Cocaine Bear

2023 - 2 - 24

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Image courtesy of "Collider.com"

The Man-Eating Bear from This '70s Movie Would Destroy Cocaine ... (Collider.com)

The bear from the 1976 horror classic Grizzly doesn't need cocaine to wreck shop!

Grizzly is far from just a cash grab, it's a movie with filmmakers behind it who were determined to make the most fun movie possible. The second victim in the film is a pretty hilarious promise of the entertainment value to come. Font choices are criminally underrated, and in that aspect, Grizzly knocks it out of the park. This works in its own way though, making you want to go hunt this bear down with the gang more than it makes you run and hide from it. Instead, it sounds as though Rickman was recording a scream in a recording booth, and the filmmakers decided to go with one of her warmup takes. The ending of Grizzly is an all-timer. As stated before, the score here is much more rollicking and adventurous than it is eerie. A camper (Kathy Rickman) is swiped across the face by the bear and her head sweeps across the screen in slo-mo, with her scream repeating over... This sucker was made back when everything had to be done in the dirt though, when special effects were like the wild west - if you wanted a grizzly bear on screen, you had to actually get a grizzly bear! Grizzly is the story of a park ranger who is given the task of saving the visitors of his national park from an 18-foot-tall man-eating grizzly bear. If you're trying to pinpoint which film gives you the most bang for your buck with an on-screen beast going berserk on the lives of many, then it's just time to be real - Grizzly comes out on top! You can't go all out and maintain that from the get-go!

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

From Cocaine Bear to Guerrilla Girls: a complete guide to this ... (The Guardian)

Enjoy the exploits of a strung-out ursine or be inspired by street art activists – either way, our critics have you covered for the next seven days.

The latest instalment of Storyville’s eclectic series focuses on the development of sex scenes in Hollywood films. Not when you have to learn the actual physics of space flight to achieve it. Morris and Khan have another kind of relationship: they are a couple. Before JMW Turner painted storms in the Channel, the Dutch Van de Velde family brought sea painting to Britain. And the three lead actors – Arthur Darvill, Anoushka Lucas and Patrick Vaill – knock it out of the park. An epic survey of street art that includes pioneer conceptual artist Gordon Matta-Clark and those political pranksters the Guerrilla Girls as well as a host of graffitists. Featuring a raft of great British and Irish talent, the Montreal mega-festival’s inaugural UK edition looks set to be a comedy extravaganza of the highest order. Drawing loosely on Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves, it is danced by the Royal Ballet, with the great Alessandra Ferri reprising her title role for opening night. After releasing two albums of characterful indie-pop as Eliza Doolittle more than a decade ago, the artist born Eliza Caird has done away with surnames. With future anthems waiting in the wings, expect this enduring hit to go off on this short tour. Parasite’s Song Kang-ho stars as the titular adoption broker, with Bae Doona and Lee Joo-young the detectives on his tail. Featuring Keri Russell and the late Ray Liotta, and directed by Elizabeth Banks, Cocaine Bear is based (yes, really) on true events.

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Image courtesy of "Variety"

Box Office: 'Cocaine Bear' Draws Solid Opening, 'Ant-Man 3' Plummets (Variety)

"Cocaine Bear" is opening ahead of projections, while "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" faces Marvel's biggest second weekend drop ever.

In third place on domestic charts, “Jesus Revolution” is scoring an impressive debut after earning $6.95 million on Friday, a figure that includes $3.3 million in grosses from early access screenings earlier in the week. “Ant-Man and the Wasp” wrapped its 2018 run with $216 million domestically and $622 million worldwide. Even with that head start, second weekend projections for “Quantumania” are landing awfully close to the second weekend of the 2018 entry ($29 million). That would mark an auspicious kick-off for “Cocaine Bear,” which carries a production budget of $35 million. A fun marketing campaign and a killer premise have given the film a strong position, with a debut north of $21 million now in the cards. That places the Universal release ahead of projections heading into the weekend, which had the gory comedy pegged at a debut between $15 million and $17 million.

