Tag Archives: Ray Liotta

COCAINE BEAR (2023) – Campy Horror Comedy A Dud

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Killer bear movies are a thing.

Probably the most famous is GRIZZLY (1976), which in spite of being a complete rip-off of JAWS (1975), is a highly entertaining and gory killer bear on the loose horror movie, and it made a killing at the box office back in the day. Before that you had NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLY (1966), a well-made western about a family trying to protect its farm from a marauding bear, and there have been many others over the years, films like INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE (2015) which tried and failed to be a more contemporary killer bear horror movie.

Now comes COCAINE BEAR (2023), which is loosely based on a true story from 1985, when bags of cocaine were dropped from a plane by a drug dealer who died when his parachute didn’t open, and the cocaine which landed in the forest was ingested by a black bear. This movie is very loosely based on that story, as in real life the black bear promptly died, which is what you would expect to happen to an animal after overdosing on massive amounts of cocaine. Here, the film imagines what the bear would have done had it not died, which is, go on a murderous rampage.

The movie follows a set of quirky characters as they converge in the Georgia forest and have to contend with the cocaine bear.

Two children, Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince) and Henry (Christian Convery) skip school and decide to spend the day in the forest. Dee Dee’s mom, Sari (Keri Russell) goes into the forest in search of the children. Drug dealer Syd (Ray Liotta, in his final film role) sends his son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), who’s still grieving over the death of his wife, and fellow drug dealer Daveed (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.) into the woods to retrieve the cocaine. A cop named Bob (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) is also in the woods searching for the drugs, and then there’s a forest ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) who is more interested in her boss Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) than helping Sari find her daughter and her friend. There are more characters as well, and they all have one thing in common: the cocaine bear!

COCAINE BEAR, as its title suggests, has all the makings of campy comedic horror classic, and that’s what I hoped this one would be.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Try as it might, COCAINE BEAR isn’t much of a black comedy. It works a bit better as a horror movie, because there are some gruesomely gory bear attack sequences, but the rest of the film isn’t serious enough for it to work completely on this level, and it doesn’t work as a comedy either because the humor isn’t even close to being sharp.

The screenplay by Jimmy Warden fails to bring any of the wide array of characters to life. They’re not well-written, we know little about them, nor is the dialogue memorable. Most of the characters are caricatures of characters we’ve seen in other movies, the generic drug dealers, a mom searching for her daughter, precocious children, etc.

Elizabeth Banks’ meandering direction doesn’t help. COCAINE BEAR has very little pacing and no momentum. Rather than building to a climax, the story just moves from one bear incident to another. Characters come and go and have their encounters with the bear, but the film doesn’t build on any of it. There’s also not a likable character in the entire movie because the characters we are supposed to like are not fleshed out, and the characters we could love to hate are dull.

Jimmy Warden also wrote the screenplay to the horror sequel BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN (2020), which I thought was pretty dreadful. COCAINE BEAR is equally as dreadful.

Elizabeth Banks, whose work as an actress I enjoy, also directed the reboot CHARLIE’S ANGELS (2019), which most people hated, but I actually enjoyed. Banks’ work here with COCAINE BEAR is a mixed bag. The bear sequences are intense and scary, while the rest of the movie which was aiming for dark comedy misses its mark by a long shot.

The cast is also a combo of hits and misses.

Young Brooklyn Prince who was amazing in THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017), doesn’t get to do a whole lot here as Dee Dee other than be scared. Christian Convery fares better as Dee Dee’s friend Henry. He is able to inject a lot of personality into the role and has some of the better lines in the film, which he handles very well.

Keri Russell as mommy Sari plays things straight and as such makes very little impact here, even with her heroic stand at the end. Alden Ehrenreich, who played Han Solo in SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018), makes drug dealer Eddie a sympathetic character, but he’s also a rather dull sympathetic character. O’Shea Jackson Jr. makes more of an impact as Eddie’s buddy and fellow drug dealer, Daveed. The scene where he’s jumped by three teens in a restroom is one of the more entertaining scenes in the movie.

Isiah Whitlock, Jr. has a thankless role as Bob the policeman, in a case where he is simply let down by the writing.

