REVIEW: Cocaine Bear

Cocaine Bear is a movie about a bear on cocaine. It is based on a true story. Sorta. In 1985 a botched cocaine run dropped a 75 pound load of cocaine in the Tennessee wilderness and later investigators in neighboring Georgia found a black bear that died after ripping through all the containers of coke. The medical examiner decided to have the animal preserved, and it still exists under the nickname “Pablo Eskobear.” Cocaine Bear takes an amusing but minor incident and turns it into a story that has about as much relationship with the facts as Bohemian Rhapsody has to the history of the band Queen, except that instead of Freddie Mercury running around on Quaaludes, you have a giant bear running berserk on cocaine. I mean, that’s almost as dangerous as a human on cocaine.

The bear in question never got the chance to attack any humans, and the film points out that normally black bears do not. However, in this story there is a combination of stray travelers doing the stupid thing and the contacts of the drug smuggler trying to recoup their loss, all going into the forest and becoming targets. Cocaine Bear is directed by Elizabeth Banks, the actor turned filmmaker who was also behind Pitch Perfect 2. It is also noteworthy as the last role of the late Ray Liotta, the star of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, which had maybe as much profanity as this movie. Well, the level of profanity is probably about right, given that the human characters are being chased by a giant bear on cocaine.

Some reviewers have presented this movie as a land version of Jaws, only played for laughs. Why is it somehow funny when the monster is a bear? Well, it’s a matter of human conditioning. We see animals like fish and insects as alien, and so they are disturbing as horror subjects. Whereas soft, fuzzy animals are cute. Cats, even great cats, are soft, fuzzy animals and therefore attractive. Bears are soft, fuzzy animals. Bears are cute. They are also giant omnivores. So a black bear is a land mammal that is simultaneously terrifying and adorable. Much like Aubrey Plaza.

It is probably a spoiler to say that the movie still has a happy ending for some of its characters. Including the bear. This is another change from the historical fact, because a black bear cannot eat 75 pounds of cocaine and survive, unlike Guns n’ Roses or Republican politicians.

So go see Cocaine Bear. It’s the story of a bear.

On cocaine.

REVIEW: Peacemaker

This Thursday January 13, HBO Max released the limited series Peacemaker, technically based on an obscure DC Comics super-vigilante, but really based on the version of the character played by John Cena in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, carried over into this streaming project that is also produced, written and directed by James Gunn. The show is rated TV-MA (the MA stands for ‘Motherfuckin’ Asshole’).

After barely surviving a duel with Idris Elba’s Bloodsport, Peacemaker is released from the hospital and is under the impression that he is not going to be sent back to police custody, mainly because nobody knows who his ass is. So he takes a cab wearing his bloody and dirty costume because he didn’t have any other clothes, gets home and is then immediately confronted by Amanda Waller’s team, who point out that he’s still got a cortex bomb in his head. This team includes Harcourt and Economos from The Suicide Squad movie as well as Waller’s main liason, ice-in-his-veins merc Clemson Murn, and the new girl, Leota Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) who seems to be just an ordinary clerical worker but turns out to have a deeper connection to Waller than any of them. Peacemaker also has to get re-equipped, and goes to see his Dad, played by Robert Patrick, which is perfect casting right there. Patrick’s character is an archetypical right-wing bigot who still says stuff like “fag” and “nancy boy” and belittles his son apparently because he’s not invulnerable. Which explains both why Peacemaker is as fucked up as he is and why he’s still not that fucked up.

There are two complications in this, however: One is Vigilante, a sorta-friend of Peacemaker’s who is based on another gun-toting dark “hero” from the late 80s-early 90s who’s that much more embarrassing than Peacemaker. The other is the team’s involvement in Project Butterfly, which among other things is meant to take out paranormals. Except that Peacemaker sleeps with this one girl over their shared taste in ’80s metal and hair, and at her place she almost kills him with her super-strength and speed. He gets knocked into the parking lot and grabs his helmet from his car and activates the “sonic boom” feature, which toasts most of the parking lot and turns the girl into a Jackson Pollock painting. At which point, Peacemaker just stares and goes “What the fuck??”
You will also be saying that if you watch Peacemaker. A lot.

Peacemaker starts off by making it clear what everybody else thinks of John Cena’s character: “What a douchebag.” The thing is, John Cena is just SO GOOD at playing a douche. In his supreme oblivious entitlement, Cena’s character is only now starting to ponder matters like “Maybe killing people isn’t always the best way to solve problems” or “Maybe my Dad is an even bigger racist than I thought”. As a result, Peacemaker the series is like a giant recurring meme of “Am I The Asshole?” in which the answer is always “YES!”

Peacemaker: You will believe an eagle can fly.

REVIEW: Chrisley Knows Best

At work, the TV nearest to my desk is usually set to USA Network, but today, instead of doing their usual NCIS marathon, USA is doing a marathon of one of their original programs, a “reality” TV show called Chrisley Knows Best, about Todd Chrisley, a Nashville-by-way-of-Atlanta real estate developer and his family. So I had this thing on the screen most of the day and got to look at it off and on.

This show has completely altered my perception of reality. I mean, I saw the last week of Twin Peaks: The Return, but this shit is fucked up.

First, this has to be the whitest show I have ever seen. And I remember The Brady Bunch. I mean, I could walk up to the TV set and actually smell the mayonnaise and imperialism.

Secondly, this family has to be the gayest bunch of straight people I’ve seen since Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin. Maybe that’s not the right term. I can believe that Todd and his elder son are sincerely heterosexual, if only because they’re both raised to believe that running a family within a Christian marriage is a high priority. But when you wear hot pink T-shirts to bed, call women “sister” and chaperone your 77-year old mom when she goes on dates, there’s a word for this attitude. And that word is:

GAY.

You might think I exaggerate, but I was really convinced with the episode where Todd’s mom, wife and daughter go to a small club to play “Drag Queen Bingo” while Todd and his friend go bowling, but then Todd and his friend crash the club IN drag, and Todd is a better drag queen than anybody else in the room.

Then there was the episode where Todd’s daughter Savannah, a full-time beauty pageant contestant, had already won Miss Teen Tennessee and was thus eligible to compete in Miss Teen USA, so the family accompanied her to the national pageant in Las Vegas, which meant that the natural tackiness of the city threatened to reach critical mass.

And I know that these shows all have some recurring moment to wrap things up, but even considering that this guy is enough of a control freak to put security cameras in the loft he bought for said daughter, are we supposed to believe that he would let a camera crew in his bedroom every night so that the kids can talk to him before he and the wife go to bed?

Further proof, as if it were needed, that the phrase “reality TV” is a bigger oxymoron than “pregnant virgin.”

But as it turns out, this marathon is a promo for tonight. Not only does Chrisley Knows Best start its new season on USA tonight, it is being shown back to back with a new program, According to Chrisley, which is basically Todd Chrisley doing an evening talk show.

I am not sure I am able to deal with that concept yet.