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Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Nihilistic and crazed, Cocaine Bear is zoological zeitgeist for these ... (The Guardian)

A drug-filled beast and an ennui-prone alligator sum up 21st-century life, but at least Flaco the owl is a positive role model.

I still went on to be the best. He’s now moved to the Bronx (Bronx zoo, to be exact) to counteract gentrification and rediscover his joie de vivre. I was 10 days late and had to be induced because I need the world to give an explicit sign that it wants me. Now imagine the inside of your mouth and all your teeth and entire gullet being coated with it for the next two hours. He’s an alligator, he’s not meant to mind the cold! Whither the jaws, the claws, the screams of terror?

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Image courtesy of "GoodHousekeeping.com"

Is 'Cocaine Bear' a True Story? What to Know About the Events That ... (GoodHousekeeping.com)

The new horror movie 'Cocaine Bear' was recently released in theaters, and it's based on a true story that happened in December 1985 in Blue Ridge, Georgia.

So, it's important to remember that although the flick is inspired by a real-life situation, not all of it is true. In a twist, the police discovered 40 packages of cocaine ripped up in the territory, with each individual piece reportedly holding one kilogram. What's more, officials believed that the cause of death was from eating "several million dollars worth of the cocaine." But contrary to popular belief, the events of Cocaine Bear is based on real-life events. What's more, a group of famous faces show up in it, like Keri Russell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the late Well, one such title is choosing to push the envelope on classic tropes, and that is the recently released Cocaine Bear.

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Image courtesy of "Collider.com"

'Cocaine Bear' Ending Explained: Who Wins in the Battle Between ... (Collider.com)

Stache (Aaron Holliday) and Daveed (O'Shea Jackson, Jr.) Image via Universal. Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Cocaine BearThere ...

The fate of the bear and the lost cocaine is left ambiguous. Another post-credit moment reveals that upon his escape, Stache discovers a duffel bag of cocaine and decides to take it for himself. He accepts that Daveed is his best friend; the pair agrees to take care of Bob’s dog after Reba gives her to them. Bob gets in a standoff with Eddie, Daveed, and Stache, but Syd arrives and kills the older cop, allowing Stache to flee the scene. Peter is brutally dismembered by the bear, and Sari decides to protect Henry while an injured Liz flees to get help. While Daveed is nearly killed, Eddie rescues him in the water, and Sari is able to save his life. After Dee Dee is kidnapped by the bear and taken to its cubs, Henry is discovered by Sari, Liz, and Peter. It’s a film that’s about as straightforward as its title would suggest, as it is in fact about a wild black bear in the 1980s that manages to ingest cocaine and develop a serious addiction. In the film, cocaine is dumped in the mountain to be picked up by Escobar’s crew by an energetic smuggler (Matthew Rhys) who flies over Georgia. Sari goes looking for her daughter Dee Dee, who has skipped school with Henry to go paint a nearby waterfall, and Sari decides to join a scouting mission with Liz and Peter. Unfortunately, the nurse Sari ( [Keri Russell](https://collider.com/tag/keri-russell/)) loses her daughter Dee Dee (Brooklyn Prince) in the woods when she and her friend Henry (Christian Convery) go exploring. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Cocaine Bear.

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Image courtesy of "The Atlantic"

'Cocaine Bear' Is Exactly What It Sounds Like (The Atlantic)

Elizabeth Banks has promised her viewers no more than a bear on drugs, and a bear on drugs is what they get.

