LnD Report

The Amateur — A Conversation?

Editors note (L): We had been talking about scrapping the actual writing of this blog and simply video recording our post-movie debrief —which occurs on our ride home. But I’ve been balking since I have enough video editing projects in my life. And I like writing the blog, even though it means, ultimately, that less of the movies we see will get reviewed. On this trip, we had help from GB who suggested that we audio record our rant. I took it a step further, wondering what if we put our 4 minute rant into Google Notebook LM (Language Model aka AI). It turned around a 9 minute podcast with hosts Jean and Raj in about 2 minutes…maybe less! Weirdly, or maybe not so weirdly or maybe just scarily, it understood the context of these comments without any explanation from us. It understood it was a car ride rant right after a movie and went off from there. D did a great job editing this down for time and readability. So enjoy our first ever L&D Report AI generated guest blog entry. Guest contributors always get an L&D Report t-shirt. What size do you think Jean and Raj wear?

Editors note (D): …. starring Rami Malek, Laurence Fishburne, and probably some other people.

Jean: OK, so let’s talk about this idea. Like, how many times can a movie ask you to just ignore logic before you just throw your hands up and say, nope, I’m out?

Raj: Yeah, that’s a great question. And it seems like that’s exactly what happened with the listeners we’re focusing on today.

Jean: Right. We’ve got this really interesting source. It’s basically an informal audio recording. Some folks talking right after seeing a movie called Revenge of the Nerd (L&D had just screened The Amateur)

Raj: And just to be clear, not the 1984 comedy. This is apparently a very different film.

Jean: Oh, definitely. And our whole mission here is to kind of unpack their reactions, figure out why this specific movie just, well, failed to connect with them so badly.

Raj: It’s fascinating because it’s so raw, you know?

Jean: Yeah.

Raj: You’re getting their immediate thoughts unfiltered. It’s a really unique window into that audience experience.

Jean: Absolutely. And one of the first things that jumped out at me from their chat was this idea of a suspension of disbelief budget.

Raj: A budget, huh? Okay.

Jean: Yeah. You only grant a film so many moments where you have to consciously decide to ignore something unbelievable. And for them, with this movie, they felt that budget was just blown completely.

Raj: That makes a lot of sense. We all go into a movie willing to accept certain things, right? Fictional worlds have rules, but there’s a limit.

Jean: Exactly.

Raj: Too many breaks in that believability, too many wait, what, moments, and you just get fatigued. It pulls you right out.

Jean: Yeah, you stop being immersed. They even brought up what they called the Indiana Jones exception.

Raj: Oh, yeah.

Jean: The idea that some movies just seem to get a pass, you know? They can get away with way more unbelievable stuff. Why do you think that is?

Raj: Well, I think with something like Indiana Jones, the film signals its reality level right from the start. It’s heightened. It’s adventure with a capital A.

Jean: OK, so there’s an understanding up front.

Raj: Exactly. An unspoken agreement. Maybe Revenge of the Nerd, this one, either didn’t set its rules clearly or maybe it violated the internal logic it did try to set up. So the unbelievable moments felt jarring, not fun.

Jean: That tracks. Now, another big thing for them was predictability. They felt the plot was just completely obvious. Someone said, you already knew it was going to happen just from the revenge angle.

Raj: Hmm. Predictability. That can definitely be a drag on the experience, can’t it?

Jean: You think so. How much does that lack of surprise really matter?

Raj: Well, a lot of the fun of watching a movie is discovery, right? Finding out what happens next, if you feel like you’re always five steps ahead.

Jean: Yeah, it takes the wind out of its sails.

Raj: Right. You lose those potential aha moments they mentioned wanting. You become more of an observer than like an active participant in the story. It’s a real challenge, especially in genre films, to use familiar ideas but still make them feel fresh.

Jean: Keep you guessing somehow.

Raj: Exactly. You need that balance.

Jean: And speaking of not being invested, they really hammered the pacing, especially Act One. Act One took so long, someone said. Oof.

Raj: A slow start is tough. Yeah.

Jean: They even joked about getting confused, thinking maybe they were watching The Accountant instead at first. Which, I mean, that tells you how little it grabbed them early on.

Raj: Yeah, that first act is so crucial. It’s where the film’s supposed to, you know, set the tone, introduce who matters, what the stakes are, basically give you a reason to care.

