Best and Worst: February Movie Round Up with Mike and Kelsey + Movie Review: Cocaine Bear + Trailer Park: The Machine

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike, joined this week by my co host and wife, Kelsey. How are you? I'm great. We're trying out something different this week and we're going to do a best and worst in a February movie roundup. In the movie review, I want to talk about Cocaine Bear and you did not go watch that movie with me? It did not not your type of movie, but interest I loved it, so I'll give my review on that and the best thing about that it's not a movie I can spoil whatsoever. And in the trailer park, I want to talk about a new movie that's entirely based on a stand up comedy bit called The Machine. Thank you for being subscribed, shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now let's talk movies. In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking AUDIMTV with glasses from the Nashville Podcast Network Movie Mics Movie So I wanted to do something entirely different this week and it may be an ongoing thing if you guys are into it. But I want to do a best and worst movies we've seen in the last month. So it's an entire February movie round up. Because on this podcast, I usually only review one movie a week, but I watch a lot more than that. Us together, we watch a lot of movies. You don't always go see all the movies with me in theaters, especially when it comes to anything scary or with violence. I will say there's only like one movie a month I don't see with you. Yeah, and then but we watch a lot at home and some movies that, as we'll talk about, weren't the best, that don't really garner an entire review. So we'll start with our best and Kelsey, you can go first. What is the best thing you've watched this month? It was the Alison Brie movie on Amazon Prime, somebody I used to know. I thought it was really it was a cute rom com. Love a rom com. We'll talk about one that I didn't love, but I loved that one. I love Alison Brie. I think she's great. Dave Franco produced it, is that correct directed it? Yeah, I think they're such a funny team together, Like they're such a good like husband wife team when they work on movies together, and it's just good like it was. I don't feel like it was super predictable. I mean it didn't have like tons of twists and turns. I really enjoyed that one. I'm getting a little bit more into rom coms as of late. I think the genre is kind of coming back. I think it's hard to do a full on comedy right now, but I think rom coms, when done right, can be really good right now. And I really enjoyed this one too. I wouldn't say it was my best of the month, but the plot was a little bit different, and I think that's what I look forward to going into a rom com is all the generic stuff has been done over and over again, and sometimes those movies serve a purpose, just make you feel good. You don't have to think a whole lot, but I think when you do add a little bit more depth to a plot, like this movie did. I will also say it was Alison Brees promo on Jimmy Fallon did a little rap and it made me want to watch it even more so. Here's that clip of Alison bree rapping on Jimmy Fallon. Here's a little tale about a movie I made with my sweet ass husband. His name is Dave. About girl meets boy, well, remeets actually, I don't want to start off this rap in factually, So they hang out in their hometown and they have a great night just paling around, and she's totally in. She thinks he's the one. But that's when things stop being fun. See it turns out he's here in wedding bells, but they're not about her, They're about someone else. Say, what's gonna happen? Where could this? Oh you're gonna have to watch somebody I used to know her. Yeah, that is a great way to promote a movie. It made me want to watch the movie even more. I already wanted to watch it before I saw that clip, and then watching the movie, I was like, Oh, that's such a great thing to do. The thing I'd liked about it is you don't really root for her. She's not really like the like the best protagonist. Yeah, she's not like somebody that you're like, yeah, I hope she ends up with the guy. Like, that's not the kind of story that you're wanting to see, and I think that makes it very realistic. So what the movie is about is her character goes back home after going to La to pursue her dream of being in Hollywood, and then she goes back and meets her ex boyfriend where they were together for a long time. They kind of hit it off, have a date, but then you find out he is in a committed relationship and about to get married. So it's this entire thing of her trying to get back with him, forming a relationship with his fiance, spends their whole wedding weekend with them. And again, none of this is a spoiler, it's all in the Chidler and Alison Bruce rap so I think also, this movie had a really great cast, and at the core of it, the writing was just really good. The plot line isn't completely predictable, even up to the end, Like most times, I can pretty much predict how a romcom is going to end. We had that discussion while we were watching the movie, like, what do you think is going to happen here? I think it proves maybe it's not an entirely groundbreaking romantic comedy, but it's a little bit more novel than your basic formula. I also don't think we're in an age where movies have to be groundbreaking. We're making seven thousand