But the main event is the cocaine bear, and the meager humans only distract from her might. What that poor creature did before keeling over is a mystery, but Jimmy Warden’s script imagines a bacchanal of carnage around that event, retaining only the location (a national park in Georgia) and the name of the drug runner who caused the incident, Andrew C. The true story of the cocaine bear is relatively mundane—after drug smugglers dropped their latest shipment from Colombia in the woods, a dead black bear was found with some 75 pounds of cocaine in its system, and was eventually stuffed and mounted. If blockbuster-level gore is what you’re after, Cocaine Bear delivers—I was impressed with how gleefully gross Banks gets at times, dropping severed limbs from the sky and strewing plenty of intestines on the ground. This project does not skimp on its main attraction, but it does seem unsure of what to put around it, throwing a variety of hapless characters in the mix and arming them mostly with indifferent comedy in the face of some truly gnarly violence. I’m probably the fool for trying to summon some profundity from these bloodstained reels; Banks has promised her viewers no more than a cocaine bear, and a cocaine bear is what they get, all growly and crazed and rendered with very expensive-looking CGI.

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Image courtesy of "Financial Times"

Cocaine Bear film review — a transcendent power chord of dumbness (Financial Times)

Truth-based tale of an animal on a drug-fuelled rampage is gonzo-horror fun until the buzz wears off.

For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. Compare Standard and Premium Digital For a full comparison of Standard and Premium Digital,

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Review: 'Cocaine Bear,' 100% pure, uncut junk with no high (Hope Standard)

If only this Pablo Escobear of a movie had snorted enough to stay up later and write a better plot.

Set during the Reagan-era “Just Say No” period, “Cocaine Bear” hopes to remark on the demonization of drugs and it also seems to have something to say about how humans misunderstand the balance of nature. “Cocaine Bear” is like a dull butter knife against those two. “Jane,” the opening song, is an homage to ”Wet Hot American Summer,” which Banks co-starred in and had the same Jefferson Starship opening tune. There’s a reference to Pines Mall, which is a little nod to “Back to the Future,” but who really cares? Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden have created a mashup of Quentin Tarantino bloodfests, Sam Raimi’s scare tactics and the Coen brothers’ absurdity. If you think it’s hysterical to see a bear do a bump off a severed leg stump, by all means, the movie theater is this way.

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Image courtesy of "whynow"

Cocaine Bear review | Elizabeth Banks' horror-comedy is an ... (whynow)

Cocaine Bear takes its basic premise from a true story but extends it to exhilarating highs. Read our review of the viral sensation.

Banks and Warden are clearly in on all the jokes of Cocaine Bear; the film begins with a Wikipedia quote after all. Above all, Cocaine Bear is hilarious. A drug smuggler tosses bags of cocaine out of a plane before meeting his maker and the poor bear just happened to come across the coke, eagerly eating some. Let’s be honest; no one buys a ticket to Cocaine Bear expecting a character-driven drama. While the real bear died, Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden were clearly inspired by the incident and created an elaborate set of characters around a bear high on cocaine. Elizabeth Banks’ third film as a director is loosely based on the true story of an American black bear ingesting over 30 kilograms of cocaine, which was dropped off a plane.

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Image courtesy of "The Indian Express"

Cocaine Bear movie review: Who is really on a coke high here? (The Indian Express)

Cocaine Bear movie review: The film's title aims for that zone between the stark reality of drugs and the comedy of a bear falling for it.

Only, remember, “Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes, well, he eats you.” Clearly, the film’s title Cocaine Bear is also aiming for that zone between the stark reality of drugs and the comedy of a bear falling for it. There are a string of characters here whom the reel bear gets to kill, butcher, chomp through and generally terrorise on her coke high — caught in gory detail.

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Image courtesy of "WION"

Cocaine Bear movie review: Savagely funny, this black comedy will ... (WION)

In 1985, in Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, a small plane with a lot of cocaine on board dumped its payload and crashed.

And the movie is indeed exactly what the trailer promises. Keri Russell is a nurse called Sari and a mother whose little daughter plays truant with and escapes on the same day the bear is wreaking havoc in the area. And that is the movie, really. Here, the bear is a 500-pound fiend. It depicts the bear as a 500-pound fiend that turns into a mindless rage monster, killing people in gruesome and hilarious ways. Cocaine Bear, the movie, is said to be based on that incident, which is Hollywoodspeak for 'taking an interesting real incident and running with it'.

