Matthew Rhys – People Talking

Movie Review – ‘Cocaine Bear’ – “Exit, pursued by a bore”

Oh, boy.

I’m so sorry, Ray.

I’m so sorry that Cocaine Bear is your first big screen posthumous release (although I guess I’m glad it’s not your last?).

And I’m particularly sorry that the movie ends on a title card that says “In Loving Memory of Ray Liotta.”

You deserve so much better…

Anyway, Cocaine Bear, the new “based” “on” “a” “true” “story” feature film (it did make the Times, to be fair; although there aren’t enough quotation marks in the world for this “adaptation”) from writer Jimmy Warden and director Elizabeth Banks (neither of whom I’m eager to see in those roles ever again) is not especially humorous, horrifying, or heartwarming, despite attempting to be all three in a roughly ninety-minute span.

To be fair, I did laugh out loud a few times, so I can’t say that Cocaine Bear is a comedy that never tickled my funny bone, but… I also just saw Munich for the first time the other night, and I’m pretty sure I laughed out loud more during that movie, which, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Munich, but, it is decidedly not a comedy.

Look, making a film is many things, but one very important aspect is making creative choices and committing to them.

This is supposed to be a period piece, right? It’s supposed to take place in 1985?

They got things like the vehicles right, and I guess the music, and, for the most part, the clothes, but none of the characters act like they’re in the 1980s (all the news footage and PSAs in the world can’t convince me otherwise). They just act like characters in a crappy contemporary comedy. You could have moved this story up to 2022 and it would barely (bear-ly?) affect the final product.

And, I’m sorry, but if you can find me a uniform (not undercover) cop in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1985 who ever looked like this… I’ll buy you a delicatessen, in stainless steel!

Another failing, and I can’t pinpoint it specifically, because I don’t know what was in the screenplay nor what scenes were actually shot, but the movie sometimes feels like there was a two-hour version that got cut down with no logic behind the decision-making. Not so much that the film is incomprehensible, but more that, rather than cutting down one particular subplot to reduce the runtime, it seems like they cut pieces from every subplot, leaving the movie feeling more than a little underbaked.

And, finally, I’m always squeamish about criticizing performances, because, by-and-large, actors simply do whatever directors demand of them, and then the editing process can make-or-break performances even more so, but, if the best performance in your movie filled with professional actors comes from a social media star (in the best sequence in the movie, to be honest), that’s probably not a great sign.

Overall, I wouldn’t say I hated Cocaine Bear. Like I said, it did make me laugh a few times, but it’s just such a missed opportunity across the board. It actually could have been really funny, or scary, or heartwarming, or any combination of the three, but, in the end, it’s just a damp squib.

Sorry, Ray.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

P.S.
If you’re looking for an underseen movie with Ray Liotta that’s actually good, I can’t recommend The Iceman highly enough.

Cocaine Bear (2023)
Directed by Elizabeth Banks
Written by Jimmy Warden
Cast: Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr, Alden Ehrenreich, Christian Convery, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Aaron Holliday, J.B. Moore, Leo Hanna, Matthew Rhys, Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Ayoola Smart, Kahyun Kim, Scott Seiss
Soundtrack: Mark Mothersbaugh

Twofer Review – ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ and ‘21 Bridges’ – Imperfectly Average

Directed by Marielle Heller
Written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, based on the 1998 Esquire article “Can You Say… Hero?” by Tom Junod
Cast: Tom Hanks, Matthew Rhys, Chris Cooper, Susan Kelechi Watson, Maryann Plunkett, Enrico Colantoni, Wendy Makkena, Tammy Blanchard, Noah Harpster, Carmen Cusack, Kelley Davis, Christine Lahti, Maddie Corman, Daniel Krell, Jessica Hecht
Soundtrack: Nate Heller

The question on many people’s minds since they first found out about this film is, “How can you make this movie after last year’s documentary, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

The short answer is: you really can’t.

If you haven’t seen the documentary yet, maybe go see this new movie first, and then the documentary will answer almost any other questions you might have.

This isn’t to say A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood doesn’t have any value. Tom Hanks does manage to somewhat capture Fred Rogers’ spirit, even if he doesn’t really look or sound like him, and there are some other solid performances (big ups to Welsh actor Matthew Rhys for continuing to pull off legitimate American accents), but there’s one element of the film that I simultaneously appreciated and was baffled by.

There’s no hint to it in any of the marketing, but the framing device of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is that the movie itself is like an episode of Mister Rogers, so you have travel interludes where Pittsburgh and New York are done up like the miniature neighborhood from the show. While I enjoyed the artistry of this, the problem is that the device is applied inconsistently, and there’s one particular scene in the movie that gave me flashbacks to Welcome to Marwen (which is not a good thing).