street pools and eight thousand remakes of the same movie. Like kind of feel like we're done with groundbreaking for a while. If it's not broken, you don't have to fix it. And a romcom is a good genre. But yeah, I mean every other movie is a sequel. I mean Top Gun did a sequel like thirty years later. True, We've got what Toy Story five coming out? Yeah, We've got remakes of everything. We're making animated movies into live action. Like, none of these things are groundbreaking. So if you want to check that movie out, is available for free on Amazon. What would you rate that one? I give that one a four out of five soft pretzels. That's exactly what I gave it. So again, you can check out that movie on Amazon. Which it's still weird to me that Amazon has original movies. The same place we get like toilet paper and granola bars from also makes movies. They're also about to launch that Daisy Jones and the Six show. It's based on a book that I read like that and I think for Reese Witherspoon is behind it, and it's got a pretty good cast, but all from Amazon. Yeah, my best of the month would be not Get the Cabin, which I've already done my full review, my spoiler free review. That is one you didn't go with me to see in theaters. I guess I did not go to two this month too, But I think you would have enjoyed Knock at the Cabin minus some of the violets, because I've never enjoyed an m Night Shamalan movie never. They freaked me out. Interesting what about it? Because it's kind of suspenseful, mysterious, paranormal. I don't do any of that. Have you watched the movie me I hide under the Blanket. I once asked you to fast forward through something because it scared me. But even now, sitting here at the end of the month, as much as I've talked about this movie since it came out, I still stand by it being my favorite of the year and the one so far the really only noteworthy movie that's come out that I feel if you haven't seen it and you're into this type of movie, you need to watch it to determine for yourself. Because I still think it's a hit or miss movie. For most people. You can watch an M Night Shamalan movie like you and not get it, not be fully into it. You think it's terrible, but somebody else like me watch it and completely love it. So I think it's kind of like a love or hate type director. I feel a little insult to my intelligence that I wouldn't get it. I think I could get a night Shamalan movie. I don't think it takes i Q. I mean I consider myself pretty smart. I didn't mean not get it as an understand it, but I mean like not get it in your soul. Kay, resonate with you. There we go. That is the word. I was looking a better word. But I still stand by that one being my favorite out of the entire month. So we'll move on now to talk about our worst. What is the worst thing you watched this month? I'm so sad it's the worst. It's another rom com. It is going to be your place for mine with recent Ashton Terrible on Netflix. Absolute garbage, and I'm sorry to anyone who loved it. Sorry Reese, if you happen to hear this, I love you. I'm the target demographic for a rom com. I love it. I love it. It It makes me feel good inside, like I will watch a Hallmark movie at Christmas. It used to be a lot more into them, not just Christmas, but I've I've narrowed it down to just Christmas. And it was it was bad. It was it had the makings to be a good movie. It's like when I try to make a recipe and something goes wrong and it just like falls flats, Like when I made brownies the other day and I overbaked them and then they were terrible. It's like everything that went into the brownies was great and then they just came out this one. I was glad you didn't like as well, because I feel like I have two different modes when I watch a movie. I can watch it as somebody who is going your critique it later, and I can also watch it knowing that it's something that you want to watch, and I'm just there to enjoy. I was actually interested in watching this movie because of the two leads, but within the first twenty minutes of it, I was like, what is this? And the entire first hour of this movie probably could have been twenty minutes. It was insane to me. The whole movie could have been zero minutes. I don't think that far. I just think that there was something in the making of this movie that was just completely phoned in. The script felt like they had one scene and then we're writing everything as they went along. The acting was very tough to watch because since Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher's characters are in two different cities that about basically the entire movie. Ashton Kutcher do not have the acting ability that Reese Witherspoon does to only talk and do one sided acting, because when he was talking into FaceTime, just on his end, it looked like he was reading his lines like this, Yeah, this is me talking to Reese Winnerspoon. My problem was more so with him, like Reese could do a rom common Er Sleep, but he's done a good rom com. No strength of the one of my favorite movies. I would argue though, that aside from his not great performance in this, I just didn't love Reese Witherspoon's character. No, her character, Debbie was a little bit. Debbie didn't do much for me. Debbie was a downer. Debbie was a downer. Debbie was an overprotective Helicopter Mom Downer. Yeah, the entire storyline for her, her goals in this movie, the way she reacted to