Jean: To stick around.

Raj: Precisely. If it drags, you start checking your watch, you get restless, you lose that initial buy-in, even if things pick up later. It needs to build momentum, make a promise that the journey’s worth it.

Jean: And it sounds like, for these viewers, that promise felt pretty empty. They actually pointed to a specific moment where they felt it all just went downhill.

Raj: Oh, really? What was that?

Jean: It was when the main character, after blackmailing someone, apparently just decides, OK, now I’m going to go kill them myself.

Raj: Oh, OK. That’s a shift.

Jean: Yeah, their reaction was basically, that’s totally unbelievable. It’s amazing how one plot point can just shatter everything for a viewer.

Raj: It really speaks to character motivation, doesn’t it? And, like, logical progression. Even in a wild story, you expect characters to act in ways that make some kind of sense for them.

Jean: Right, based on who they are, what’s happening.

Raj: Yeah. And that sudden jump from blackmail to personal execution, it sounds like it felt completely unearned or illogical to them. And boom, there goes that fragile connection to the story’s reality.

Jean: Snapped just like that. They also seem to go in expecting something… Different, like maybe more of an action movie.

Raj: Ah, genre expectations.

Jean: Yeah, they felt this wasn’t really it. And the comparison they used was pretty brutal. A poor man’s Enemy of the State.

Raj: Ouch. OK, that’s telling. Enemy of the State suggests they were geared up for a certain kind of thriller, you know, tech, conspiracy, maybe some slick action.

Jean: Right.

Raj: And calling this a poor man’s version implies it just didn’t deliver on that level. Quality, pacing, maybe the thrills just weren’t there compared to what they expected. It really shows how important it is for a film’s marketing or even just its basic premise to line up with the actual movie.

Jean: Manage expectations, basically.

Raj: At least meet the expectations you set up.

Jean: Then there was, well, the ghost of the wife show, as they put it.

Raj: The what now?

Jean: Yeah. Apparently, a subplot involving the protagonist’s dead wife appearing. Their reaction was just universally negative. Pointless. Nobody bought it.

Raj: Oh dear. That sounds like a subplot that did not land.

Jean: Not even close, it seems. What happens when something like that, intended maybe for emotion, just falls flat?

Raj: It could be really detrimental. If a subplot feels forced or unbelievable or just unnecessary, it distracts from the main plot. Instead of adding depth, it just muddies the water.

Jean: Makes it feel cluttered.

Raj: Exactly. Or worse, unintentionally funny or just awkward. Sounds like this ghost wave thing felt like a total misstep that pulled them further out of the story.

Jean: Despite tearing it down pretty hard, they actually had ideas for how it could have been better.

Raj: Oh, like what?

Jean: Well, shorter runtime for one, maybe even cut most of Act One, a simpler plot, fewer bad guys maybe, and a more believable escape for the villains.

Raj: Okay, streamlining it.

Jean: Yeah, they specifically called out a very public kidnapping scene as being so unbelievable it sounds like they just wanted something tighter, more focused.

Raj: That makes sense. Taken together, their suggestions point towards wanting a story that was just more plausible within its own context. Faster pace, clearer conflict, and events that didn’t constantly strain credulity. That kidnapping scene sounds like a real breaking point for them.

Jean: A bridge too far. And maybe the biggest issue, which came up near the end of their chat, was the protagonist himself.

Raj: What about him?

Jean: They just couldn’t connect. Someone said flat out, you have to sympathize or empathize with the protagonist. And here, there was nothing really redeeming about him at all.

Raj: Wow. That’s tough for a film to overcome.

Jean: Isn’t it? How crucial is that connection, really? Do you have to like the main character?

Raj: I mean, not always.

Jean: Yeah.

Raj: But you need something to hold on to. Empathy, understanding, fascination, even. If you find the central character completely off-putting or unrelatable…

Jean: Why should you care what happens?

Raj: Exactly. It creates this huge emotional distance. It’s hard to get invested in the journey if you have no connection to the person taking it. I bet a lot of you listening have felt that, where you just can’t find anything to latch on to with the main character.

Jean: And it wasn’t just him. They pointed out they knew almost nothing about the wife he was supposedly avenging.

Raj: The ghost wife.

Jean: Well, the wife before she was a ghost, presumably. The only detail they could recall was that she goes to conferences for work.