The long and short of it is that if you’re looking for a feel-good movie, and you’re open to that experience, then A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood might work for you, I certainly wouldn’t talk you out of seeing it, but if you find it [more than] a little jarring, I’m right there with you.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Directed by Brian Kirk
Written by Adam Mervis (story and screenplay) and Matthew Michael Carnahan (screenplay)
Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Sienna Miller, J.K. Simmons, Stephan James, Taylor Kitsch, Keith David, Alexander Siddig, Louis Cancelmi, Victoria Cartagena, Gary Carr, Morocco Omari, Chris Ghaffari, Dale Pavinski, Christian Isaiah, Sarah Ellen Stephens, Jamie Neumann, Peter Patrikios, John Douglas Thompson, Obi Abili, Andy Truschinski, Darren Lipari, Adriane Lenox
Soundtrack: Henry Jackman & Alex Belcher

The first several [dozen] times I saw the trailer for 21 Bridges, I thought, “That sounds like a great premise for some sort of post-apocalyptic mood piece, but not necessarily a serious cop drama.”

To my surprise, the filmmakers actually made it work.

For much of its runtime, 21 Bridges is a solid, surprisingly grounded piece of entertainment (like a more realistic poliziotteschi).

The trouble comes in the third act, when the story becomes a little too pulpy for its own good (I’d level a similar criticism at The Good Liar, though that one has the excuse of being based on a novel).

Still, I think this might be the best performance I’ve seen from Chadwick Boseman (though I’m largely uninitiated, to be honest), which isn’t totally surprising as 21 Bridges seems to have been something of a passion project for him.

Unfortunately, Sienna Miller’s “New Yawk” accent is a bit of an albatross, and a great-on-paper supporting cast is largely wasted.

Even so, as with A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, I wouldn’t talk you out of seeing it, just don’t go in expecting Heat (or even Heat Jr).

Rating: ★★★☆☆

P.S.
I’m not criticizing anyone, I know movies are tough to make, but I do find it a little funny that the Mister Rogers movie got to shoot on the real NYC Subway whereas the New York crime thriller had to use Philadelphia’s.

Movie Review – ‘The Post’ – Truth and Consequences

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods, Pat Healy, John Rue, Rick Holmes, Philip Casnoff, Jessie Mueller, Stark Sands, Michael Cyril Creighton, Will Denton, Deirdre Lovejoy, Jennifer Dundas, Austyn Johnson, Brent Langdon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Deborah Green, Gary Wilmes, Christopher Innvar, Justin Swain, Kenneth Tigar, David Aaron Baker, Gannon McHale, Dan Bucatinsky, David Costabile, Johanna Day, Annika Boras, Carolyn McCormick, Peter Van Wagner, Angus Hepburn, James Riordan, Kelly AuCoin, Cotter Smith, Ben Livingston, JaQwan J. Kelly, Shaun O’Hagan, Celeste Arias, Sonny Valicenti, Aaron Roman Weiner, Tom Bair, Mark Jacoby, Curzon Dobell, Neal Huff

Soundtrack: John Williams

Before Watergate.
Before Woodward and Bernstein.
There were The Pentagon Papers.
And thus began the rise of The Washington Post to national prominence, and the downfall of the presidency of one Richard Milhous Nixon.

I said this before when I reviewed Bridge of Spies, and I think it bears repeating. It’s become somewhat popular to hate on Steven Spielberg, and I get it (I mean, I’m about as excited to see Ready Player One as I am to get food poisoning, or cancer), but the fact remains, he’s still Steven Spielberg.

I’m not going to tell you that The Post is “Classic Spielberg”, reminiscent of his heyday in the Seventies and Eighties, but it does at least hearken back to his run in the early Aughts, which isn’t so bad (Catch Me If You Can, anyone?).

On its face, The Post isn’t anything particularly special. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, and none of the performances, even from the Oscar winners in the room, are really anything to write home about (though it is fun to see Bob and David in a Spielberg movie together). Yet, somehow, I’m left feeling satisfied, which leads me to conclude that film is greater than the sum of its parts, and I believe that is largely due to that wily old veteran director, Steven Spielberg (and his near-constant collaborator, John Williams; who’s getting up there, kids, so maybe savor this one while we still have them to savor).

For all of his softening and head-scratching decisions over the past fifteen years, the man still knows how to bring a script to life and make it pop, and he still knows where to throw in his signature touches (like those little one-ers you don’t really notice, but your brain does). Was he the absolute best choice to handle this particular material? Maybe not, but they certainly could have done a lot worse.

Speaking of the material, kudos to first-time screenwriter Liz Hannah, who was the initial rolling snowball of this avalanche, and executive producer and writer Josh Singer (who, unsurprisingly, held the same positions on Spotlight), for putting together yet another intricate and no doubt incredibly well-researched period journalism piece (to have a script with roughly fifty real-life people portrayed by credited actors in a two-hour movie just goes to show how deep the dive was). Much like Spotlight (and in contrast to All the President’s Men), The Post works whether you lived though the events or not.

However, I wouldn’t say The Post is all-in-all on the same level as Spotlight, which is to say I don’t think it’s Best Picture material, and the subtext of the film given the current climate is fairly obvious, but still, perhaps for reasons I can’t fully articulate, I have zero issue recommending it.

It’ll make you real depressed about the Vietnam War (but then what doesn’t?), but if you’re a fan of Spielberg, journalism, and/or the First Amendment, The Post‘ll be right up your alley.

Rating: ★★★★☆