things. I just felt like they could have gave that character a little bit more depth and it would have probably been a better movie. Have Jesse Williams. We also had Zoe Chow in both movies, Your Place, Remind and Somebody I used to know. I thought she was great in Your Place Remind as kind of Freeze's sidekick friend. Yeah. These was a battling Valentine's Day movies. We watched them on the same day. Yeah, so I felt like we got our polar opposites there. So I would say, your Place or mine, don't spend your time on it. Somebody that I used to know, I'd say, it's a little bit rountier, there's nudity, and it's a little bit more adult. Yeah, so it's not so much of an easy rom com. That's fair. So what would you rate Your Place Your Mind? One out of five? Hidden Manuscripts one out of five? I think I would have gone less on that. I'd have gone point five one because of adverse furthererspin and I am a big fan of verse. She is the one she is the one. She got a point five on my scale. The worst thing I watched this month wasn't a new movie. It was Now You See Me two, which came out in twenty sixteen. And the reason I even stumbled upon this movie I remember watching Now You See Me a while back and I rewatched it because we were going to Washington, d C. And that was one of the only movies available on the plane. Side note, can we have a little tangent about how irritating the HBO Max interfaces on the app on your phone? Because we both downloaded things to watch on the plane. If you don't, if you don't start it before you're off of Wi Fi, it won't show up. What's the point of downloading it? Yeah, I just wanted to finish Gossip Girl. HBO Max is the only service I found that the app does that. So originally what I did I had downloaded the first two John Wick movies because I wanted to watch them before they left. HBO Max had him downloaded, had him que it up. That's all I wanted to do on this plane. Went to click it and that's when we found out it wouldn't load, and I was like, it's downloaded, it's there, HBO Max, what's going on? So I resorted to Southwest and what they have available to watch for free? I'd basically seen everything, and I was like, now you see me, Like it'd been so long since I've seen that movie. I wanted to check it out again. And that almost feels like a movie that was made to be watched on an airplane service. And if you haven't seen it or don't remember what this movie is about, it's this group of magicians that get together and rob a rich person. So they go and do these performances and then they make off with a heist. So sounds pretty ridiculous. But what he Harrelson is in it. The cast is great, Yeah, Franco, Yeah, Jesse Eisenberg, And it's weird that it has such a great cast. But it's almost like this movie's kind of dumb. Mark Ruffalo, is it it? Illa Fisher? Right, Yeah, she's in the first one. So I watched the first one on the plane and that was back in January, and then we were in February and I was like, I think they made a part two to that that I never watched. So then I went over to tub to watch this movie. That should have been my first indication that the movie wasn't going to be great. If you don't know what TUB is. They did the commercial for the Super Bowl that made everyone think that you sat on your remote and change the channel. Yeah, and I think before that I had maybe seen one thing on TUB. But I went back to watch Now You See Me Too, and it's one of the worst movies not only I watched this month, but probably ever. Now You See Me. He should not have received a sequel. And the reason this movie was so bad it did so many tropes that I hate when it comes to sequels. It turns out that Woody Harrelson had an evil twin brother, and then they bring him out. So there's this scene where it's Woody Harrelson and his evil twin brother with hair having a conversation, and I feel like that is up there with the tropes that I hate, the long loss hidden twin, right up there with somebody being hit by a bus. I hate somebody getting hit by a bus in a movie. It feels so cheesy, it feels so lazy in the writing where they just wrap up somebody's character being killed because they get hit by a bus. Mysterious long loss, Hidden Twin is up there, and Hit by a Bus is probably number one. But this movie was so bad. I'm so surprised it was even made and that the people were still associated with this with minus Sila Fisher, who was not in this, one should have been called nice. Didn't see this now you shouldn't see this. So I would give this movie a point five as well. It was a waste of time, an utter waste of time. I don't know why. I just sometimes go back to watching things from the twenty tens thinking they'd be a little bit better than they were if I missed them. Then I was halfway through the movie and you were like, this is stupid, and you kept watching. Yeah, because it's the plot. Morgan Freeman's in it. Yeah, the plot gives you enough to make you want to keep watching it even though it's bad. Evil Twin made you keep even though it's bad and not really going anywhere. You just want to know, all right, what's going to be the finale in this movie? I'll keep watching. So I think that's why this movie is a perfect movie to be seen on an airplane or on cable TV. No, but now you see me was good enough to be on an airplane. Now you see me. Two wasn't even airplane. That's true to be, materials to be. This is not airplane, not cable to be. But