Cocaine Bear (15)
**
Cocaine Bear, it’s the film that the world seems to need right now. Or maybe it’s the film title that the world needs right now.
Either way, a collective tizzy of anticipation has grown around the film ever since its title was announced, and now it finally arrives in cinemas. Just nobody say Snakes On A Plane.
It’s freely based on a true story, or more accurately, made up from real events. In the 80s reality, a bear came across a bag of cocaine that had been ejected by panicking smugglers from a plane, ate it and died.
In the movie, he finds and eats the cocaine, gets instantly hooked and turns into a killer, terrorising everybody who happens to be in the Blood Mountain National Park as he searches for the next hit.
Quite why it has that effect on bears we don't know. Why doesn't it just talk a mile-a-minute to some poor cornered unfortunate before disappearing into the toilets? If cocaine turned humans into killers Soho would be like the Hunger Games every Saturday night, though presumably opportunities to break into the film industry would be plentiful.
For our delectation the film scatters the park with a variety of dopey caricatures (foreign hikers, fat ladies looking for love) who can be killed off with impunity, along with some more fully rounded characters whose fate is in the balance, and a mother (Russell) and children who are fully protected.
Is this a good night out? The bear is well done and convincing. There are some good set pieces, clever reversals, and decent humour, both visual and verbal. Unfortunately, it packs most of those into the first hour. The film builds steadily and by midpoint seems to have achieved a frantic momentum; a high which quickly fades away.
CB has enough of the necessary elements to leave you passably entertained, particularly if you meet it halfway with some pre-match refreshment. But I saw this in a biggish audience who had access to an hour's worth of free bar, and the response, apart from a few individual hooters, seemed to be lukewarm mild laughter. And it surely ought to be able to rouse a better collective response than that.
Directed by Elizabeth Banks. Starring Ray Liotta, Keri Russell, Margo Martindale, Alden Ehrenreich, O'Shea Jackson and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. In cinemas now. Running time: 95 mins.
Subject (15)
**
Documentary filmmakers are the lowest of the low; smarmy, ingratiating mugwumps who suck the life out of whatever host they attach themselves to while high-mindedly proclaiming to be, “telling their story.”
Documentaries are thriving at the moment - in cinemas they seem to be taking the slots vacated by actual films - and Subject is about the effect of being featured in a successful doc.
It should be a film after my own heart, but it’s a skittish, superficial affair: a heap of talking heads stating the obvious while it races through trying to include every documentary made in the last few decades.
Only The Staircase, The Wolfpack, Hoop Dreams, The Square and Capturing the Friedmans are explored in any depth.
And it is heartbreaking to hear from Margie Ratliff, one of the daughters from The Staircase, about how her mother's murder is still being churned over for profit two decades on. When her father invited a French film crew to record his defence against a murder charge, there was no Netflix, or Amazon Prime, and HBO Box Office was mostly boxing.
Now she has to deal with being played in the film by the Game of Thrones girl who can't act.
Directed by Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall. Featuring Margaret Ratliff, Arthur Agee, Mukunda Angulo, Jesse Friedman, Michael Peterson, Elaine Friedman, Bing Liu and Susanne Reisenblichler. Running time: 93 mins.
Fashion Reimagined (12A)
***
That the fashion industry was evil has always seemed obvious to me, without realising it was one of the most environmentally destructive industries on Earth.
If it were a country, it would rank third behind America and China for carbon emissions. This doc follows designer Powney’s attempt to introduce a totally sustainable fashion collection.
The process of making a single T-shirt takes in six or seven countries on its way from the cotton fields to the shop floor. Accompanied by product designer Chloe Adams, the pair scour the world looking for ways to deglobalise clothing production.
In many ways, this is the standard "journey" documentary. There is the deadline - the line has to be ready in 18 months for the 2018 London Fashion Week - and repeated assertion that the protagonists are battling against almost impossible odds.
The doc is unusual in exploring the issues in detail. If you want to know about how denim and cotton are produced, and the baffling complexities of global production chains it's all here. None of this is particularly interesting, but you appreciate their presence; it's the kind of nuts and bolts information most documentaries brush over in the rush to get to some confrontation.
Directed by Becky Hutner. Featuring Amy Powney, Chloe Marks and Pedro Otegui. Running time: 100 mins.
More reviews at http://www.halfmanhalfcritic.com/
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