Ray Liotta – Memphis Flyer

Here’s your weekly guide to what’s new and worth your time on the big screen in Memphis.

The movie with the buzz this weekend is Love Lies Bleeding. Kristen Stewart stars in this erotic thriller from director Rose Glass and A24. Stewart is Lou, a gym manager in the steroid jungle of Las Vegas in the 1980s. Her life is upended when Jackie (Katy O’Brian from The Mandalorian) starts training at her gym, and spending the night in her bed. When Lou’s mob boss dad (Ed Harris) gets involved, bodies start to hit the floor.

The second film opening this weekend which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival is The American Society of Magical Negroes from first-time helmer Kobi Libii. The magical negro, a stock Black character who shows up in stories to make white people feel better about themselves, is a long tradition in American fiction. David Alan Grier stars as a trainer for the secret society, designed to keep on a lid on race relations, who bites off more than he can chew with his hapless new recruit Justice Smith.

The Malco Summer Drive-In is reopening for spring, and Time Warp Drive-In is back with Night In The City: The Deadly Urban Worlds of Martin Scorsese. The first of the triple feature is a favorite of Marty heads everywhere. Goodfellas is a flawless film about the lure of the underworld and the consequences of the lifestyle. Early in the film, Scorsese drops one of the all-time great long takes, called a “oner” in movie parlance. Watch as Marty simultaneously introduces Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco’s characters Henry and Karen Hill and paints the world around them in a single tracking shot that lasts a little over three minutes.

Taxi Driver is where the legend of Marty really got rolling. Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle, a cabbie with a violent streak who develops a crush on a campaign worker played by Memphian Cybill Shepherd. On set, De Niro served as a mentor to Jodi Foster, who was twelve years old when she was cast as a child prostitute who Bickle tries to rescue from a life on the street.

I’m just going to say it: Oppenheimer was mid. Killers of the Flower Moon should have won the Best Picture Oscar. It’s now my favorite Scorsese joint. Anyway, here’s the trailer to my now second-favorite Scorsese, and the third film on the Time Warps’ killer triple bill, which rolls on Saturday at dusk, After Hours.

Credit where it’s due, Kung Fu Panda, the animated series of furry wuxia parodies is way better than it has any business being. That’s mostly thanks to the flawless voice work of human cartoon character Jack Black, but you gotta give the inventive animators props, too. The fourth one in the series is currently the number one movie at the American box office.

If you haven’t caught Dune: Part Two yet, the sci fi epic is worth seeing on the biggest screen you can find. If you have seen it, maybe go again.

Back in 1985, a drug smuggler named Andrew C. Thornton II found himself over East Tennessee in a failing Cessna. Trying to lighten the load, he ejected a few duffle bags’ worth of cocaine into the woods. When that didn’t work, he stuffed several Ferraris’ worth of product in his pockets and jumped out of the airplane. His parachute didn’t open, and the former-federal-narcotics-officer-turned-cocaine-cowboy went splat in suburban Knoxville.

As someone who grew up in rural Appalachia during the height of the Reagan era, I can attest that bundles of drugs regularly fell from the sky. Some poor randos got lucky and were able to buy a real house, not a trailer. Some less-lucky randos were brutally murdered by employees of the distribution network whose drugs had gone missing. In this case, a black bear found the fallen cocaine cache and ate it. Pablo Escobear, as the overstimulated ursine would come to be known, is the only known bear to die of a cocaine overdose — another Appalachia victim of the War on Drugs.

In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing that it took so long for someone to make Cocaine Bear. In the 1980s, lots of producers got their movies funded with little more than a catchy title and some eye-catching VHS art. The story writes itself. Bears are cute, but they can eat you whenever they want. Luckily, bears are lazy, and you’re more trouble than you’re worth. But a bear on cocaine, they’re edgy. They’re paranoid. They just want to party with you. Why are you holding out on them?

Director Elizabeth Banks sets the gonzo tone in the first scene, when Andrew Thornton (Matthew Rhys) experiences a high degree of job satisfaction by dipping into the bricks before he tosses them out of the airplane. At least he dies doing what he loves: cocaine.

The first people to discover what happened to the cocaine are prime slasher movie fodder: a pair of young European hikers in love. For Cocaine Bear, they’re just a yummy appetizer.

Also on the table are a pair of kids: the rebellious Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince), who is skipping school to paint a waterfall, and Henry (Christian Convery), who is following her. Dee Dee’s mom Sari (Keri Russell) is trying to track down both of them, with the help of Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) and zoologist Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).

Meanwhile, Syd (Ray Liotta), who is on the hook for the missing marching powder, sends his enforcer Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and angsty son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) to retrieve the $14 million in assets before the Columbian cartels come calling. They have a violent run-in with a trio of delinquents and find one of the missing duffle bags at the same time as TBI detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and the cocaine-crazed bear.

Besides Cocaine Bear, who is an instant movie star, Bob is the film’s best character. He’s a police detective who’s getting too old for this stuff. He’s thinking about retirement and just bought a cute dog. But he’s been chasing Syd for years, and he’s got a hunch that this is his last chance to take him down. In a movie like this, he’s a dead man walking. Whitlock, a veteran of Spike Lee films and The Wire, understands the assignment and plays it to the hilt.

Everyone involved in Cocaine Bear seems to know exactly how serious to take it, which is, not very. As a classy appreciator of art, I should call Cocaine Bear a guilty pleasure, except I don’t feel very guilty about it. Cocaine, a wise man once said, is a hell of a drug.

Cocaine Bear
Now playing
Multiple locations