The same can be said for Ray Liotta as drug dealer and main villain in the movie, Syd. It’s a terribly written role, and it’s kinda too bad that this was Liotta’s final movie role. He died a week after completing work on this movie, in May 2022.

There are other quirky characters here as well, but none of them are developed. They show up for one sequence with the bear, and that’s pretty much it. Some of these sequences include a tense standoff inside the ranger’s cabin, a scene where the bear actually chases an ambulance, and a sequence where characters climb trees to escape the bear which doesn’t end well. All of these sequences have their moments, but none of them work as well as they could.

The bear itself is pretty frightening looking for a CGI creation, and the fact that it moves so quickly also helps make it scary. Interestingly, the killer bear movies I mentioned above were all about grizzly bears, while COCAINE BEAR is about a black bear, which traditionally does not attack humans, but this one does, because it’s high on cocaine.

I thought I was going to have a fun time watching COCAINE BEAR, but that simply wasn’t the case.

There’s certainly a story here to be told, an imaginative one about what might happen if a bear high on cocaine didn’t die and went on a crazy killing spree in the forest…

But sadly, COCAINE BEAR isn’t it.

I give it one and a half stars.

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RATING SYSTEM

Four stars – Perfect, Top of the line

Three and a half stars- Excellent

Three stars – Very Good

Two and a half stars – Good

Two Stars – Fair

One and a half stars – Pretty Weak

One star- Poor

Zero stars – Awful

THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (2021) – SOPRANOS Back Story Far Less Riveting Than the TV Series

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THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (2021) has as its subtitle “A SOPRANOS story.” It would have been a much better movie had it really been a SOPRANOS story!

Technically, it is, as it provides backstory for a young Tony Soprano, but the movie is really about Dickie Moltisanti, Tony’s favorite uncle and the man who influenced his rise into the mob world. And at the end of the day, Dickie Moltisanti is a far less compelling character than Tony Soprano. The film suffers for this.

Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) is the father of Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli), a prominent character on the HBO hit TV series THE SOPRANOS (1999-2007), on which the characters in this movie are based. And by far that’s the best part of THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, seeing characters decades before they appeared on THE SOPRANOS. Imperioli even provides some voice-over narration as Christopher from beyond the grave.

The actors here do a phenomenal job in that regard. Vera Farmiga is spot on as Tony Soprano’s mother, Livia, a role played so well by Nancy Marchand for two seasons on THE SOPRANOS before her untimely death from lung cancer. Farmiga nails the character, and we get to see her cold, detached relationship with Tony already having an affect on him as a teenager. Farmiga has had plenty of practice playing monster moms, having played Norman Bates’ mother Norma on the acclaimed TV show BATES MOTEL (2013-17).

Likewise, Corey Stoll is perfect as Tony’s other uncle, Junior, who was having back trouble even back in the 1970s. Alexandra Intrator is also spot on as Tony’s older sister Janice. My personal favorite was watching Billy Magnussen ham it up as a young Paulie.

But the most intriguing casting by far is Michael Gandolfini as the teenage Tony Soprano. Gandolfini is the son of James Gandolfini who play Tony Soprano on THE SOPRANOS, who tragically passed away in 2013 at the age of 51 from a heart attack. Michael Ganolfini is excellent in the role, and he does capture the same expressions, smiles, ways of speaking, and nuances as his father, and so you really do believe you are watching a young Tony Soprano on screen. This was definitely a highlight of the movie.

But like I said, the main focus here is on Dickie Moltisanti. The story takes place first in the late 1960s and then switches to the early 1970s, amidst the backdrop of racial tensions and violence. As such, one of Dickie’s enforcers, a black man, Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom, Jr.), is forced to flee New Jersey because of a murder warrant, but when the action switches to the 1970s, Harold returns and decides to take charge and run his own numbers racket, giving Dickie stiff competition.

Not only is Dickie dealing with trying to fend off Harold and his new organization, but he has an abusive father “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti (Ray Liotta) who is now beating his new young wife Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi), which Dickie takes offense to and eventually takes action to take down his father, and afterwards makes Giuseppina his mistress. He also has a complicated relationship with his nephew Tony, who worships him. Dickie likes Tony too and goes back and forth between including and excluding the teen in his mob world, and by the time he realizes he should be doing everything he can to shield Tony from the underworld, it’s too late.