Raj: Goes to conferences. That’s it.

Jean: Apparently, it just highlights how underdeveloped things felt. If even the core motivation, the wife’s significance, feels vague or underdeveloped.

Raj: It makes the stakes feel really low, doesn’t it? Why is he going through all this? If her character is just a cipher defined by professional conference attendance?

Jean: Yeah, it feels almost absurd.

Raj: It makes it hard to buy into the emotional core of the story. Those little details, or lack thereof, they add up.

Jean: So summing it all up, their final take was pretty scathing. Worst movie since Mother, one person said. Another thought it was definitely one of the worst of all time.

Raj: Pretty definitive judgments there.

Jean: Yeah. It really brings us back to where we started, doesn’t it? The whole deep dive was about why it failed, and it seems it was a failure on multiple levels for these viewers. Believability, pacing, plot logic, character connection.

Raj: And connecting this back for everyone listening, thinking about valuable insights, this conversation really highlights how vital that narrative contract is.

Jean: The unspoken agreement.

Raj: Exactly. Audiences need consistency. They need believable motivations, even in fiction. You push that too far, ask for too many leaps, make characters act nonsensically, you risk losing people completely, like these viewers were.

Raj: It’s a fragile thing, that suspension of disbelief.

Jean: Very fragile.

Raj: So maybe a final thought for you to chew on. What’s the movie that tested your limits the most? Was there one specific moment, one plot point, one character choice that just made you mentally check out and say, nope, not buying it?

Raj: And thinking about that, what does it tell us about that unspoken relationship, that delicate dance between the storyteller and the audience?

L&D Early Summer Report

The Materialists *** I think you will enjoy going to this movie and talking about it with your friends. I don’t think this is a terribly good movie, but it does have a lot to say about life in the Big City, much of which is probably true. Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a professional matchmaker for Manhattanite-types that can afford professional matchmaking services. Harry (Pedro Pascal) is a zillionaire “unicorn” (a perfect match for pretty much any female looking) and John (Chris Evans) is a bumbling idiot from Lucy’s past. There is a lot of “math” in this movie — for men the key addends are height and income, for women being young and rail thin (say, BMI < 20, not ≤ 20). The movie is billed as a rom-com, but I didn’t find it terribly funny (though there were several amusing sight gags). Does that make it a drama? There is definitely a meditation on how financial resources — or the lack thereof — shape life’s possibilities, especially in New York. There are some interesting exchanges and conversations throughout, but some baffling plot elements that are worth at least one * off.

The Phoenician Scheme *** Wes Anderson’s latest features Benicio del Toro as an industrialist and international man of mystery, Mia Threapleton as his daughter and would-be heir (or perhaps his heir and would-be daughter, tough to say), and with Michael Cera as the traveling secretary, Bjorn. The cast is also littered with supersars, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, and, of course, Bill Murray. Unfortunately, there aren’t many writers that can support that kind of cast, and this is no exception. I saw this a few weeks ago and couldn’t tell you the main takeaway from the movie, though I can recount a half dozen amusing moments and scenes. As per always, Anderson makes it clear who is directing with the set pieces and the props and the deliberate, sharp color schemes. If you are an Anderson fan, this one is a no brainer. If I was in the market to re-watch an Anderson movie, this one would be at least five or six deep in the queue.

Bride Hard ½* Ostensibly a Die Hard spoof set at a ritzy wedding, this one falls flatter than Hans Gruber from the top floor of the Nakatomi Plaza. Within the first minute of watching I sensed I was in for a long evening. Rebel Wilson in the lead has a couple of moments (using curling irons as nunchucks gave us a moment), but what appears to be a pretty talented cast (Wilson, Anna Chumsky, Da’Vine Joy Randolph) wasn’t enough to overcome a bad script and lazy writing. L liked it quite a bit more than I did, and my estimated rating for him is *½.

F1 ***, ***½ if you see it on the big, big screen. This is a summer action film, big stars (Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem), loud music, rumbling cars, some reasonably strong plot lines. Not that strong, though. Mostly, but not entirely, predictable. If you are looking for two hours of extraordinary film production from Daytona to Budapest to Belgium to Abu Dhabi and back again to Baja, then this one is a good choice.

The Brutalist

The Americans Dream?

Listen to me. Everything we see that is ugly- stupid, cruel, and ugly. Everything is your fault…

But especially the ugly.