those are the best and worst things we've seen this month. Now, kind of a weak month. Yeah, February was a little bit weak. It usually is. January and February are what are known as dump months, where a bunch of random movies come out that really have no place within the rest of the year. Usually get like a horror movie in January, and then of course all the rom comes coming out around Valentine's Day. But next month, that's a great month. We got Creed, we got john Wick. There are so many great movies coming out in March. I feel like every single Friday of March has a really big movie. So go down in February and then next month when we do this episode, I'll be like man, which one was the best? See and we all segue us into the next thing. We thought we were going to have a real hit on our hands with ant Man. Yeah, that was a big one of the month. That was so the other movies we saw in theaters. Ant Man was one, what did you think about it, which you're not really the biggest ant Man fan. Yeah, out of the Marvel series, it's kind of it's kind of a Doctor Strange to me, Like a little week Doctor Strange was even a little more interesting to me. Oh yeah. I like the visual effects of Doctor Strange, like I thought the multi Verse because that was the last one, right Multiverse. I thought, like all the visuals were really good. Aunt man, we're talking about this after the movie, like it gets into like quantum it's a quantum realm and then they kind of start talking about like quantum physics and quantum math, and I don't want to have have to think that hard in a movie. So it was. It was Paul Rudd, sweet, Paul Rudd. Jonathan Majors was great. The other movie we watched in theaters that we never got to review was Missing. Oh yeah, we did see that, which was the sequel to Searching, and in Missing, it kind of flips the script. In the original it's the dad trying to find his daughter and in this one it's the daughter trying to find her mom. And the novel thing about this movie is that all takes place over some kind of technology, So whether it be FaceTime, the screen recordings of emails. It's all from that perspective of somebody's computer or somebody's phone, which I feel like you can only do so many of these movies before that novelty wears off. But Searching was so good. We were excited to see this one because we kind of just watched Searching on a whim of Yeah, we watched that like when I first moved to Nashville when everything was still shut down. We watched like a movie, and I we were trying to just find anything. We realized check out Searching, and it was really good. It's kind of true crime live action in a way of you're watching all the events unfold in real time in the movie and trying to figure it out yourself. So I think that's the fun part of it. It's a mystery that you're trying to take all the clues that are presented to you and you decide and figure out what's going to happen. I think that's what I enjoyed about watching this movie in theaters is because I like hearing other people's commentary sometimes as the movie was going along, Although somebody talked a lot during this movie. We went to go see it. Oh yeah, there was a row, an entire row in front of us, and they wouldn't shut up. But I was trying to figure it out. And the fun thing about this is paying attention to everything on the screen because you see like their text messages up, you see emails, you see people's names listed on the call log. I was looking into all that. I don't think it helped me figure it out in this movie, but I felt like this one was somehow better and somehow also a little bit worse than the original. I felt it was a little bit more dramatic. There were a few more twists in this one. There were more twists, which I think is what makes a movie like this interesting. But you also had to suspend reality a little bit more in this one to where in the first one, I felt it was a little bit more straightforward, like this could all happen in the real world. Yeah, some of the things in this one were like, they're really gonna do that, Like it was a fun in theater experience. I would never watch it again because you already know what happens, and I just don't really know who that movie is for. It was kind of a novel idea. Yeah, it was more novel than some of the other things. That's what I'm gonna start judging movies on the novelty. Yeah, and it reminded me of one of my favorite horror movies, Friended, which is a movie that I enjoy because it all takes place over Skype. I wouldn't say a guilty pleasure movie of mine, but I know that movie is not good, but I like it for some reason. They're just those movies sometimes, like I know it's on paper not good that I can't really recommend it to somebody and be like, you have to watch this movie. I just enjoy it for some odd reason. So maybe that is what also missing is like would you watch another sequel if they made a trilogy out of this? I honestly probably would. Yeah, I would do it again. Having the Regal passes is not an ad for Regal, but as usual Regal, if you would like to sponsor us, let us know Regal Unlimited. We only pay the tax. It's like fifty five cents to go watch a movie as many times as we want in a month. Yeah. We see a lot of things that we probably it's true, wouldn't see. Sometimes are bored, and we're just like, I see a movie, yeah, and then if it's not good, we could just leave. We have left during a