Category: Film Reviews by Amy

A bear does cocaine in Cocaine Bear, a movie that is 100 percent exactly what you think it’s going to be.

This movie opens with title cards giving us facts about black bears citing Wikipedia as its source, which feels tonally perfect. Like, here’s some information but we didn’t work super hard to get it and we don’t stand by its accuracy. (But, speaking of Wikipedia, a link on this movie’s Wikipedia page will take you to the tale of the “real life” Cocaine Bear, who has apparently been stuffed and is now on display at something called the “Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall” and also the bear’s nickname is sometimes “Pablo Eskobear” and, well, I definitely recommend the “Cocaine Bear” Wikipedia page.) This movie is directed by Elizabeth Banks and if you can picture her seriously reading you facts about bears, that gives you a sense of where this movie is, vibe-wise, even though she herself doesn’t appear in the movie.

It’s the “this is your brain on drugs” 1980s and a drug smuggler dumps duffel bags filled with cocaine out of an airplane and into a Georgia forest before jumping himself. Well, before preparing to jump himself. Before he can actually jump, he bonks his head, falls out of the plane and ends up splatting in someone’s yard. But the gang expecting the cocaine — led by Syd (Ray Liotta, in his final role, according to IMDb) — knows that most of it is still out there and needs to go collect it so as not to incur the wrath of the cartel wholesaling it to them. Syd sends his son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), who is still grieving the loss of his wife and is generally disinterested in his dad’s whole drug-dealing thing, and Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), a friend to Eddie but also no-nonsense in his approach to the cocaine retrieval, to find the missing drugs.

Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), nominally a detective but primarily an Isiah Whitlock character, suspects that Syd’s gang might be looking for the cocaine and goes on the hunt for it in hopes of nabbing them.

Before those opposing forces can get to the drugs, though, a trio of crime-minded dummies — whose IMDb names are “Kid (Stache)” (Aaron Holliday), “Vest” (J. B. Moore) and “Ponytail” (Leo Hanna) — find one of the duffels and hides it in the forest, hoping to go back for it later.

But before any of these guys start their cocaine search, a large female black bear finds some of the cocaine, consumes it and decides she loves cocaine. She is single-minded on getting more cocaine — possibly grunting something like “yum yum” when she’s near it? maybe that was my imagination. And while not usually portrayed this way, cocaine seems to give her the munchies, specifically for humans, the more clueless the better.

This is bad news not just for the cops and criminals on the search for the drugs but also for anybody who happens to be in the woods, like for example single mother Sari (Keri Russell), searching for her tween-ish-aged daughter Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince) and Dee Dee’s buddy Henry (Christian Convery), who have cut school to go to the forest in search of a waterfall. And forest ranger Liz (Margo Martindale), who is far more concerned with seducing wildlife expert Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).

Everybody, every Margo Martindale and Keri Russell and Ray Liotta body, seems to be having a total blast here — and why not. The movie is called Cocaine Bear and the coked up bear quickly overtakes all other storylines and character elements as being the key issue of the movie. This is not a horror movie, this isn’t even a thriller really, it’s just a bear, on cocaine, chasing O’Shea Jackson Jr., who like his dad (Ice Cube) is solid at being the straight man in a wacky situation. What’s not to enjoy? The movie — like this year’s Plane or last year’s Beast — is totally and completely up front about what it is going to deliver to you and then it delivers exactly that. What are this movie’s themes? Bear on cocaine. What is this movie’s central argument? That a bear on cocaine will want more cocaine. What does this movie make you feel? That you are watching a bear on cocaine — or, you know, a good-enough rendering of a bear. This movie does have some gore, which feels more for the comic “ew” of it all than to really induce fear. There is a “glued on mustache” sensibility that pervades this movie, which perhaps keeps it from reaching some, I don’t know, higher height of intoxicated bear cinema but also keeps things humming along at a nicely unserious, deliberately shabby level. Which is all to say, if Cocaine Bear seems both really stupid and like something you, with your daily stresses and worries, might need in your life, you are absolutely correct. B

Rated R for bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Elizabeth Banks and written by Jimmy Warden, Cocaine Bear is an hour and 35 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Universal Studios.

Featured photo: Cocaine Bear.