That is the best punch line of The Brutalist, Director Brady Corbet’s epic exploration of the Affluent Society. It is also, arguably, the thesis of the film.

I loved watching this film on the very big Marcus screen. People often say this about movies shot in Montana or Australia, big landscapes, blue skies, astonishing weather fronts, that sort of thing. Remarkably in The Brutalist, many of these landscape views are scratchy stock film from the ’50s heralding the post-WWII industrial boom. The stock film is often co-narrated by the guy from the school movies of your childhood, and backed by the gasp of an accordion, or some pulsing, syncopated beats.

Meanwhile, much of the main action is shot with what is — gosh, I don’t know, where is L when you need him? — maybe a hand-held camera? The effect is this disorienting and sometimes suffocating intimacy that pervades the movie. There were times where I swear I could see two sets of eyes on characters bouncing up and down in their cars. But it seems like it wouldn’t work as well on a television.

Anyhow, this is a very long movie, clocking in at over 200 minutes, so hunker down. About 15 minutes in, the cacophony of visual and aural and intellectual stimulation was so overwhelming that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to process and put it all together in real time. So the four-hour theater experience, including a 15-minute intermission, was not one of your relax-at-the-movie experiences.

And the film takes on the Big, Big issues, the Holocaust, the camps (the main characters are survivors), remorseless capitalism, immigration, assimilation, covert and overt anti-Semitism, and, perhaps least of all, the place of art and architecture in the emergent industrial age.

The main character, protagonist, possible hero, and subject of the movie is László Tóth (Adrien Brody), the brutalist himself. His journey is Brady Corbet’s characterization of America.

Tóth makes it to America in the opening scene and the first outdoor American shot in the film is an upside-down Statue of Liberty. (Could this possibly be a metaphor of some sort?). His first stop is the City of Brotherly Love to live with and work for his cousin, Atilla (Alessandro Nivola). Atilla is the proprietor of a small furniture business and has reimagined himself as an American Catholic named Miller! More foreshadowing here as the cousins converse about what is expected in America, what it takes to be accepted in America.

Tóth isn’t impressed. He doesn’t seem like the compromising type, and certainly not one to compromise his vision for the sake of bean counters or pencil pushers. Yet, he is also pragragmatic about some of the ends to get to his means, particularly with respect to the use of abundant and inexpensive concrete! And so away we go.

Much of the movie involves Tóth’s relationship with his new patron, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). These patron-artist relationships are always a dicey and touchy area for the artist. Who is paying and what exactly are they paying for? What if they want you to comprimise? What if they delegate oversight to some penny-pinching philistine? But Van Buren’s real role is that of the industrialist archetype. He represents the post-war economic and construction boom that’s helping Pennsylvania and the United States into the modern age.

Van Buren’s son, Harry Lee (Joe Alwyn), also features prominently for plot-related reasons, but ultimately he represents the financiers. At one point László asks him, “how does that work exactly? The company paying themselves to finance?”

As it says on our masthead, to ask the question is to answer it.

So the politics of the movie aren’t altogether complicated, but László’s relationships with his wife and niece certainly are. Right off the bus in Philadelphia, Cousin Miller tells László that he has received word that they are alive! So throughout the first few hours of the movie there are repeeated voiceovers back-and-forths between László and Erzsébet in an attempt to get her to the states. I must admit that I don’t watch trailers, so I wasn’t entirely sure that she would ever really make it.

But, spoiler alert, the intermission credits provide a decisive wedding picture that helps secure her immigration visa, so Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and their niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) make their way over to join László at the Van Buren estate. There is a lot going on here in terms of the state of their marriage, the state of their Jewish faith, their places in America, to name a few. There is no easy way to characterize Erzsébet, she understands ambition and ambitions, but she also is reflective and shows gratitude in spots where I’m not sure you would expect it. She is definitely an interesting add and a welcome riposte to Corbet’s otherwise simplistic American caricature.

The other main and recurring character is Gordon (Isaach De Bankolé), who László meets in a food line early on in the movie. Gordon’s role seems to be to provide opportunities for the script to explore László’s character and humanity. He often shows up right as László is responding to a new plot development.

And what of the Brutalism? Huh. I guess I will continue to reflect on that question as I continue to process all of this. My big takeaway is that the movie is a commentary on the economic and cultural response to World War II coming to a close.