couple of movies in the past year, and I feel no remorse about leaving. Hey, they're so bad and there's still two hours left. I'm out of there, and I'm like, well, they've already gotten there's seven dollars out of my Diapepsi the concession stand. And those are movies that end up not getting reviewed because they're that terrible. A couple more things we watched this month is after we went to go see Adam Sandler Live in Nashville. You now want to go on a wormhole of watching Adam Sandler movies. And there was one that we realized we never watched that came out on Netflix back in twenty nineteen called Murder Mystery and was one of Netflix's like highest streamed movies, which he signed a huge Netflix movie to two hundred and fifty million dollars for four films, saying four films, and they're all done through his production company too, and they're not necessarily I feel like he's out of his really bad movie era, the era that came in the late two thousand's early twenty tens, when he was just putting out really bad movies in theaters. But also Adam Sandler can flop and he's like, okay, yeah, And even though these movies still get ripped a shred online with critics, they have some of the lowest rout Tomatoes scores. When Netflix puts him out, a lot of people watch them. Yeah, we watched it because the second one is coming out next month. Yeah, it's coming out on March thirty first, So we're like, let's see if this one's any good, and then that will lead us into the sequel. I was pleasantly surprised with this movie, I think because it wasn't as Zany off the wall as I was expecting from an Adam Sandler movie. It kind of gave a knives Out feel, maybe like a little bit lesser knives Out. It was like a five dollar Walmart DVD bin I don't know, it was a five dollar Walmart DVD ten dollar because it's not the acting level of Knives Out. It's not the star power quality of that. I don't know. It's got Adam Sandler and Jen Aniston. How much more star power do you Need but Knives Out has like eight tray List actors. So Jennifer Aniston looked so good in this movie. I think they're good, a good duo together. They were fun together and I bought it. I liked both of their characters. But it's a movie if you have really low expectations going into it, you can enjoy and probably one you can watch with the entire family. There's nothing that crazy about it. Which I was looking back on some of Adam Sandler's movies as you were going through some of the ones you wanted to watch. I went down a wormhole. Yeah, you fell asleep after we got home from the Adam Sandlers Show, and I was awake till like one am on a Wikipedia literally just being like, oh have I seen that one? Forgot how good that one is? Oh, I haven't seen that one. Let me add that to the list. And I think that is some of the reason of his success is he's never really made a full on raunchy comedy. They're usually somewhat family friendly to an extent. Maybe tips to scales a little bit on some movies, but no F words, probably an S word here and there. Cut Gems had some efforts I wouldn't consider that an Adam Sandler movie though, but he's in it, and he's like the star. I mean, like the ones he makes with this production company. Oh okay, I was like, like Happy Madison movies, Yes, good, all Happy Madison productions. So I feel like that's also been a part of his success, is making movies that really the most amount of people can enjoy. Also, I'm obsessed with him and his wife and the fact that he puts her in every film. It's like a little Easter egg, it is. But that show cute. The live show is really good. I am probably a bigger fan of his comedy than you are, and the reason I wanted to go, well, we never seen him in any capacity, but I was such a fan of his last Netflix special and this is essentially what he does in that special, but live. And it's just crazy to see how influential his movies have been because when we went, there were people in Bobby Bouche jerseys and Happy Gilmore jerseys. So if you have a chance to see Adam Sandler coming to your city, I highly recommend it. It's part music, part stand up. They're surprises. It's also just cool to like see this gonna sound cheesy, but to be in the same room as Adam Sandler, I found myself saying that too. Adam Sandler, like he has his career has spanned like my whole lifetime beyond, but like I know him from things for me when I was really little, and it's like WHOA, Like this is cool. It was cool to see him there. Yeah, he had some surprises which we won't spoil, but they were really cool. And the final thing that we watched in February, and the reason we watched it is because our internet went out for five days. It's terrible and normally I can fix the internet. It's like living in the Stone Age. It's like reboot the router, maybe unplug something, run some kind of diagnostic and get the network back up. But I tried all that, could not do it. It was five days until they could get somebody out here to check on it. Five days is also really hard when you work from home. Yes, our hot spots were burning on our flower working off a hot spot, which I mean shout out to even having that capability, and I'm glad it powered like zoom calls. But it was like anytime I would not like reset it for like an hour of the hot spot would die and then my Microsoft outlook. There were a couple times where I was like, wow, no one's emailed me, and then I looked down and it's like