Where To Watch 'Cocaine Bear' Free Online Streaming at Home ... (Deccan Herald)

Universal Pictures! Here's options for downloading or watching Cocaine Bear streaming the full movie online for free on 123movies & Reddit,1movies, 9movies, ...

As of now, the only way to watch Cocaine Bear is to head out to a theater when it releases on Friday, Feb. No, Cocaine Bear will not be on HBO Max since it’s not a Warner Bros. That is, unless Cocaine Bear is available online. Is watching Cocaine Bear on Disney Plus, HBO Max, Netflix, or Amazon Prime? Cocaine Bear is an action-packed gory ride based on an incredible true story (though very heavily dramatized here). Is Cocaine Bear 2023 available to stream?

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Image courtesy of "The New Yorker"

“Cocaine Bear” and “The Quiet Girl,” Reviewed. (The New Yorker)

Like “Snakes on a Plane” and “We Bought a Zoo,” Elizabeth Banks's film provides exactly what the title promises. Then what?

As he points out, Cáit “says as much as she needs to say.” The camera constantly takes its cue from her darting gaze; the fact that she notices so much, and talks so little, is, for Seán, a virtue that he understands and shares. (So chronic is Heidi’s yearning for the mountains that she sleepwalks.) The home to which Cáit is sent, in contrast, seems like a genuine haven: a farmhouse owned by Seán (Andrew Bennett) and his wife, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), who takes one look at the new arrival, with her unwashed limbs, and runs her a hot bath. For the bear, I guess, except that C.G.I., despite its wondrous re-creation of flesh and fur, is less adept at pixelating a personality, and there is little here to match the appeal of Baloo, in “The Jungle Book” (1967), who consumed nothing more potent than prickly pear and pawpaw. Near the farm is a well, so clear and so still, like a magical source in a legend, that you can drink from it. Finally, you could recover with “The Quiet Girl,” which, with Oscar night just around the bend, is the last of the contenders to be released. Such was the case with “Snakes on a Plane” (2006), and it’s my forlorn duty to report that “Cocaine Bear” follows suit. It’s as if she were puzzled by her place in the modern world—shades of the dreamy kids in “Close.” (Is this a winking reference to “Little April Shower,” the daintiest scene in “Bambi”?) It’s as if Quentin Tarantino kicked off his career, in the early nineteen-nineties, with a tale of some dogs who visit an actual reservoir. This elemental sequence comes from a 1977 film, scarily titled “Day of the Animals,” and the joy of it is that the battling man is played by Leslie Nielsen, and that the movie is not—repeat, not—intended as a comedy. Why does the whole cast, including the kids, swear so freely and so loudly (“We’re fucked,” Henry cries), if not to advertise the amazingness of the main plot? As with “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (1993) and “We Bought a Zoo” (2011), “Cocaine Bear” is explained by its title. To that end, his son, Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), and a henchman, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson, Jr.), are dispatched to the great green wilds of Georgia.

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Image courtesy of "The Hindu"

'Cocaine Bear' movie review: An enjoyably gory, funny creature feature (The Hindu)

Starring: Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr. Plot: A bear ingests copious amounts of ...

In a fit of pique, Dee Dee cuts school and decides to head to the park with her best friend, Henry (Christian Convery). Sari (Keri Russell), a nurse, had promised her daughter, Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince), they could go to the park but cancels to spend a weekend with the new man in her life. The bags of cocaine fall in and around the Chattahoochee National Park.

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Image courtesy of "Roger Ebert"

Cocaine Bear movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert)

It is an incredible blast, especially if you have the benefit of seeing director Elizabeth Banks' insanely violent comedy/thriller with a packed crowd.