I think the acting is splendid, Brody really is great. I’m not sure who else might have pulled this off. Felicity Jones earns her money, too. I also loved Salvatore Sansone as Orazio in the Italy scene –– “dangerous work.” The entire sequence in Italy is just remarkable. There is so much to like.

The verdict. I thought this was a great movie to watch, though it isn’t a great movie. I do recommend you head to see it on the big, big screen if you can. It was loud in there, too! Make a day of it.

A shout out to Dr. B for braving this one with me. He didn’t get up and leave or doze off, so I think he liked it, too.

The Return

I stayed alive for this?!?

The odyssey. Odysseus. Ten years away at the Trojan war, ten years to get back. Past the Cicones, the Lotus Eaters, the Cyclops (“Nobody” tricked him!), the Wind God, Circe’s Island, to Hades and back, the singing Sirens, through Scylla and Charybdis, on to the Isle of the Sun God and to Caylpso’s Island. What a trip!

Ithaca. Queen Penelope raising the son, Telemachus, keeping the many suitors at bay. Famously weaving a funeral shroud by day, covertly undoing it at night. For 20 years! The suitors weren’t the sharpest group.

Setting the stage for the return. Just not setting the stage for The Return.

While Penelope was unwinding, Odysseus found his way to Phaeacia, where he recounts his tales to King Alcinous and the Phaeacians — I actually wrote a college term paper on how this penultimate stop served as a transition from the fantastic back to the more mundane toil of life in Ithaca (not exactly an original thesis, I know). It was the sea-smart Phaeacians that help Odysseus find his way back to Ithaca.

None of this makes it into The Return, unfortunately, especially the part about Odysseus talking a lot. Instead, The Return focuses solely on Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) back in Ithaca to (presumably) reunite with Penelope (Julia Binoche). I say presumably here because Odysseus of The Return is a troubled, broken shell of a man, and not at all in a talking mood. He has misgivings about his time as a warrior and his heroics in the Trojan War. He can’t muster up the courage to confront the suitors and reunite with Penelope. He is seemingly all alone — there is no sign of the goddess, Athena, who has been his #1 fan and protector over the past 20 years. The entire movie, in fact, is a godless affair, and not in a good way!

The movie does capture Odysseus’ renuion with his loyal dog, Argos. My recollection is that Odysseus passes by on his way back to the palace and Argos looks up from the dung heap, notes his master’s presence, wags his tail, and passes on from this life. The Return doesn’t let him off that easy, instead extending into several minutes of pointlessness before finally letting Argos go. Even so, on behalf of L&D, I will say we wish we would have checked out of the theater when Argos passed on.

Revisionist Odyssey didn’t work for us. If you are looking for action, drama, intrigue, tension, emotion, suspense, you best look elsewhere. This is one of the worst viewing experiences in the L&D canon.

Gladiiator

Is that Siskel or Ebert?

Did you notice the title has the Roman numeral II in the middle of it? Indeed, that is about the most subtle part of the Gladiator remake. This is the second Ridley Scott project in recent memory — Napoleon being the other one — where it seems like it would have worked better as an eight-to-ten part Max or Netflix series. But instead we get sloppy storytelling that sets up a variety of spectacular visual sequences.

If you are familiar with Gladiator, you can see where this movie is going from the length of the Roman empire away. The charasmatic warrior Lucius (Paul Mescal) is captured by legions led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal) and then sold into gladiatorial servitude to the enigmatic Macrinus (Denzel Washington himself!). Lucius turns out to be exceptional at killing man and beast and makes his way to the Colloseum. General Acacius and Macrinus have sketchier motives, I guess we’ll have to see about all of that. And we are introduced to the decadent emporer tandem, Geta and Caracalla. Lucilla (Connie Nielson) shows up and seems concerned about the fate of Rome. Contrived drama. Big finish.

With Gladiator, we all knew Maximus (an in-shape Russell Crowe) was pals with Marcus Aurelius and had been unjustly railroaded. He reluctantly did his killing to get his chance for vengeance, “in this lifetime or the next.” The big difference here is that there is some mystery surrounding who the actual protagonist is — is it the gladiator? General Acacius? Denzel? Lucilla? The fratelli imperatori?