disconnected like two hours ago, and it's like a crap. And what that led us to do was bust out the blue ray collection and to like talk to each other. It was a rough five days. So the last thing we watched before we got our internet backup was Spider Man No Way Home for probably the fifth time. I still like that movie. Yeah, I'm half watched to half write a book, but it holds up. It reminded me of how much of a Zendaya fan am and how much I want them to do another one, and how much I want and Tom Holland to stay together forever. You think, are they still together? Yeah? So do you know different? No, don't break my heart like that. Ever since you went on social media, I don't really see anything anymore. But they did confirm that they will be making a Spider Man four. They're working on the story, which after rewatching it now for the fifth time, they have to make one more. Yeah. They left us with way too big of like a What's going to happen next? So that is it? That is our best and worst in our February movie round up? Anything else you want to say? Kelsey, we don't recommend TV shows here, so I can't go on that team. Can I get a TV show plug? Though? Okay, you could do one. Thank you. If you have HBO Max and you're in two comedies you like Mindy Kaling, you must watch The Sex Lives of College Girls. Odd title, I know, but it is hysterical. I watched all twenty episodes and no, don't know six days. Yeah, I watched maybe half of those with you, and I really like it. Dude. It's funny. So if you just need something like light quirky. Obviously, as the title says, there is some some nudity, some adult themes, so don't watch with your children around. But it's hilarious. I give it a gold star. That's probably if we were doing TV shows, that would be the best thing I've watched in February. And for me, if I was doing TV shows, it would be also an HBO Max original. Well, I guess it's just HBO. But the last of us, yes, who are loving that? I have watched every single episode and been on every single episode and my kind of show. That's our random recommendations. So there you go. A small TV moment here on the podcast. We'll come back and talk about Cocaine Bear, and then in the trailer Park we'll talk about the Machine. Time. Now for a spoiler free movie review, let's talk about Cocaine Bear. Ocine Bear. Say it with me. Although I feel that this movie is unspoilable because all it is is exactly what it says in the title, A Bear does Cocaine You get. Cocaine Bear based loosely on a true story. It's about this five hundred pound black bear stumbles upon some cocaine in a Georgia forest, eats all these bricks of cocaine, and then goes on a cocaine fueled rampage, killing a bunch of people in the forest and destroying a bunch of things. That's really all you need to know going into this movie. And I had somewhat high expectations oddly for this movie because I felt like it has such a sexy title, it has a really good cast and a good director. I wanted this to be a movie that I could go into completely disconnect from reality and just enjoy a bear on cocaine. So before I get into my fool thoughts of this movie, here's just a little bit of the cocaine bear. Cocaine bear. Trailers of dollars worth of cocaine fell from the sky this morning in Knoxville, Tennessee. There's more this out there. If they dumped it somewhere. I'm looking for my daughter's fast as a dangerous place. A lot of cocaine was lost. I need you to go and get it. Let's see what kind of affect that has on. So that's really all you need to know going into this movie. It's about a bear who does cocaine. You don't need to watch any other movie leading up to it, which I know they did some promo surrounding this, kind of poking fun and all the Marvel movies. You don't need to watch Kujoe, you don't need to watch Jaws, you don't need to watch Anaconda or Lake Placid. This is the only movie you need to know going into this. So they poked some fun at movies like that, and I think that's kind of what we need in this world of reboots and remakes. And everything interconnecting. We just need a really good movie that at the core of it embodies all the things that people go to the movies to do. And it's what I said earlier, disconnect from reality watch something completely ridiculous but also well done, which I think is the key difference here in Cocaine Bear. So aside from just the fact of it being a bear going on a cocaine field rampage, I think what Elizabeth Banks, who directed this movie, did a really good job at was interweaving the storylines between all the other characters, so you have all these other things going on that you actually care about, and I think that's important for a movie with a plot this ridiculous, is to give us some experiences with these characters, and even though it's not the most fleshed out characters of all time, it gives you something a little bit more to grasp onto, which I think is what ended up keeping this movie being something like Sharknado that is fun on a very small level, but aside from that, there's no real substance there. What you have in Cocaine Bear is the interweavings of all these other characters lives. You have the people connected to the drug dealer who dropped all the cocaine in this location. There they are trying to retrieve it and getting it back to the drug lords. So that is where Rayleiota and O'Shea Jackson's character come into play. And then you have