This ‘Bear' didn't gnaw on my funny bone

   Braving snow and extreme cold, I went to a preview screening of Cocaine Bear. I didn’t expect a must-see movie but I was curious to learn what filmmakers might do with a story based on an oddball report from the 1980s.

   In 1985, a drug smuggler leaped from a plane after dumping much of the cocaine he was transporting. The poor man's parachute didn’t open, the smuggler died, and the cocaine landed in a Georgia forest. A bear ingested some of the cocaine. Eventually, it was found dead, too.

   I had never head the story before reading about the movie inspired by this long-ago incident but two things immediately struck me. Both the 1980s and cocaine jokes are culturally passé, a dated backdrop for a contemporary story.

    The movie’s trailer seemed to suggest that the filmmakers were trying for a blend of horror and comedy, mixing jump scares, gory gags, and goofy characters, nothing to be taken seriously. 

   That’s pretty much what the filmmakers achieve in a strained attempt to make something out of the movie’s weird hook.

   Director Elizabeth Banks concentrates the story in Georgia's Chattahochee-Oconee  National Forest where a variety of folks embark on different searches -- all while trying to avoid turning into bear food.

   -- A mom (Keri Russell) searches for her teenage daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and her daughter’s pal (Christian Convery). 

    -- A detective (Isiah Whitlock Jr.)  tries to track down drug smugglers. 

    -- And some lame drug dealers (Alden Ehrenreich and O'Shea Jackson Jr.) seek to recover the product they hoped to sell. 

   -- In his final screen appearance, Ray Liotta plays the father of one of the drug dealers, a two-bit drug lord with little regard for human or animal life.

   -- Margo Martindale shows up as a horny park ranger. 

   I'm omitting some of the cast but it hardly matters because many of the movie’s humans wind up in pieces anyway. A severed leg here. A head there. Entrails streaming from torsos. You get the idea.

   Of course, a CGI bear terrorizes everyone with its claws, jaws, bear slobber, and insatiable appetite for increasing quantities of cocaine.  

   Banks can’t get much beyond the novel allure of the movie’s title, and Cocaine Bear, at least for me, didn't whip up enough scares or laughs to satisfy any initial curiosity.

   

   

Puppets, profanity and a shortage of movie

Muppet-like puppets go crude in Happytime Murders.

If you've ever had a desire to see Muppet-like puppets talk dirty, you may find a few laughs in The Happytime Murders, a production of Henson Alternative and director Brian Henson (son of the late Jim Henson). The Happytime Murders quickly reveals itself as a kind of crude Judd Apatow wannabe, a comic helping of noir that's trying way too hard to wring laughs from the incongruity between puppets and profanity. Set in a fantasy version of LA, where puppets and humans live in uneasy proximity, the story centers on former LAPD puppet detective Phil Philips (Bill Barretta). Early on, Phil, now working as a private investigator, takes a case brought to him by a ludicrously oversexed blonde puppet (Dorien Davies). The movie centers on Phil's efforts to discover who's bumping off the cast of a defunct puppet TV show -- The Happytime Gang. With the show about to go into syndication, there's money at stake. Oddly, the best work in the movie comes from the human cast. As an LAPD detective who once served as Phil's partner, Melissa McCarthy brings snap to the snide insults she trades with Phil. Maya Rudolph has an equally nice turn as Bubbles, Phil's secretary. Elizabeth Banks turns up as the only human member of the Happytime Gang cast. A major sight gag involves puppet sex and prolonged ejaculation, which should give you a clue about the level of humor. What's missing? A level of sophistication that might have turned Happytime into something more worthy. As it stands, watching the cotton innards blasted out of puppet murder victims doesn't exactly serve as wry commentary on movie violence. Look, there's nothing much to say about Happytime Murders other than to tell you that there are a couple of laughs and not much else to fill a 90-minute running time. If you go, stay for the end credits, which show how the movie's puppets were integrated into a human world.