But while the suspense that had carried the film for the first two-thirds of its brisk running time dips as it nears its conclusion, “Cocaine Bear” still emerges as a hell of a high. Much of the joy of “Cocaine Bear” comes from the look of the creature itself, which is surprisingly high-tech for a cheesy, silly movie. (Both kids are great in a throwback way, reminiscent of the kinds of brash, profane characters you’d see in movies like “ [The Bad News Bears](/reviews/the-bad-news-bears-1976)” or “ [The Goonies](/reviews/the-goonies-1985).” The boy’s reaction to discovering one of these illegal bundles is not fear, but rather a cheerful: “Let’s sell drugs together!”) They include a pair of mismatched buddy drug dealers ( [Alden Ehrenreich](/cast-and-crew/alden-ehrenreich) and O’Shea Jackson Jr.); their humorless boss ( [Ray Liotta](/cast-and-crew/ray-liotta) in his final film role, recalling one of his signature performances in “ [Goodfellas](/reviews/great-movie-goodfellas-1991)”); and a police detective from the Kentucky town where the smuggler’s plane eventually crashed (Isiah Whitlock Jr., perfectly deadpan as ever). The few times “Cocaine Bear” injects even a meager amount of sentimentality, the pacing starts to lag. [Jimmy Warden](/cast-and-crew/jimmy-warden) has taken the basic facts—a 175-pound Georgia black bear ingested some cocaine that a drug smuggler dropped from an airplane in 1985—and imagined what might have happened if the bear hadn’t died, but rather sampled the stuff and gotten hooked.

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Image courtesy of "Economic Times"

Cocaine Bear releases: All you need to know about movie (Economic Times)

Cocaine Bear tells the story of a black bear in Georgia that consumed cocaine after a plane crash.

While piloting a plane carrying a load of cocaine, [Thornton](/topic/thornton)realized that the cargo was too heavy and dropped a duffel bag filled with the drug. The bag of cocaine, worth around fifteen million US dollars, was then found by a black bear, which consumed it and subsequently went on a drug-induced killing spree. [Elizabeth Banks](/topic/elizabeth-banks)is based on a true story, specifically the incident of a black bear in Georgia that ingested cocaine after a plane crash in 1985. Thornton II](/topic/andrew-c-thornton-ii). Therefore, as of now – the only to watch the movie remains limited to theatres. [Martin Luther King Jr.](/topic/martin-luther-king-jr-), others, like the recent comedic spoof Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, take a more flexible approach.

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Image courtesy of "Vulture"

Cocaine Bear Is, in Fact, a Movie (Vulture)

Movie Review: Directed by Elizabeth Banks, 'Cocaine Bear' is a loosely based-on-fact account of a bear that eats a mountain of cocaine and then goes on a ...

VHS is a thing of the past, and so is the late show and maybe even the whole concept of discovering things. They have to fail first and then get reclaimed by us through random discovery, preferably by popping in a dusty VHS cassette out of curiosity or turning on the late show. The mid-’80s was the height of Spielbergian kids’ adventures, but it was also the height of a particularly baggy and brutal period of slasher flicks, and Cocaine Bear carries whiffs of both. We’re here for the bear and the cocaine, and the film doesn’t skimp on that front either. appear to have set out to make a cult movie on purpose. Like the characters, it wanders around a bit too aimlessly, but by the end you feel like you’ve actually been somewhere. Sometimes the bear sneaks up on our characters like a grim woodland menace. By doing in one of the bigger names in the cast with their opening scene, Banks and writer Jimmy Warden slyly place us in a state of uncertainty over who will make it intact and who will not. Or the two low-level hoodlums, Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), sent off by their boss (Ray Liotta) to retrieve the missing cocaine from Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia? Then he buckles in his parachute, puts on his sunglasses, kisses off the empty cockpit, and promptly hits his head and drops lifelessly into the clouds. It also takes a few cues from its time period, not just in the vintage anti-drug PSAs that open the picture but in pace and style. Elizabeth Banks’s action-comedy-thriller is loosely based on a 1985 incident when an American black bear ingested a massive amount of cocaine and was found dead soon thereafter.

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Image courtesy of "WIRED"

'Cocaine Bear' Is a Buzz Kill (WIRED)

The movie seems destined for internet infamy but doesn't live up to the promise of its viral trailer.