Carrie Russell and her daughter who she and a friend went out into the forest after skipping school. Carrie Russell finds out that's where she is and she goes to try to rescue her. You have a group of punks who have been terrorizing hikers, and then you just have some other hikers and park rangers who just happened to be there and get thrown into the mix as well. So you have these interweaving storylines, which I always find entertaining because once one storyline gets boring, you move to the next one. It's pretty NonStop action throughout the entire movie, not a whole lot of dialogue or story building you really need to get into in this movie. So I think at the core of this movie, if you had to kind of put a scale of killer animal movies, I would put Jaws up there at the very highest. You can be the very highest level a killer animal movies, and at the very bottom, I would put another shark movie like Sharknado, where still in the same category but just completely ridiculous, and in the middle I would put movies like Anaconda and Kujo. So I think that is where Cocaine Bear lands right there in the middle of completely ridiculous but also still grounded in reality to where it doesn't just feel like you're watching something too bizarre the entire time. And the violence in this movie is pretty exaggerated. The kill scenes are pretty gruesome and violent, and there's a lot of blood, some intestines, so it gets pretty intense. And the thing you have to suspend the most belief on is the fact that this bear could take all this cocaine and not die from a heart attack. So aside from that, you end up kind of rooting for the bear. The bear didn't do anything wrong. It stumbled onto the cocaine and then form this addiction and a result of that is just killing everybody get encounters. But the thing I really took away from Cocaine Bear and why I think it's a movie that we need right now in the world, it really came down to the in theater experience. I went into a pack theater on a Thursday night, and everybody there was just wanting to have a good time, and there was also a diverse crowd. I sat next to a woman probably in her late fifties early sixties, somebody I really wouldn't expect to go watch a movie like this, but had a great time. The entire movie was laughing at things and commenting on things, and I think this is a movie that warns that you don't really have to pay attention to the plot, you don't have to focus in on anything and have complete silence. That camaraderie and that laughter add to the experience of this movie, and I think that is what we need. I think my favorite performance was probably O'Shea Jackson, just because I really liked his character. And you have Carrie Russell, who I don't really remember the last thing I saw her in, but you realize that she is a really great actress even in this situation. And I think at the end of the day, this is what we'll separate Cocaine Bear from some other bad movies that may try to replicate this formula of just giving a different animal a different substance, or just putting another animal on cocaine is the fact that they were able to get some really good actors to make this story believable. So aside from the violent nature of this movie, I still wouldn't consider it a horror movie. I would consider it a comedy. And I think when it comes to just making a straight ahead comedy, you're probably going to fail, so you have to add something else. It either has to be a horror comedy an action comedy. There has to be something else to a movie now to resonate with us and actually make us laugh, and this movie did that because of its ridiculous nature and over the top grew some violence, but also adding some jokes in there, adding in some callbacks throughout the movie. I think that made it one of the funniest movies I've seen so far this year and probably will because of that bond it formed with just these strangers. I was in a theater with watching a ridiculous movie. So this is a movie I wasn't expecting to feel this way afterwards, but I think it warranted a Cocaine Bear two, maybe even a Cocaine Bear three. I think they may have something here that'll get audiences and people like me who just want to go and watch something completely turn off your brain. And also that's not so interconnected to a bunch of other movies. And also this movie is only an hour and a half, which I think they probably recognize that there wasn't enough story to make it any longer. Just a plot alone doesn't warrant more than ninety minutes, so I think that was also key into keeping me entertained throughout this entire movie. So as much as I enjoyed this movie, I do feel like it has a little bit of a threshold. Nothing with a plot like this I think would enter the four range on the rating scale. So it's at the very tip top of what a movie like this could be. So for Cocaine Bear, I would give it three point five out of five Double bags. It's time to head down to movie Mike treit Laar Paul. I want to talk about a movie called The Machine. So if you're familiar with the comedian Bert Krisher, who you've probably seen a clip of it on TikTok. But he's a very funny comedian. He is known for getting on stage and ripping off his shirt. And this entire movie called The Machine is based on a story he told in a stand up special and a story that has gone viral. The YouTube video alone has fifty million views on Facebook. This story has forty