'Hunger Games' finale only half way there

A franchise inches toward its conclusion.

The decision to split the finale of The Hunger Games series into two parts leaves fans with little choice but to queue up for the penultimate offering, even if it's a bit of a placeholder.

In general, I've found the series to be reasonably good, an entertaining addition to the world of big-screen YA fiction that spills over to a broader audience.

Two previous movies have reinforced the notion that the story's main character -- Katniss Everdeen -- is indefatigable, rebellious and self-sacrificing.

Fair to say, too, that the gifted Jennifer Lawrence has made Katniss her own. At times, she even looks younger than her 24 years.

Lawrence, of course, returns for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1, a movie that takes a step toward concluding the whole business, though not a giant one. The movie feels like an obligatory -- and somewhat listless -- march toward the real finale, due next year.

Director Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) takes two hours to deliver a slightly unbalanced result: His film manages to be darker and more complex than its predecessors -- a look at issues involving propaganda and war -- but it's also less exciting.

Part 1deposits us in a post-games world in which the ruling Capitol is being threatened by rebels and in which many of the districts of the great empire have been reduced to rubble. The high-stakes drama that the games themselves imposed on previous movies has gone missing.

Although severely traumatized from the last episode, Katniss is asked to emerge again as Mockingjay, a much-admired warrior. She's supposed to provide inspiration for weary revolutionaries who are prone to intimidation by the imperious and markedly evil President Snow, played by Donald Sutherland with all the soft-spoken, sinister intent he can muster.

Burdened by doubt, Katniss is distraught that her friend and love interest (Josh Hutcherson's Peeta) is being held prisoner in The Capitol.

Worse yet, Peeta allows himself to be used. He's making TV spots encouraging the rebels to seek peace; i.e., to submit to the Capitol's exploitative authority.

The supporting cast is minimized in this episode. Philip Seymour Hoffman's Plutarch Heavensbee devises an ad campaign to boost rebel morale, and Julianne Moore's President Alma Coin makes stern speeches to the populace of District 13, an underground redoubt where even the Capitol's bombs are ineffective. As Haymitch Abernathy, a briefly seen Woody Harrelson seems to shown up between other jobs.

Even Elizabeth Banks' lively and pretentious Effie Trinket seems subdued in this most despairing of all the Hunger Games movies. Liam Hemsworth's Gale is around to advance the plot.

Although Part 1 ends in anguish, it spends too much time allowing Katniss to wander across the dystopian wreckage in this final chapter of author Suzanne Collins' much-read trilogy. Katniss isn't even a prime mover in the movie's last bit of action.

I wouldn't say that Part 1 has done irrevocable damage to the franchise, but it doesn't really satisfy. Like exhausted baseball fans, we're left to console ourselves with a familiar refrain: Wait until next year.

We wait. We hope.

More (and better) Hunger Games

The series continues with a strong second helping.

At the conclusion of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, I felt as if I'd been watching an old-fashioned serial -- only one that had been playing for two hours and 26 minutes. Even at this excessive length, the second big-screen adaptation of novelist Suzanne Collins's popular series, left me wanting more.

Much of the credit for this goes to Jennifer Lawrence , the fine actress who gives Catching Fire its conscience and its heart.

Moreover, the movie's visual environment -- skillfully created by director Francis Lawrence and a capable effects team -- enhances what amounts to an upgraded second helping of a franchise that's gaining both momentum and seriousness as it moves toward its finale.

Lawrence (the director) has a distinct advantage over his predecessor, director Gary Ross. Because he doesn't need to establish the world in which the action takes place, Lawrence is free to advance the story, and he wastes no time belaboring the obvious: The Hunger Games that define the movie have a disturbing contemporary relevance, reality TV carried to perverse extremes.

This edition finds Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen as haunted as she is determined: In the last installment Katniss killed to survive: She now suffers the burdens of post traumatic stress disorder and lingering guilt.