While Alessandro Nivola is quite good as Dickie Moltisanti, the character just isn’t that interesting. The film would have worked far better had the story focused more on young Tony.

Michela De Rossi is excellent as Giuseppina Moltisanti, as she exhibits both strength and independence, and yet possesses a willingness to play the role of the “kept woman”, which constantly has her fearing for her life at the hands of the Moltisanti men. De Rossi delivers one of the best performances in the movie.

Fans of Leslie Odom Jr. will enjoy his considerable screen time as rising criminal Harold McBrayer, but again his screen time takes away from Tony’s. And Jon Bernthal rounds out the cast with a solid performance as Tony Soprano’s father, Johnny Soprano. The scenes between Bernthal and Vera Farmiga as Livia are some of the livelier ones in the movie.

THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK was directed by Alan Taylor. The film captures the look of the period, and the pacing is okay, deliberate, slow in some parts, but never dull. The violence is there, one scene in particular involving a tire riveter. Taylor also directed THOR: DARK WORLD (2013) and TERMINATOR GENISYS (2015), two movies I somewhat enjoyed. THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, while a far different movie from those two, is comparable in terms of quality to those actioners.

Lawrence Konner wrote the screenplay, based on the characters created by David Chase. The dialogue is decent, but the story subpar, and the connections to Tony Soprano nowhere near as fleshed out as they needed to be. While technically this is a Sopranos story, it’s kind of a Sopranos-lite story. Still, the screenplay is better than some earlier Konner vehicles, films like SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (1987) and the dreadful Tim Burton PLANET OF THE APES (2001) remake.

If you haven’t seen THE SOPRANOS, you may still enjoy THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, since it tells a self-contained story about Dickie Moltisanti. But since my favorite parts of the movie all had to do with its connections to THE SOPRANOS, I’m guessing if you haven’t seen the show you won’t enjoy the movie as much.

THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK is a decent mobster movie, but as a SOPRANOS story, it’s far less riveting than expected.

Fans of the TV series deserve more.

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NO SUDDEN MOVE (2021) – Stephen Soderbergh’s Latest A Compelling Crime Tale

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Who knew the catalytic converter could cause so much trouble?

NO SUDDEN MOVE (2021), the latest movie by director Steven Soderbergh, now playing in theaters and on HBO Max, is a stylish thriller that takes place in 1950s Detroit about a pair of criminals who find themselves in the middle of a robbery gone wrong and suddenly are being chased by so many unsavory characters you’ll need a scorecard to keep track, in a plot which involves the auto industry and the fight over some innovative top secret information!

As plots go, it’s pretty darn interesting!

Recently out of jail, Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle) is looking for work, and he’s none too picky about what he takes. He accepts a sketchy job from Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser) which involves a team of three, and includes Ronald Russo (Benicio Del Toro) and Charley (Kieran Culkin). They invade the home of a man Matt Wertz (David Harbour) and his family. While Curt and Ron remain in the home holding the family hostage, Charley takes Matt to his office and forces Matt to break into his boss’ safe and steal the documents located there. When Matt opens the safe, he discovers the documents are gone, but rather than tell Charley this, he hands the criminal substitute documents.

This leads to a violent chain reaction, upon which Curt realizes they have been set up, and he and Ron decide to go after the missing documents themselves and get paid handsomely for them. Which proves to be no easy task, since there are a lot of people who want those documents and who will kill for them. And not only do Curt and Ron need to stay one step ahead of the unsavory characters who are after them, but also they have to contend with detective Joe Finney (Jon Hamm) who is hot on their trail.

The less said about the plot the better, because it really is a compelling story. The screenplay by Ed Solomon is solid. It does get a bit confusing as it goes along, as there are so many characters and twists and turns in the story, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it. I liked the two main characters, Curt and Ron, a lot, and their back and forth chatter works well. The dialogue throughout is excellent. And I liked the connection to the auto industry, as it’s not every day you see a thriller about the catalytic converter.