Eternally youthful Paul Rudd returns for an adventure in the tinyverse in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Rudd) has a pretty good post-Thanos life. He’s written a book, he’s publicly beloved and his girlfriend Hope Van Dyne/the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) is using science to make the world a better place. But then he gets a call from the police department where his daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) is being held after getting arrested at a protest where she may have shrunk a police car (Hope slipped her an Ant-Man-like suit). When Scott brings her home to the Pym/Van Dyne house, he learns Cassie has been working with Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope on tech to map the quantum realm. Everyone’s proud of young Cassie’s invention but Hank’s wife/Hope’s mom Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) gets panicked when she realizes the device sends a signal into the quantum realm. She tries to shut it off but the device malfunctions and sucks them all in — or down, I guess, as the quantum realm is the submicroscopic world below or inside or whatever our world.

Janet, you’ll remember, was once stuck in the quantum realm for decades and when the gang — separated into two groups: the Pym/Van Dyne family and Scott and Cassie — arrives they realize she knows more than she’s ever explained about this world. For one, it’s populated by an assortment of beings, some more humanoid than others. And one of those beings is apparently the big noise of the quantum realm with some kind of old score to settle with Janet.

Eventually we meet this guy and he is Kang (Jonathan Majors), a name to remember for Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you watched Loki and didn’t give up after one episode like I did, apparently he is familiar (and also there’s some Loki content in the post-credits, according to the internet; I only stayed for one mid-credits scene, which was wearying). He is the villain — I guess? Mostly, he just feels like the start to a Whole Thing.

This movie is primarily made of goofiness, some of which I enjoyed (a cute if not well-used cameo, some business with Hank Pym’s ants) and some of which I just found to be tiresome. Everything to do with the fraying of the multiverse or whatever, the half-baked “secrets Janet never divulged” stuff, and Kang’s whole deal all just feel like a drag on whatever fun the movie could have had.

This movie feels so invested in being the first chapter of a new thing that it seems like it forgot to put together a compelling stand-alone story. And while I have affection for both Paul Rudd and Scott Lang, that affection isn’t enough for the movie to skate by with so few redeeming elements of its own. C

Rated PG-13 because that is the most profitable rating — I mean, for violence/action and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Peyton Reed with a screenplay by Jeff Loveness, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is two hours and five minutes long and distributed in theaters by Walt Disney Studios.

Featured photo: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Channing Tatum’s Mike takes his skills to London in Magic Mike’s Last Dance, a movie about abs.

Sure, there’s other stuff: A romance between Tatum’s character and Salma Hayek Pinault’s character that never has quite as much charm and chemistry as their little pre-movie “thank you for watching this movie” message. A plot that feels like somebody watched part of an early Ted Lasso episode and said how about we do a little of that, sorta. A show within a show, to give us the big dance finale we bought our tickets to go see. Some impressive biceps, some (clothed) butts. But, like, if I had to sum it all up: abs, this movie is about really chiseled abs.

Narration — delivered by Zadie (Jemelia George), the bored teenage daughter of Maxandra (Hayek Pinault) — explains that Mike Lane (Tatum) lost his furniture business in the pandemic, which is why he is bartending at a fancy party in Miami. He runs into Kim (Caitlin Gerard), a woman whose bachelorette party he danced at back in the 2012 original Magic Mike movie. Now a lawyer for Maxandra, the woman throwing the fancy party Mike is working, Kim tells the divorcing and unhappy Maxandra about Mike’s past occupation. Max calls him into her house after the party and offers him $6,000 for a dance. He delivers and then some, which is how they end up in bed with Max offering to take him to London. She has a job for him — not that — that will require him for a month, after which she will pay him $60,000. He agrees, which is how he finds himself at a historic theater which has been presenting a fusty play.

Max got control of the theater as part of her divorce — mostly out of spite because her ex-mother-in-law loves it — and, after being danced on by Mike, decides that what she most wants is to bring the passion of that experience to the London stage. She asks Mike, with his male entertainer background, to direct this new production. She also declares that there will be no more romance between them; he declares that he will not dance in this production. Guess what happens!

The day I saw this movie, I consumed a fair amount of Magic Mike content. I finally saw 2015’s Magic Mike XXL and I listened to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast episode about that movie (featuring hosts Joe Reid and Chris V. Feil with their Oscar-nominated buddy Pamela Ribon as guest). That episode was a delight, as was XXL — all goofy buddy energy and lots of dudes gyrating while trying to make flustered ladies feel sexy. It’s fun! It’s, as the podcast observed, all fun, with none of the more serious elements of the original movie.