The twist in the story finds Katniss and Josh Hutcherson's Peeta thrown back into competition as part of a ploy by the evil Capitol to extinguish any flames of rebellion that might be sparking in the various districts into which the country of Panem has been divided.

This particular competition -- staged to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Capitol's victory over an earlier rebellion -- pits previous Hunger Games winners against one another in what promises to be an even more brutal fight to the death. There's only one winner in a Hunger Games competition; i.e., one survivor.

There's a hitch in the plan, though. This time, combatants are much more likely to ally with one another because they all feel betrayed. Victories in earlier editions of the Hunger Games were supposed to guarantee the winners and their families lives of peaceful ease. The Capitol has reneged on its promise.

It doesn't take much familiarity with the Collins's novel to know that currents of rebellion flicker beneath the fascistic, authoritarian order that the Capitol ruthlessly enforces. Public floggings and arbitrary punishments makes us root for revolution.

The returning cast includes Donald Sutherland as President Snow, a man whose cunning is as thorough as his crisp enunciation. Liam Hemsworth returns as Gale, Katniss's old flame. Katniss's heart may belong to Gale, but she's forced into a phony romance with Peeta -- mostly to amuse the ever-observant powers-that-be in the Capitol. Will the sham become real?

Woody Harrelson reprises his role as Haymitch, an older former Hunger Games winner. Elizabeth Banks returns as Effie Trinket, the big-haired fashionista who presides over the public image of Katniss and Peeta. Lenny Kravitz is back as Cinna, Katniss's super-creative costumer; and Stanley Tucci again turns up as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Games broadcast whose smile is as big as a billboard. A little of Tucci's over-the-top, parodic take on game show hosts goes a long way, even when used judiciously, as it is here.

The movie benefits from the addition of a few new characters: Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a game designer and master schemer, becomes the brains behind President Snow's malignant schemes. Plutarch has been charged with designing this edition's electronically controlled Hunger Game: It's called The Quarter Quell and includes poisonous fog, vicious baboons, swooping birds and a storm surge.

Also joining the fray are Jeffrey Wright, as a technically savvy warrior, and Sam Claffin, as an arrogant combatant, who turns out to be less selfish than we initially anticipate. Jena Malone has a nice turn as a Hunger Games participant who makes no attempt to hide her fury at having been drawn back into combat.

From the outset, the movie's effects team has ample opportunity to impress -- in the sleek imperial Capitol, on speeding trains and in decaying District 12, home to Katniss and Peeta, and, of course, in the action-packed games. (Oddly, the games might be the movie's least interesting achievement.)

The movie builds to a climax that neatly sets the stage for the final chapter, Mockingjay, which is scheduled to be released in two installments next year.

Unlike some franchises, Catching Fire isn't afraid to put some breathing space between its action set pieces. And this time, the movie seems more serious about immersing us in a class-divided society in which the misfortunes of the impoverished many support the decadence of the privileged few.

'People Like Us' -- or are they?

People Like Us tries hard to mask formulaic thinking, but doesn't entirely succeed.



Sam (Chris Pine), fast-talking businessman, misses his father's funeral after making sure that he doesn't have the necessary identification to board a commercial flight from New York to Los Angeles. It's a quick stroke that immediately establishes People Like Us as a movie about an irresponsible wheeler/dealer who refuses to face the pain in his past.

People Like Us begins in earnest when Sam belatedly lands in Los Angeles with his girlfriend (Olivia Wilde) in tow. The rest of the movie involves the discoveries Sam makes as he lingers in Los Angeles, initially because he wants to avoid an FTC investigation resulting from an ethically dubious barter deal and later because of a relationship he develops with a single mom (Elizabeth Banks) and her 12-year-old son (Michael Hall D'Addario).

As it turns out, Sam's recently departed dad -- a record producer by trade -- left his son nothing but shelves full of vinyl albums and a shaving kit containing $150,000 that Sam's supposed to deliver to a stranger. It's here that the movie finds its hook: The money, we learn, is intended for Banks's Frankie, a half-sister Sam didn't know he had.