Solomon also wrote NOW YOU SEE ME (2013) a snappy thriller which I enjoyed and starred Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, and Woody Harrelson, among others, and way back in the day, he co-wrote BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989), and he also wrote MEN IN BLACK (1997). So, he’s no stranger to writing catchy dialogue.

Don Cheadle delivers the best performance in the film. He gives Curt grit and determination, and he plays the character as a stand up guy, in spite of his criminal past. He’s only after the money to get back what he believes is rightfully his. And he’s not about taking innocent lives with him to do it. It’s some of Cheadle’s best work since HOTEL RWANDA (2004).

Benicio Del Toro is nearly as good as Ronald Russo, the former mob enforcer who is now running from the mob since he slept with his boss’ wife. Not smart, Ronald! Del Toro plays Russo as an often lethargic hit man who is constantly looking for a drink. It’s a terrific understated performance.

David Harbour, looking thinner and trimmer than as of late, is cast against his STRANGER THINGS Sheriff Hopper persona, playing Matt Wertz, a cowardly weasel of a man who is not above risking the lives of his family as he plots with his girlfriend and boss’ secretary to rip off the company, a plan which blows up in his face in far worse ways than he could ever imagine.

Amy Seimetz also delivers a strong performance as Matt’s long suffering wife Mary, who finds ordinary life a struggle and can’t handle going through the motions of what she views as a phony existence, and so she already has issues with life even before the violent plot against her family rears its ugly head. Seimetz has been in a bunch of things, from the remake of PET SEMATARY (2019) to ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) to co-starring with David Harbour in STRANGER THINGS (2016-2017).

While Jon Hamm is effective as Detective Joe Finney, he actually doesn’t get to do a whole heck of a lot. I expected more from the role.

It was fun to see Brendan Fraser back on the “big” screen again. I hadn’t seen him in a movie in a while. And he chews up the scenery as the mysterious mobster who sets everything in motion by hiring these men. Speaking of chewing up the scenery, Ray Liotta does just that in a small role as head mobster Frank Capelli.

And there’s an uncredited performance in the film’s conclusion that adds a lot to the climax of this movie.

I’m not the biggest fan of Steven Soderbergh. His thriller UNSANE (2018) shot entirely with an IPhone 7 was just so-so, and he’s made a bunch of other films I’ve found simply lukewarm, films like SIDE EFFECTS (2013) and CONTAGION (2011). And I’m not a fan of his OCEAN’S movies. But I really liked his quirky crime comedy LOGAN LUCKY (2017), and of course back in the day he made films like THE LIMEY (1999) and SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE (1989).

But I really liked NO SUDDEN MOVE. Soderbergh captures the look and feel of 1950s Detroit with seeming ease. He gets the most out of his actors’ performances, and he keeps this one thrilling throughout. I did think it slowed a bit towards the end, picking up just in time for its satisfying conclusion.

Overall, NO SUDDEN MOVE has a great cast, a superb script, and a creative director who is operating at the top of his game.

And you’ll even learn a little history about the catalytic converter.

Yup, it’s definitely a movie you “auto” watch.

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MARRIAGE STORY (2019) – Painfully Authentic Depiction of Divorce

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marriage story

I finally caught up with MARRIAGE STORY (2019) the other night, the only 2019 Best Picture nominee that I had not seen before the Oscars aired last week.

I had heard that its depiction of divorce was depressingly realistic, and after finally having seen it,  I have to agree. MARRIAGE STORY gets the emotions right.

MARRIAGE STORY opens with a voice-over by Charlie (Adam Driver) describing all the reasons why he fell in love with his wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), and these reasons play out in little vignettes shown on-screen. Then it’s Nicole’s turn as she describes why she fell in love with Charlie, again in a voice-over narration with the accompanying vignettes. It turns out these were written by Charlie and Nicole as part of their mediation process, and when Nicole refuses to read out loud what she wrote, she walks out of the mediation meeting, and thus MARRIAGE STORY begins.

Charlie runs a very successful theater group in New York City, he as the director, and Nicole as the lead actress, but Nicole has always longed to return to Los Angeles where her family lives, but Charlie has never been interested in that idea, which has caused Nicole stress over the years. When Nicole accepts a role in a TV pilot, she moves to LA with their eight year-old son Henry (Azhy Robertston), a move that Charlie believes is temporary.