I bring all this up because if that’s where you’re coming from, the “Woo-hoo! Pony!” vibe of XXL, Last Dance isn’t going to quite live up to that abs-tastic joyfulness, with Jada Pinkett Smith calling the female audience queens and Joe Manganiello being a loveable goof. The remaining Kings of Tampa are mostly absent in this third outing. Instead, we get a lot of relationship-building between Mike and Max, most of which happens with Mike talking and not dancing. There is also stuff about Max’s struggles to be a mother to Zadie and her difficult divorce — and, sorry to Hayek Pinault, but I didn’t care about any of that. Zadie, sassy teen, can be a fun balance to the sometimes kooky dreams of Max, and she and Max’s butler (Ayub Khan-Din) have a nice brothers-in-arms sort of friendship, but generally all of that stuff felt a bit like spinning our wheels waiting for dancing, which this movie felt rather light on. There is a cute sequence about halfway through that blends dance and caper, a director Steven Soderbergh specialty, and I wish the movie had done more of that, had more of that energy, lightness and general glee.

Overall, Magic Mike’s Last Dance is an OK amount of fun, a B maybe or a B- when compared to the top-notch “ladies make some noise” delight of Magic Mike XXL, which is a solid B+. And, for the record, This Had Oscar Buzz in general, and this episode in particular, are always an A+.

Rated R for sexual material and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Steven Soderbergh with a screenplay by Reid Carolin, Magic Mike’s Last Dance is an hour and 52 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Warner Bros.

Want more Magic Mike? The original movie is currently streaming on HBO Max, if we’re still calling it that, and is available for rent or purchase. Magic Mike XXL is also streaming on HBO Max and Hulu (where it’s labeled TBS on Demand) and is available for rent or purchase.

This Had Oscar Buzz is available where ever you get your podcasts and is an absolute must for movie nerds, especially during Oscar season.

Pamela Ribon, a one-time Television Without Pity writer, writer on a bunch of TV and movie stuff including Ralph Breaks the Internet and a co-host of the Listen to Sassy podcast (also excellent), is nominated for an Oscar in the animated shorts category for the movie whose title got a little moment when Riz Ahmed read it — starts with My Year of and if you Google it you can probably still find it to watch via Vimeo. Watch it, it’s great! (Decidedly not for kids but great!)

Featured photo: Magic Mike’s Last Dance.

80 for Brady (PG-13)

Four talented actresses deserve better than the bland oatmeal that is 80 for Brady, a Girls Trip-meets-Last Vegas-style comedy.

Longtime buddies and Massachusetts residents Lou (Lily Tomlin), Trish (Jane Fonda), Maura (Rita Moreno) and Betty (Sally Field) have been getting together to watch the Patriots play football for nearly the whole of Tom Brady’s career (the movie takes place in 2017). They stumbled on a game while hanging with Lou after her chemo treatments and have now become such superfans that they even have a pre-game ritual, with everybody needing to sit in a specific spot or do a specific thing (Rita must drink tea, Lou must knock over chips). They love the whole team — Trish is even the successful author of a steamy fan fiction series about Gronkowski — but their particular shining star is Tom Brady, especially to Lou. Lou even hears Tom Brady (playing himself) urging her on when she decides to find a way to get tickets to the quickly forthcoming Super Bowl LI in Houston. When the ladies’ favorite sports show announces a plan to give away a four-pack of tickets, Lou is certain she’s found a way to make her dream happen.

The women make it to Houston, each dealing with her own stuff: Lou seems desperate to make this an experience to remember, Trish fears that she’s about to repeat a pattern of falling in love too fast when she meets ex-football player Dan (Harry Hamlin), Maura is trying to move on after the death of her beloved husband, and Betty’s beloved husband (Bob Balaban) is driving her nuts with his neediness. None of this is terribly well-examined and all the women remain kind of flat — Tomlin and Fonda’s characters more than those of Moreno and Field, who get to be more lively.

The movie’s slate of non-professional actors — Tom Brady, Guy Fieri, Rob Gronkowski — does not lead to a lot of stunning performances (though Guy Fieri gets off a pretty good throwaway joke). But it’s the flatness of the lead performances that is more disappointing. To describe the movie in Guy Fieri terms — he runs a hot wings contest in the movie — 80 for Brady not only never enters Flavortown, it stays on the far outskirts. I’d compare the movie to ketchup when it bills itself as hot sauce but ketchup has vinegar and this bland affair could use a bite of acid. The movie is so mild in its comedy, so restrained in what it lets its four lead actresses do and so shallow in the way it develops the characters’ stories that it feels slow and dragging even though it is only an hour and 38 minutes long. C

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, some drug content and some suggestive references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Kyle Marvin with a screenplay by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, 80 for Brady is an hour and 38 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Paramount Pictures.

Knock at the Cabin (R)

A couple and their daughter are menaced by four strangers and the possibility that they might have to make a terrible choice in the underwhelming thriller Knock at the Cabin from director M. Night Shyamalan.

Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) head to a cabin in rural Pennsylvania for a family getaway. Eric and Andrew are hanging out on the porch when on the other side of the house Wen is approached by Leonard (Dave Bautista). A Dave Bautista-sized man with a Dave Bautista voice, Leonard is nonetheless gentle when talking to Wen about the crickets she’s capturing to put in a jar for study and his desire to be friends with her and her dads. She sees other people appear and makes a run for the house, closing doors behind her and frantically telling her dads to come inside. Leonard and three other people — who we eventually learn are Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint) — come to the door and ask to come in. Eric and Andrew sensibly and politely tell them to buzz off, after which the group smash their way into the cabin.

Eventually, we get to the part you’ve probably seen in the trailers where Leonard explains that the four of them have been tasked by visions and some mysterious force to come and find this family. The family must, as families throughout history have done, make a horrible choice: sacrifice one of the family members or watch as the world ends through a series of plagues and disasters. Eric and Andrew reasonably call BS on this but then, as they decline to make a choice, Leonard turns on the TV to show Eric and Andrew the first series of disaster their unwillingness to participate has unleashed.

This movie reminds me of a rollercoaster, slowly click-click-clicking up toward the top. Except in this case the “top” is a long shallow climb and the down is a half-foot drop.

There are two not-stupid, medium-intriguing questions at play here: Could you sacrifice a beloved family member to save all of the world (and no copping out by one selfless member sacrificing themself)? And, could a group of people be manipulated into believing they are on a quest from God when really they’ve been pushed into a group delusion by the internet?

Both of these little puzzles make for potentially interesting story telling, but the movie doesn’t really dig in to them. Instead Dave Bautista just repeats that “one of the three of you has to sacrifice themself” over and over while we get little glimpses into the life of Eric and Andrew via flashback. Not a lot of character development or personality depth, more just like “here’s the time when they first saw baby Wen at the hospital” or “here’s the song they were listening to on the way to the cabin.” Aside from some basic name-age-occupation facts, we don’t get a lot of personality on the other characters either. Maybe Shyamalan felt like this story was more plot-driven, about the questions raised and the story twists and not about character relationships. And, OK, that’s not a terrible storytelling choice but that means that the twists, thrills and puzzles need to be compellingly presented, and they’re just not here. C+

Rated R for violence and language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan with a screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan and Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman, from the book The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, Knock at the Cabin is and hour and 40 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Universal Studios & Vacation Home Productions.

Featured photo: 80 for Brady.

The women of a rural fundamentalist community must decide to stay or leave in Women Talking, a captivating exercise of storytelling through conversation directed by Sarah Polley and based on the novel by Miriam Toews.

After years of the women of the colony, as they call their settlement, waking up to find themselves bruised and bleeding, the rapists who had been drugging and violently assaulting female community members (ranging in age from little girls to their grandmothers) have been arrested. They are imprisoned in the nearby town and all the men of the colony have gone to bail them out. The leaders have told the women that when the men — rapists included — return, the women must forgive them. The alternative is to be cast out — of the colony, of the religion, of the eternal kingdom of God.

Before the men return, the women all decide to vote on what to do. Their options, as laid out with sketches for these women and girls who have never been allowed to learn to read and write, are to do nothing, to stay and fight or to go. “Do nothing” is a first-round loser but “stay and fight” and “go” are in a dead heat with a smaller committee of women being tasked with discussing the two options and deciding for all the women of the town.

All of the women are angry, a deep full-body anger. Salome (Claire Foy), mother of a 4-year-old girl who had recently been attacked, attempted to kill the accused men and vows that she will finish the job if she stays. Ona (Rooney Mara), pregnant from her attack, has some elaborate ideas about what a post-colony egalitarian community could look like but her ideas sound very pie-in-the-sky to Mariche (Jessie Buckley), who is stuck in an abusive marriage. Mariche is so rage-filled that she’s sort of firing indiscriminately at the other women and girls gathered in the barn, as likely to yell at a woman having a panic attack or wonder about whether really all the accused men are guilty as she is to rail against the injustice of what’s been done to them all.

