was a perfectly good attempt at making a horror movie which is, in all the obvious ways, an anti-superhero movie. A super-villain movie, I guess... in a year where we’ve already had Glass (reviewed here) and with a Joker movie soon upon us. If you’ve seen the trailer for Brightburn and liked what you saw... well, this does exactly what it says on the tin but in a way which doesn’t run out of steam and is not overly long. An easy recommendation from me for fans of both horror and superhero movies. I’m hoping we’ll get some kind of well made sequel to this one at some point in the future. I can see how this could be expanded in a few directions.