I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for Booze & Reviews! This week we have a look at the Yuletide action flick “Red One” and I’ll tell about a drink that’ll get you in the sspirit of the season!
Listen to “Booze & Reviews” HERE! (Starts at 10:44)
Could there be a Simon & Garfunkle reunion happening? Find out HERE! (Starts at 20:47)
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the Christmas actioner “Red One,” the drama “Magpie” and the stop motion animated “Memoirs of a Snail.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In the new Yuletide action flick “Red One,” when Santa Claus (code name: Red One) is kidnapped twenty-four hours before Christmas, the North Pole’s Head of Security, an ELF “(Extremely Large and Formidable”) named Callum Drift, played by Dwayne Johnson, teams with Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans), hacker and the world’s best tracker, in a dangerous mission to save Christmas. “There are worse ways to go out than saving Santa Claus,” says Jack.
CAST: Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Nick Kroll, Kristofer Hivju, Wesley Kimmel, and J. K. Simmons. Directed by Jake Kasdan.
REVIEW: As Santa’s bodyguard Callum Drift, Dwayne Johnson complains that for the first time ever more people are on the naughty list than the nice list. It’s ironic, then, that as the star of “Red One,” the new high-tech, low-reward holiday movie directed by Jake Kasdan, Johnson’s name belongs at the top of that ignominious list.
A Christmas movie with product placement for the whole family, from Hot Wheels to Bulleit Bourbon, it’s a formulaic action film, with generic CGI battles and Johnson in automaton mode.
Johnson is in his wheelhouse. This is a big family action flick, reminiscent of “Disney’s Jungle Cruise” and “Jumanji: The Next Level.” Difference is, both those movies gave Johnson the chance to exercise his comedy chops as well as his muscle-bound physique. “Red One” sees him as a dour, oversized ELF with resting Grinch face who, when he isn’t barking orders is glaring at the film’s baddies. Despite one slightly amusing size-shifting fight scene, it’s a particularly uninspired performance that should get noticed come Razzie Awards time.
Chris Evan fares slightly better. He shrugs off the Captain America persona to play a Jack, a deadbeat dad, drunk and degenerate gambler. “I’m not a scrupulous person,” he sneers. “Ask anybody.”
Of course, they will learn from one another. Jack will discover how to be good from Callum, while proving to Callum that there is good in everyone, even a “Level Four Naughty Lister.” The movie’s messages of nice triumphing over naughty are the usual holiday fare, hammered home with the subtility of fifty-foot Christmas tree.
Add to that a forgettable villain with very little screen time and even less presence when we do see her and you’re left with a film about the magic of Christmas, with very little magic.
“Red One” is a big, $300 million movie, but, as the season has taught us, not all good things come in big packages.
My review of “Cocaine Bear” is quoted in this article from Screen Rant.
“Before buying a ticket to “Cocaine Bear” ask yourself this question: Am I likely to enjoy a movie called “Cocaine Bear”? I can tell you authoritatively that it is the best stoned bear movie of the year. Admittedly, it is a small field, but if that turns your crank, by all means check it out…” Read the whole thing HERE!
Talk about wildlife.
“Cocaine Bear,” a grisly new hybrid of “Scarface” and “Yogi Bear” starring Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Ray Liotta in his last filmed performance, and now playing in theatres, delivers on the promise of its premise. Like “Snakes on a Plane,” another movie whose entire plot was contained in the title, “Cocaine Bear” lives up to its name. There’s a bear and he is tweaked on the devil dust, but is that enough to get people in theatres, or will audiences just say no?
The movie plays fast-and-loose with the true 1985 story of a 79-kilogram American black bear who, while wandering the Georgia wilderness, stumbled across and ate a discarded duffle bag of cocaine. Later nicknamed Pablo Escobear, in real life the poor unfortunate beast overdosed immediately and spent its afterlife stuffed and on display at a local mall.
Director Elizabeth Banks uses the real-life set up as a kick off for her story. In her retelling, drug smuggler Andrew C. Thornton II (Matthew Rhys), in a bid to avoid police, dumps 40 kilos of cocaine in the forests of Georgia. When the bear finds it and ingests it, instead of keeling over he becomes a character out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, setting off on a bloody, coke fueled rampage through the forest in search of more drugs.
Along the way the Cocaine Bear (one character actually calls him that) gets her paws on a variety of folks, including a concerned mom (Keri Russell), a mob boss (Ray Liotta) and his henchmen (Alden Ehrenreich and Jackson Jr.) and a park ranger (Margo Martindale).
Before buying a ticket to “Cocaine Bear” ask yourself this question: Am I likely to enjoy a movie called “Cocaine Bear”? I can tell you authoritatively that it is the best stoned bear movie of the year. Admittedly, it is a small field, but if that turns your crank, by all means check it out.
If you need convincing, then “Cocaine Bear” may not be for you. On the fence? Read on.
The one-joke premise aside, the movie is a throwback to the slasher films of the 1980s. The gruesome stuff is outlandish, bloody and the kind of thing that you know you shouldn’t be laughing at, but here you are, laughing out loud at the misfortune of others.
Unfortunately, although there is a good vibe between Ehrenreich and Jackson Jr, most other characterization is kept to a bare minimum—many of the characters are essentially sentient slabs of bear food—and the dialogue isn’t nearly as camp or funny as it should be. It feels choppy—there is a good pun to be made here about chopping up lines of cocaine, but I’m too lazy to make it—and the gaps between the action sequences stretch on a bit too long.
However, “Cocaine Bear” has quite a few solid laughs. That makes up for the lack of satire or deeper meaning. This isn’t about anything other than truth in advertising. It’s about a bear and a bunch of cocaine and is only about 90 minutes long. If that appeals, make like the bear and snort it up.