The rest of the movie charts Sam's humanization after he meets Frankie, a woman who works at a Los Angeles bar. Sam begins to learn that decency has its rewards.

Now without getting into more detail, let me point out that People Like Us is one of those movies in which the absence of a simple conversation -- presumably one most of us would want to have as soon as we discovered that we had an unknown sibling -- keeps undermining the movie's credibility. Sam won't tell Frankie who he is, which sets up the inevitable march toward to the uber-dramatic moment when he must reveal all.

Granted, the financially pressed Sam has his reasons for not saying anything (he's thinking about keeping the $150,000), but this kind of withheld information constitutes the same sort of hackneyed conceit that has fueled far too many low-grade romcoms. Here, it provides the obstacle for brother/sister reconciliation.

Sam and his mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) seem to have had it easier than Frankie. As a single mom and hard-working waitress, Frankie's always stressed, and to make matters worse, she's dealing with a wise-ass kid who has a knack for getting into trouble.

Unfortunately, the movie's most interesting character -- Sam's departed dad -- is never seen. Sam's father evidently was a major philanderer who was more interested in music than in his family. The relationship between this unseen impresario and Pfeiffer's character might have provided material for a far more original movie than the one director Alex Kurtzman has made. (Kurtzman, by the way, co-wrote the screenplay for the most recent Star Trek movie in which Pine plays Capt. Kirk.)

Despite a strong performance from Banks, who eclipses Pine, People Like Us ultimately comes across as an adequate formula job that tries to mute its predictability: Nothing wrong with a fresh twist on old contrivances, but People Like Us follows its predictable arc to a place where we've been hundreds of times before.

Odds favor big-screen 'Hunger Games'

It's not as good as the book, but The Hunger Games has lots to recommend it.

Movie, good. Book, better.

We’re talking The Hunger Games, one of the more anticipated movies of a year that has yet to produce an entertainment with blockbuster potential. Adapted from the first in a trilogy of novels by Suzanne Collins,The Hunger Games surely will be scrutinized in the way all novels with devoted followings are; i.e., there will be intense interest in whether director Gary Ross (Seabiscuit and Pleasantville) has honored both the letter and the spirit of Collins’s novel.

Burdened by too much exposition and less emotionally resonant than the novel, the big-screen version of The Hunger Games nonetheless is marked by sufficient fear and fervor to push it onto the plus side of the ledger. Just as important, the filmmakers have found an actress (Jennifer Lawrence) who's capable of displaying the mixture of toughness and vulnerability the story demands.

For those unfamiliar with Collins’s work, a brief introduction:

The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence), a 16-year-old living in yet another dystopian future. After an unexplained apocalypse, the country of Panem replaced what we know as North America. The Capitol -- the most advanced part of Panem -- exploits and rules each of Panem’s 12 districts. Katniss hails from District 12, formerly Appalachia and one of the poorest sections of Panem.

Economic exploitation being insufficient torment for the residents of the districts, the Capitol each year stages The Hunger Games, a lethal contest that resembles the TV show Survivor. The name of every district child from the ages of 12 to 18 is put into a national lottery. One boy and one girl from each district are then selected to compete. The 24 competitors -- known as Tributes -- battle to the death. The last remaining Tribute wins. And it’s all on TV, of course.

Katniss, whose father died in a mining accident, has had plenty of time to hone her survival skills. She engages in illegal poaching to feed her emotionally crippled mother and her younger sister, exploring the forbidden forests around District 12 with her pal (and potential boyfriend) Gale (Liam Hemsworth).

The story begins in earnest when Katniss’s sister Prim (Willow Shields) is selected to represent District 12 in The Hunger Games. Katniss immediately volunteers to replace her sister, a substitution allowed by the rules of what otherwise seems an arbitrary game, which is manipulated by high-tech gamesmakers who control the game’s physical environments.