The bad news is that if you haven’t seen Gladiator, it might be a little difficult to follow along. The good news is that it doesn’t really matter. This movie is the battlefield and the Roman Circus. Ridley Scott gives us a naval assault and a great siege to open the movie. He gives us a gladiator mounted on great rhinosoraus (hat tip to a classic Bugs Bunny short for the rhino’s fate). He turns the colleseum to a great, shark-infested naval theater. This is definitely one of those “see it in the theater” type movies because they spent a lot of money making this look spectacular.

That is, if you want to see it at all.

Poor Things

There are two things L&D want you to know about Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, out in theaters just in time to disrupt your holiday season.

First off, it is a masterpiece.

Second, it is not for everybody.

In fact, it might not be for most people. It is full of sordid characters, blasphemy, torture, maiming, dismemberment, houses of ill repute, objectionable animal husbandry, live-action surgery, graphic sex, and a lot of things that could be dealbreakers for you that possibly didn’t even register for me. And in many cases what is implied in the script is even worse than what we actually see on the screen. I admit to some squirming throughout and covering my eyes and wincing at least twice. It is probably not a great holiday movie choice for you and the kids.

On the other hand, the production values are extraordinary, at least three movie stars are at their best (or better), and the story is cerebral in more ways than you can count on one hand.

The movie begins with an in-color shot of Emma Stone taking a nosedive off a bridge and into the drink. What follows is not a flashback, but does initially revert to black-and-white with Stone awkwardly walking, playing, eating, urinating, etc… in a cognitively primitive state. She is within the confines of the home of a heroically patient yet grotesquely disfigured Dr. Godwin Baxter, played by Appletonian Willem Dafoe (!). “God”, as his inner circle immodestly addresses him, is a pure empiricist — a surgeon or a man-of-science of some sort.

L&D were huge fans of Emma Stone’s performance in The Favourite, another Lanthimos film, so we were expecting good things. But five minutes into this one I was pretty confused as to what was going on, and thought to myself that there is no way Stone’s character can carry this movie. Boy was I way off in that initial assessment. I was also not expecting Mark Ruffalo to show up and attempt to steal the show with a bravado performance. But a bravado performance it is, with his portrayal of the the rakish Duncan Wedderburn.

And then there is Dafoe. For a horribly disfigured guy who is on the front-end of surgical innovation, it is a pretty understated performance. But as we were leaving the theater, we were debating whether this was the best performance of his career. Although the movie does not reveal the backstory on the heavy scars covering his face, we have enough clues to put together the likely source. It becomes more and more heartbreaking as the movie goes along.

So to sum up, a crazy feminist science fiction steampunk storyline, an abundance of edgy content, several great performances, a number of big laughs, and a visually challenging yet gorgeous backdrop.

In short, a masterpiece.

L&D were duped into paying full price for this one, but it was still way over the bar. I wouldn’t be surprised if we catch this one again before it leaves the theaters.

Cocaine Bear

In the not too distant past, L&D headed off to the late Marcus Tuesday screening to take in what was certain to be a memorable event, however it went, and it went exceedingly well.

“How good could a movie called Cocaine Bear be?” you ask.

Well, the L&D mantra of late is “To ask the question is to answer it.” Cocaine Bear is exactly as good as it can be, it’s hard to imagine that it could have been any better. It’s ridiculous, it’s funny, it’s thrilling, it’s gross, it’s surprising, it has star power, it’s remarkable across the board.

To say the movie is based on “true events” is akin to saying The Wizard of Oz is based on true events — indeed, a young woman got caught in a storm and hit her head once. As for the rest, well.

The intertwining plotlines fall somewhere between serviceable and solid. Keri Russell gets top billing as the mom tracking down her cheerfully truant explorer daughter and pal (Matthew Rhys sneaks in, as well). Isiah Whitlock, Jr. has cop buddy detail, he’s the one chasing down the big lead. Margo Martindale puts on a tub of lipstick as the lonely ranger setting a honey trap. There is a smattering of young park thugs who get more than they bargained for in the affair. And it’s Ray Liotta himself as the exasperated crime figure in what was his last major role.

There are a number of laugh out loud moments, though laughter did not seem uniform throughout the theater. The opening scene with the drug runner gleefully tossing bricks of coke out of the plane is surprisingly hilarious. The entire EMT sequence is surprisingly inspired . And the finale featuring Liotta shows some surprising intestinal fortitude.