million views. And it is, as far as he says and as far as I know, based on a true story about a time he robbed a train in Russia with the Russian mafia. So I just love the origin of how this movie came together, going from being a stand up bit and a story that he was known for, and then it turning into a meta comedy where he plays himself. His dad is Mark Hamill aka Luke Skywalker, and it's taking that story and turning to get it into a full theatrical release. So I think, just for him, how exciting I like to see comedians get a chance to be on the big screen. That's inspiring to me. So before I get into more about this movie, here's just a little bit of the machine trailer. You paid money to see my son tell his made up story about robbing a train in Dusha for the million time. It's a true story. Are you the machine man? The party's outside? Twenty three years ago you told the only thing my father ever cared about. This some sort of TikTok prank. I'm about to lose much nation. It's definitely a prank. Clearly that's a fake gun or not, You're coming with me back to Russian Russia. So the movie takes place twenty three years after the original story that inspired it. It's about Bert's character and as a strange father and the past comes to haunt him. There's this Russian person who comes and takes him back to the Motherland to pay for his crimes that he committed when he was in college. So now together him and his father must retrace the steps of his younger self in the midst of a war between a sociopathic crime family while he attempt to find some common ground. So, in real life, this movie and its actual events happened twenty three years ago. Burt was a student at Florida State and he spent a summer abroad in Russia, where apparently he just partied, drank a lot of vodka, got drunk, and somehow met a local mobster and ended up involved in a train robbery. So then twenty years later in this movie, a Russian gangster shows up at his house and then takes him back to Russia. But all of this came because of the stand up bit he did in the comedy special back in twenty sixteen, so from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty three we now have the movie. So that had my interest based on the origins of this movie alone, because this movie is part meta comedy, being that Bert plays himself based on a true story that at least he believes, so whether or not all the details that happened, even as he tells it in the stand up special, are true, we have to take his word and believe that at least most of it is true, probably exaggerated when it comes to stand up comedy. And then I like seeing Mark Hamill play his dad, which I feel like Mark Hamill just gets known for being Luke Skywalker, but he's done a lot of great voice acting work, probably one of the best jokers to ever do it, So I like seeing him in an action comedy like this, and it looks like very over the top, ridiculous action comedy. There are some scenes in this Red Band trailer where Bert accidentally kills a guy and then feels really bad about it afterwards, so it looks like a lot of fun action. Kind of reminds me of nineties comedies from back in the day. Maybe I could see Chris Farley in a role like this where it's just the normal guy who looks like Bert and has to navigate his way through this really crazy situation. And I feel the same way after watching this trailer that I did when I watched a Cocaine Bear trailer. Looks like a bunch of NonStop action, ridiculous comedy in a movie where you don't have to think a lot while watching it. So this movie may be a sleeper pick for the summer blockbuster slate. The Machine comes out on May twenty sixth, twenty three, this week's edition of Movie Bar and that's going to do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta get my listeners shout out of the week this week, I am going over to Instagram and I got a DM from Rebecca Martinez who shout out to Rebecca Martinez for being a frequent listener of the podcast. This is your first listeners shout out, though, because you sent me a DM saying I fully laugh because you said Chris Evans not Chris Hemsworth while referencing Thor And also, I love the humor in Quantum Mania. It's never too late to stop being a dick, So thanks Rebecca for pointing that out. I have a tendency to do that with actors who have the same first name, so Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, I will say those completely wrong for some reason, maybe because they're both in Marvel movies. They're both Chris's. I'm glad you were able to know which one I was actually talking about. I do that also with the tom's Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks. I think before on the podcast somebody called me out for say that Tom Cruise was in Forrest Gump. Obviously I know it was Tom Hanks, so I'm sure that irritates you when you're listening when I get those things wrong, But you know what I have to say. I'm only human, So I hope you have a great rest of your week. Let me know again if you enjoyed the format of this end of the month type episode, and we'll do it again for March because there are so many great movies coming out. Next week I will give my review of Create three, which is one of my most anticipated movies of the year, and then we have the new Screen movie coming out after that, so a lot to look forward to here on the podcast. And until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.