I won’t bother you with additional details except to say that Collins’s book, which consists of Katniss’s first-person account of the games, does a better job when it comes to exposition, probably because everything transpires from Katniss’ highly focused point-of-view.

In order to handle expository chores on screen, Ross is forced outside the arena, where we see the control room where technicians oversee the games. The bearded Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) runs the control room. Look, it's never a good sign when a movie has to stop to explain itself.

In the book, Collins’s propulsive narrative gathers momentum from Katniss’s observations, doubts, craftiness and occasional deliriums. On screen, Katniss’s inner life becomes the responsibility of Lawrence, the young actress who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in Winter’s Bone. Lawrence must suggest with looks and presence what Katniss was able to convey with words in the novel. She gets awfully close, although I have to say that Lawrence wasn't quite as battered, desperate and crafty as the Katniss of my imagination, the one put there by Collins's prose.

Josh Hutcherson plays Peeta Melark, the other competitor from District 12. A baker’s son, Peeta falls for Katniss, a development that gives the movie a bit of romantic spin -- or does it? Can competitors in this deadly game allow themselves to have feelings for one another? Are Peeta’s feelings real or are they part of a strategy related to winning the game?

The movie tries to include most of the events that kept the novel percolating, but shortchanges the more resonant emotions of Collins’s book, particularly those involving Katniss and Rue (Amandla Stenberg). A 12-year-old competitor from an agricultural district, Rue develops a touching relationship with Katniss during the games.

The movie’s adults are mostly well cast. Woody Harrelson plays a watered-down version of the dissolute Haymitch Abernathy, a District 12 competitor who won the 50th Hunger Games and a reluctant mentor to Peeta and Katniss, who have been thrust into the 74th edition of the games. Elizabeth Banks portrays Effie Trinket, the ridiculously pretentious woman appointed to escort Katniss and Peeta to the Capitol. Stanley Tucci shows up as Caesar Flickerman, the host of the Hunger Game TV interviews and a master of faux sincerity. Lenny Kravitz has a nice turn as Cinna, the Capitol resident who’s responsible for helping to shape Katniss’ public image. And Donald Sutherland plays the head of Panem, a cunning and cruel leader who seems to have been inserted mostly in preparation for the next installment.

Ross and cinematographer Tom Stern do a good job creating District 12, a grim, coal-mining area that has been given a look that evokes the Great Depression. But The Hunger Games isn’t exactly coy when it comes to dealing with themes such as the degradations of poverty, as well as exploitative TV, voyeurism, and political oppression. In a way, the movie is another hybrid, a picture that has been crossbred from Survivor, The Truman Show and maybe Lord of the Flies.

Collins’s book seems better paced than the movie, which -- in its quieter moments --falls a little flat, and I’m not sure how much the big-screen version will astonish and captivate those who haven’t read the book.

But Hunger Games is smarter than most fiction aimed at young adults, and it isn’t afraid to explore the dark, bloody terrain of a society that’s willing to amuse itself by brutalizing its children. To the Tributes, the games are a matter of life and death. For everyone else, they’re a TV show.


So a recommendation with only mild reservations. Taking a cue from Katniss’s weapon of choice -- the bow -- I’d say that The Hunger Games definitely hits the target, although it's no bull's eye. And now that the world of Collins’s novels has been established, it should be easier to give us an ever better second helping.

'Man on a Ledge' plunges into mediocrity

A convicted cop makes an unusual ... er ... totally improbable stab at proving his innocence.

If a movie puts a man who's threatening to take the big leap on a ledge some 200 feet above a New York City sidewalk, it’s reasonable to expect that some tension will follow.

In the prosaically titled thriller, Man on Ledge, director Asger Leth does create a bit of tension, but the movie that surrounds the title character is too painfully improbable to keep eyes from rolling.

Instead of the tightly focused picture its title suggests, Man on a Ledge turns out to be an unsatisfying mixture of vertiginous teases, heist-movie ploys and bad cop/good cop moralizing.