At the beginning of the movie, a title card describes the story as a product of “female imagination,” which I think you can kind of take how you want in this movie written and directed by a woman based on a book by a woman and performed almost entirely by women — the only two non-female characters with significant roles are August (Ben Whishaw), the school teacher asked to take minutes of the meeting, and Melvin (August Winter), a young trans man who was also attacked. The discussion spreads out to all the edges of dealing with gender violence and with the general oppression under which the women have lived their lives. They come from a place of very strong core faith and an organization of their lives around God and it’s from that point of view that they argue about the right decision, what their duty is in terms of forgiveness, their duty to keep their children safe, their place in the community and what they deserve as humans. They worry about their sons — how do they keep them from becoming these kinds of men. In some ways it is a very stagy discussion and I feel like you have to decide to go with the conceit of what’s happening — what and how these women are arguing, August’s role as meeting note taker, the way we learn everybody’s stories. I could see this movie not working for some people (I read some commentary on Jezebel that seemed to suggest the staginess got in the way of the writer’s really enjoying it). But for me, this sort of bottle-episode thought-experiment worked — and was boosted by some extremely strong acting talent. Not only is Foy absolutely magnetic throughout, Mara gives what could be a drippy character some roundness and humanity. Judith Ivey and Sheila McCarthy, playing the mothers of Ona and Mariche respectively, are also great, showing us how these two people who haven’t been given much can use the tools that they have to fight for themselves and their children. And, for all that it dives in to some awful places, Women Talking is filled with some lovely imagery of the farmland where these women live and shot with faded colors that help to put you in this alternate reality.

Women Talking received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay, both well deserved but I would have added more — a few supporting actress nods, definitely a directing nomination — to that list. A

Rated PG-13 for mature content including sexual assault, bloody images, and some strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Sarah Polley, who also wrote the screenplay from the novel by Miriam Toews,Women Talking is an hour and 44 minutes long and is distributed in theaters by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures.

Featured photo: Women Talking.

A teen uses location services, street cams and Colombian Taskrabbit to search for her mother in Missing, a lightweight thriller.

June (Storm Reid), 18, is on eyeroll-whatever terms with her mother, Grace (Nia Long), as Grace heads from their L.A.-area home to vacation in Colombia with her boyfriend Kevin (Ken Leung). The vacation falls on Father’s Day, a tough time as June’s dad James (Tim Griffin) died when she was little. June is no more interested in Kevin’s awkward beginnings of some discussion about his feelings for her mom than she is in Grace’s blah blah blah about safety. She just wants Grace out the door so her friend Veena (Megan Suri) can come over with a big box full of cheap booze purchased with the money Grace Venmo-ed June “for emergencies.” I guess needing booze for the friends hanging out at your parent-free house for a week, culminating in a rager the night before mom is slated to return, is, like, a hosting emergency. The only oversight June has is a brief visit from Heather (Amy Landecker), her mother’s friend, who seems a little too fond of Kevin.

The Sunday morning Grace is set to arrive, a hungover June wakes up late and rushes to the airport to meet her. She waits — and waits and waits but neither her mother nor Kevin get off the plane. When June calls the hotel in Colombia she is able, with some help from some quick Google translations, to figure out that while Kevin and Grace are no longer there, their suitcases and other items still are. June calls the embassy but finds it closed and the hotel won’t send her the security footage over the internet. Via the Colombian version of Taskrabbit, she hires Javi (Joaquim de Almeida) to go to the hotel to get the footage. He doesn’t find that but does find other clues to where the couple may have gone.

As Missing’s present-day scenes begin, June and her friends are watching Unfiction, a true crime show. Using some of the techniques of that show, Veena and June figure out how to find street footage that might give more information about her mother’s trip and even her relationship with Kevin. Against the advice of Agent Park (Daniel Henney) at the Embassy, who is all “evidence we can use in court,” June worms her way into Kevin’s Gmail account and starts to learn more about her mother’s boyfriend. She also gets access to the location services that give her more clues about where they really went.

Some of the same people involved in this movie were also involved in Searching, a 2018 movie seen almost entirely through a variety of screens (phone, computer, etc.) where John Cho searches for his teen daughter. Though this movie isn’t quite as stuck to screens, we are learning and searching and seeking largely through June’s computer searches and phone calls with occasional news reports and “live” scenes worked in. The movie edits these pieces together in a way that keeps things moving. I wouldn’t say this particular puzzle is super-complicated or all that twisty — there are several twists that the movie drops enough clues on that it feels a little pokey how long it takes June to figure them out. But Reid, who carries the action with her worried face, is a compelling enough lead character that the movie never really feels slow.

Missing maybe makes little nods toward saying something about our constant surveillance, our very unprivate notions of privacy and the true crime industrial complex. But mostly it is a fun enough thriller that moves along at a brisk enough pace. B

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, language, teen drinking and thematic material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Nick Johnson and Will Merrick with a screenplay by Will Merrick & Nick Johnson, Missing is an hour and 51 minutes long and is distributed by Sony.

Featured photo: Missing