The stage is set, then, for a cast of wacky characters to descend on Blood Mountain to retrieve the gear. Following the incident, the bear was stuffed and displayed in the wonderfully named Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington. In the heat of the maulings, the film shifts from comic to disturbing: Intestines are exposed; heads roll. The story goes that a police officer-turned-drug smuggler hurled several duffle bags of cocaine from a plane and then met his own demise while trying to parachute from the craft himself. The film just doesn’t land right, and you can’t help but feel that it was manufactured just to be chopped up for a viral YouTube trailer. And [who wouldn’t want to see](https://twitter.com/SamuelAAdams/status/1628378464431620096?s=20) a bear on a drug-fueled rampage?

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Image courtesy of "Hollywood Reporter"

'Daisy Jones and the Six,' 'Cocaine Bear' and This Week's Best Events (Hollywood Reporter)

Thirteen years after the workplace comedy came to a close, Ken Marino, Martin Starr, Jane Lynch, Megan Mullally and Ryan Hansen attended the premiere for the ...

On Sunday night, Tres Generaciones Tequila hosted the All-Star Weekend Wrap Party in Salt Lake City, featuring a performance by 2 Chainz. Thirty filmmakers were shortlisted across six categories with six winners announced on the night, receiving a range of cash prizes and Sony Digital Imaging equipment. Aniplex of America and Crunchyroll held a L.A. On Saturday, Netflix hosted Poguelandia, an immersive event in Huntington Beach to celebrate the upcoming third season of Outer Banks. In the student filmmaker section, Mateo Salas (Colombia, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia), The Sun of the River won the fiction category and Seonghoon Eric Park (Republic of Korea, Boston University), In Cod We Trust won non-fiction; Pan Tianhong (China Mainland), Homework for Winter Vacation won the Future Format competition. carpet for the season two premiere of their Peacock show on Wednesday. On Thursday, Tribeca co-founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal and The New Yorker editor David Remnick hosted a screening at the Tribeca Screening Room in NYC for Oscar-nominated short films Stranger at the Gate and Night Ride. on Wednesday, with new castmembers Jennifer Garner, James Marsden, Zoë Chao and Tyrel Jackson Williams. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hosted a special private screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary on Wednesday, followed by a Q&A with director Laura Poitras and film subject Nan Goldin. Jabari Banks, Adrian Holmes, Cassandra Freeman, Olly Sholotan, Coco Jones, Akira Akbar, Jimmy Akingbola, Jordan L. Creo announced the winners for the first edition of the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards during a black-tie awards ceremony on Wednesday on the Sony Pictures Studio lot. Here’s a look at this week’s biggest premieres, parties and openings in Los Angeles and New York, including red carpets for Daisy Jones and the Six,

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Image courtesy of "Vulture"

Who'd Win in a Fight Against Cocaine Bear? (Vulture)

The bear from Elizabeth Banks's 'Cocaine Bear' versus, say, 'Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.' Who'd win in a fight? What about against the shark from 'Jaws' ...

The bear isn’t dead, but the shell hang-glides on a Dorito to safety. Let’s say that Marcel finds a way to get the bear to fall on an upright butcher knife. If Ratatouille met the bear in his Parisian restaurant, he would be eaten alive while trying to steer his human marionette, Linguini, to safety. Meanwhile, Cocaine Bear doesn’t have the guts to kill children she has known for mere hours. Narnia’s most famous faun hands her a brick of Turkish delight that she mistakes for a brick of … The coke-fueled aggression gives way to bliss. If the bear stumbled into Bodega Bay while all the crows, sparrows, and gulls were losing their goddamn minds, she’d be overwhelmed by the swarm. But if our Cocaine Bear encountered the Jaws shark during such an adventure and the shark swallowed her whole, she’d likely claw her way out through its neck — effectively beheading the shark that caused those Amity Islanders so much trouble. Cocaine Bear Let’s see how she fares in these clashes (while she’s coked out, of course). The hikers standing between her and a brick? The 150-pound bear got high (we assume), killed no one (that we know of), and overdosed.