Sam Worthington, of Avatar fame, plays Nick Cassidy, the man on the ledge, a former New York City cop who was sent to prison for stealing a valuable diamond.

The screenplay by Pablo F. Fenjves quickly shows us how and why Cassidy wound up on the ledge, where he spends most of the picture.

I won’t burden you with a plot summary, except to say that Cassidy, his brother (Jamie Bell) and his brother’s girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) are involved in a preposterous scheme that’s supposed to prove Cassidy’s innocence.

If you’ve seen even a couple of movies, you’ll quickly be able to separate the bad guys from the good guys, but I’ll give you a rapid rundown of the supporting cast, which includes Elizabeth Banks (as the detective called to talk Cassidy off the ledge); Edward Burns (as a skeptical cop who doesn’t think Banks’ character is up to the job); and Anthony Mackie (as Cassidy’s former partner and purported best friend).

Special mention needs to be made of Ed Harris, who plays David Englander, the real-estate tycoon who owns the building where Cassidy stages his ledge stunt. Englander’s greed and insensitivity are so blatant, they stand out like an overly wide and aggressively garish tie. Getting a bad – i.e., caricatured -- performance from an actor as gifted as Harris takes some doing, but Leth manages it.

Other annoyances crop up: Bell and Rodriguez banter in ways that are neither funny nor believable, and the standard crowd gathers to encourage Cassidy to jump, thus ensuring that a major cliche gets its unruly due.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Kyra Sedgwick, who plays a hard-bitten New York TV reporter. Sedgwick’s Suzie Morales roots for the most lurid and gripping possible story. It didn’t take long for me to begin to share Suzie’s point of view.

So if I was at all tense by the end of this one, it was probably because I was waiting for someone to talk me down from the ledge disbelief.

Staging a jailbreak for love

A husband wants to help his wife escape from prison, but director Paul Haggis can't quite give the movie the credibility and obsessive drive it needs.

An air of unbelievability hangs over The Next Three Days, a thriller that focuses on a community-college professor who attempts to free his wife from prison, where she's serving a life sentence for murder. Having exhausted all legal remedies, Russell Crowe’s John Brennan does what red-blooded American men are expected to do, at least in movies: He takes matters into his own hands. John tries to devise an escape plan for his wife Lara (Elizabeth Banks).

Written and directed by Paul Haggis (Crash and Valley of Elah), The Next Three Days is a loose remake of the 2008 French thriller Anything For Her. The story's origins may explain why so much of this Pittsburgh-based drama feels slightly off, as if something has been lost in translation.

The Next Three Days charts John’s progression from amateur to professional. As an English teacher, he knows virtually nothing about jailbreaks or the criminal world. Much of the movie’s 133-minute running time must, therefore, be devoted to John’s education. He slowly learns how to conduct himself in a seamy new world, no easy task for a teacher who also must take care of his six-year-old son.

An all-too-brief encounter between John and a savvy ex-con (Liam Neeson)adds zest. I found myself wishing that Neeson’s appearance, as an expert on escapes, had amounted to more than a cameo. Extending his role might have given Crowe someone to play off, liberating him from having to carry the picture by himself.

The script makes some effort to test John’s commitment to his wife. At one point, he meets an attractive young mother (Olivia Wilde) at a local playground. Will John yield to temptation and develop a relationship with her?

Haggis tries to maintain a mild air of uncertainty about Lara’s guilt, but John never wavers in his belief. He insists that he knows his wife well enough to be sure that she’s incapable of murder. Sure she’s prone to sudden flashes of anger, but who isn’t?

When the movie's third act rolls around, Haggis generates tension and excitement, and he makes us wonder about the propriety of rooting for someone who's breaking lots of laws -- albeit in an effort to right what he perceives as a monstrous wrong.

But the combination of Crowe and Haggis creates expectations for something more than old-pro efficiency and gloomy drive. Like Crowe's character, the movie feels entirely too dutiful in its execution.