But once there, Nicole hires divorce attorney Nora Fanshaw (Laura Dern) who reminds Nicole that this process is about her getting what she wants and that there is no reason why she has to settle for things she doesn’t want, a la things that Charlie wants. When Charlie arrives in LA, he’s served the divorce papers, and he feels blindsided and betrayed by Nicole as he was under the impression that they were not going to hire lawyers, but Nicole makes it clear that she is unhappy and this is the only way she is going to get what she wants.

Charlie hires a more sensitive attorney Bert Spitz (Alan Alda), but after losing continually to Nora’s hardball tactics, he hires a tougher attorney, Jay Marotta (Ray Liotta) because as he tells Nicole, “I needed my own assh*le.”

As things get uglier and nastier, Nicole and Charlie have to deal with all their emotions even as they realize they don’t really want to hurt each other, in spite of the fact that their marriage is over and their divorce is imminent.

I really liked MARRIAGE STORY, even though watching it was a very uncomfortable experience.  As I said, it gets the emotions right. Through Nicole and Charlie, we witness the pain of watching one’s family and way of life disintegrate before one’s eyes, the frustration of suddenly being adversaries with the very person they’d been in love with, having to keep it together in front of their child, having to deal with their child’s emotions, but as a parent working alone. It makes them say things they simply don’t mean, as the whole ordeal gets inside their heads and changes them, scars them.

All of this is depicted very accurately in MARRIAGE STORY, as well as the sense that even while the divorce is happening, there’s the feeling that Nicole and Charlie don’t really want it to happen. That they love each other and don’t really want to hurt each other, but yet the marriage is over, and so there’s this weird mix of fighting for what you want and need vs. wanting on some level to keep that sense of family together even as the actual family is now separate.

So, kudos to writer/director Noah Baumbach for creating such a genuine portrait of divorce. The screenplay is outstanding.

As is the acting, especially by the two leads. Adam Driver continues to impress me as an actor. Sure, he plays Kylo Ren in the new STAR WARS movies, and he’s very good in the role, but he’s been better in other movies, in films like LOGAN LUCKY (2017) and BLACKKKLANSMAN (2018). His work here in MARRIAGE STORY is best of all.

Driver makes Charlie a self-absorbed character who is totally at home directing for the stage and perfectly content in that world, but it blinds him to the needs of his wife. He enjoys some powerful scenes, especially with Johansson, as their arguments are fiery and agonizing. Driver’s best moment comes when Charlie unleashes upon Nicole wishing her deader than dead, and then he just collapses, overcome with emotion, before apologizing for what he said.

Scarlett Johansson is just as good. As Nicole, she’s the one who seeks the divorce, but she’s also the one who needs the change, as Charlie is so stuck in his own world nothing she has said or done so far had been able to reach him. When she files for divorce, and Charlie tries to reconcile, in her eyes, it’s already too late. She believes if she goes back it’ll be the same, and she wants more for her life.

Johansson was equally as good as another mother Rosie in JOJO RABBIT (2019), which means 2019 was a pretty darn good year for Johansson.

Laura Dern won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role here as divorce attorney Nora Fanshaw. Dern is excellent, no question, although I thought both Florence Pugh in LITTLE WOMEN (2019) and Kathy Bates in RICHARD JEWELL (2019) gave better performances. That’s not to take anything away from Dern, who like Johansson, also enjoyed a stellar 2019. Dern was also in LITTLE WOMEN, as matriarch Marmee March, and she’s excellent in both films. In fact, these two performances are among Dern’s best ever. She’s been making movies for a long time, and so I for one was happy she won the Oscar. And I’m old enough to remember one of her earliest movies, SMOOTH TALK (1985), which I saw at the movies. She impressed me then and has continued to do so ever since.

But the main reason to see MARRIAGE STORY is to watch Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson performing at the top of their game. As good as the script is, MARRIAGE STORY ultimately works because of Driver and Johansson. They nail their roles, and the emotions that go along with them.

MARRIAGE STORY is not a fun movie, but it is an accurate one. Its depiction of divorce is painfully spot-on.

As such, it’s one of the finest dramas of 2019.

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