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Image courtesy of "The Verge"

Cocaine Bear review: it's fun, but it doesn't know when to stop (The Verge)

Universal's Cocaine Bear — in theaters now — from director Elizabeth Banks is plenty of fun so long as you've got a high tolerance for gore and ...

Cocaine Bear’s not without its charms, and both Convery and Martindale deliver exceptionally delightful performances that reinforce how just a little bit more substance for other characters could have done wonders to make them all more memorable. It’s obvious — both from Cocaine Bear’s framing and from one of its more memorable deaths — that the movie’s trying to tap into a very similar kind of brilliant but slightly batshit energy that made Renny Harlin’s Deep Blue Sea such an instant classic. Many of Cocaine Bear’s characters end up dying in funny-ish ways that sort of underline how you’re not meant to become all that involved in any of their individual lives. Each of Cocaine Bear’s human characters has their own reasons for wandering into the park, and they’re well aware of what sort of things they should be watching out for under normal circumstances. But when Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince), Sari’s middle schooler, and her best friend Henry (Christian Convery) decide to ditch school to hang out in the wilderness one day, they don’t realize just how much danger they’re wandering into or what sort of wild ride they’re in for. Thornton (Matthew Rhys) dumps out of his plane over the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest in a clever but ill-conceived attempt at hiding from the authorities during a big run.

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Image courtesy of "Slate Magazine"

Cocaine Bear Is “Bad Environmentalism.” That's Awesome. (Slate Magazine)

Maybe a deadly beast hopped up on nose candy is exactly what the climate movement needs.

(Congrats for composting, the planet is still on fire!) In the hyper-dilated eyes of our rampaging ursine, though, drug peddlers and tree-huggers are one and the same. In fact, the literary critic Fredric Jameson has argued that seemingly lowbrow works of “genre fiction”—like detective novels or space operas—are able to introduce their readers to serious topics precisely because they are low-brow. But in an atmosphere in which it is all too easy to feel suffocated by climate anxiety, Elizabeth Banks’ film cuts through our ecological malaise. Though if I learned anything from Cocaine Bear, it is that squaring up with a coked-out Ursus americanus is not a good idea.) My classrooms are mostly populated by bright-eyed Environmental Studies majors who want to save the world, and yet watching films and documentaries about ecological catastrophes often seems to dampen their enthusiasm for activism. What is most interesting about the film is its off-kilter environmentalism. Almost all environmental discourse in America is predicated on the old enlightenment idea that knowledge is power: that if we simply know more about humanity’s impact on the environment, we’ll change our behaviors and attitudes. Indeed, if Cocaine Bear violates our expectations about what environmentalism looks like, it is because American consumers are accustomed to environmental discourse that is characterized by piety and a dash of mournfulness. But the thing about Frank was that if you lined up 20 dudes off the street and were told “one of these guys feeds cocaine to pigeons for a living,” you would have picked Frank 10 out of 10 times. And in a nation populated by hucksters and con artists, it is refreshing to have someone sell you exactly what you were promised. The bear turns the mountain red in pursuit of more cocaine. Of course, there is really only one reason to see Cocaine Bear, and that is because you would like to see what happens when a bear does cocaine.

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Image courtesy of "The Jerusalem Post"

'Cocaine Bear' star Ehrenreich got big break after Spielberg met him (The Jerusalem Post)

Ehrenreich, now 33, made a scrappy home movie that he and other friends showed at the bat mitzvah ceremony in 2009.

Spielberg was in attendance at the Los Angeles synagogue and afterwards invited Ehrenreich, who is Jewish, to meet with fellow directing legend Francis Ford Coppola. He is also set to play a part in “Oppenheimer,” acclaimed director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film on the drama behind the creation of the atomic bomb — a story featuring several Jewish characters, Ehrenreich, now 33, made a scrappy home movie that he and other friends showed at the bat mitzvah ceremony in 2009.

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