So big ups from L&D, if you think you might like Cocaine Bear, you should head out and see Cocaine Bear.

Psychotic Bear(s) Alert

In theaters for this coming Tuesday we have a bio of Emily Brontë, the spiritual journey of a Christian hippy, and a pair of psychotic bears (see above). I vetoed the Ant superhero movie — Paul Rudds me the wrong way — and L probably saved us both by vetoing what appears to be a bungling new attempt at Marlowe.

What we have seen hasn’t been that great, either. Here are two blurbs:

80 For Brady **½ This is not a good movie despite its 53 on Metacritic. For $5 you get some great actors (Fonda, Fields, Tomlin, Moreno, and Harry “Clash of the Titans” Hamlin) and a few laffs. There are one or two scenes that are well put together, but it is mostly mush. For the L&D guide to Metacritic scores, see our earlier post on giving free passes to novelty movies and tv-to-theater productions that “fans of the genre will love.” Extra half star for Guy Fieri.

A Man Called Otto ** It was a not a big decision for a Man Called Otto. Let’s just say that L&D agree to disagree on this one. Tom Hanks isn’t a credible grump. And when is the last time it was sunny in Pittburgh during the winter?

The Whale

Too scared to venture out on our own, L&D turns to a guest reviewer from our friend and Reuben expert, Tommy Bergler, soon to be proud owner of the coveted L&D tee!

In these days of escapism, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Baz Luhrmann, and the insane CGI of Avatar, whichever version we are on, Darren Aronofsky brings a different view.

The first film I saw of Aronofsky’s is Pi, and just let’s leave it at his is a special oeuvre, to be savored at the right time and with the right people, and with a certain expectation. His work is not light. It is not flighty. It is not a cream puff of a film, to be swallowed and for the sugar rush to give you a pleasant warm hug all over. Aronofsky flays you. He turns you upside down. He isn’t afraid to dig in.

To truly see how challenging he can be with your vulerabilties, and make you uncomfortable. I noted that when the lights came up on The Whale, the audience I was with, all middle-aged white Brooklynites from Park Slope, Ft Greene, and Dumbo, got up and left and there were a smattering of what I distinctly heard were really uncomfortable laughs.

To say that this was Brendan Fraser’s greatest cinematic performance is an understatement. I remember watching Fraser opposite Pauly Shore back in the 90’s as an unfrozen Cro Magnon specimen in modern day Encino (Encino Man was the title of this great film), and this film shattered all opinions I previously had of Fraser.

The Whale is set in Idaho in the late fall of 2016, when Fraser, who portrays a brilliant though mortally emotionally damaged, kind, and sensitive man named Charlie, who realizes he is quickly dying, and seeks to reconcile with his estranged daughter Ellie, played by Sadie Sink (Stranger Things). Along the way, this ensemble piece, originally written as a play, shows us the relationships Charlie has with his friend Liz (Hon Chau), who is also a nurse, and who is his closest friend, as well as Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a complex young man with some familial estrangement issues.

Look, there are moments in this film when I was desperately uncomfortable and even disgusted. Aronofsky has a talent for challenging the audience. But I was prepared for what I was going to see, and I enjoyed it. My wife, however, was not amused nor entertained. So let me just offer that it’s not necessarily a “date night” movie. The play — yes, it’s a film, but really, it’s a play — takes you on a psychological journey through the valley of despair but rest assured that Aronofsky doesn’t leave you there in that chasm, there is redemption “at the end.” So go see it if you’re interested in taking that journey and see a tour de force performance by the actor previously known for playing Tarzan the Ape Man.

Where the Crawdads Sing

Is that the Metascore?

Where the Crawdads Sing ** I am guessng this is a pretty good book. I saw it on a list of great books for novice mystery readers, possibly because this isn’t a conventional mystery, so I thought I would round up the gang and see it. The biggest mystery of the night turns out not to be the who done it, but rather was that really only two hours and five minutes? Ugh.

I like this movie a little more upon reflection than I liked it watching it. The acting is pretty stellar, I think, and the movie is beautiful. That said, it was painful to sit through. If you are looking for insight above what you might get on the Hallmark channel, you will have to look elsewhere. So with all this had potentially going for it, I am going to lay the blame on the script and the director for not tightening this up. Metascore 47 and should sink from there.