Aubrey Plaza

Christopher Abbott

Sarah Gadon

Paola Lázaro

Grantham Coleman

Lindsay Burdge

Lou Gonzalez

Shannon O'Neill

Alexander Koch

Jennifer Kim

Kevin Barker

Mary Borrello

Rob Turbovsky

Haitao Zeng

Lawrence Michael Levine

Julie Christeas

Jonathan Blitstein

Richard J. Bosner

Sophia Takal

Matthew L. Weiss

Tracy Dishman

Jennifer Durban

Allison Pearce

Stephen Harrod

Paul Losada

Marina Grasic

Jai Khanna

William G. Santor

Andrew Chang-Sang

John Hills

Robert Leitzell

Bryan Scary

Giulio Carmassi

Allison Estrin

Henry Russell Bergstein

Jenn Gaw

Bruno Vernaschi

Hilton Jamal Day

Dominic Martin

Jesy Odio

Chazz Menendez

Leo Giannopoulis

Chelsea Mahr

Jesse Coyote Sanchez-Strauss

Rob Agulo

Gianna Llewellyn

Nikki Maltezos

Sarah Scepansky

Kirsten Lee Houck

Eliot Marzano

Erin LaSorsa

Jeanne Goehring

Tommy Mitchell

Roselani Goehring

Stephen Phelps

Alanna Wray McDonald

Josie Rodriguez

Elizabeth Fox

Kekepania Vasquez-Tamali'i

Neha Simon

Katie Grant

Patricia Beaury

Wesley Swanson III

Derek Sexton Horani

Theo Johnson

Daniel Hourihan

Trevor Hart

Adam McClellan

Karl Williams Jr.

Ariadne Figueroa

Emma Dornewass

Kris Hurysz

Hans Augustave

Héctor Vargas

Don Fuller

Cat Long

Michelle Paulucci

Lou Pecora

Kath Raisch

Ben White

Anna Kelman

Raymond Calderon

Chase Comming

Dylan Suchesk

Lewis Goldstein

Tom Ryan

Andrew Mastronardi

Vinny Alfano

Teddy Blanks

Drama

Thriller

Black Bear

Blue Creek Pictures

Oakhurst Entertainment

Tandem Pictures

United States of America

English

Español

jealousy

love triangle

pregnancy

dark comedy

writer's block

cabin in the woods

filmmaking

house guest

lake house

a movie within a movie within a movie. epic... except it's not

I do want to see Aubrey Plaza in more lead roles though

Aubrey Plaza is terrific in this!

<em>'Black Bear'</em> is intriguing from beginning to end. I did find the first half to be the stronger and most interesting part, though the conclusion is still fairly captivating all the same. As noted, Plaza is excellent throughout - she carries the film, no doubt. Christopher Abbott has a few moments, while it's neat to see <em>'<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_(TV_series)" rel="nofollow">The Walking Dead</a>'</em> newcomer Paola Lázaro involved.

I’d really like to like Black Bear. I actually was really liking it a lot, even enjoying it, right up to the halfway point, where the whole thing comes crashing down faster than Kevin Spacey’s career.

Black Bear is divided into two parts; The Bear on the Road, and The Bear by the House (let’s call them BB1 and BB2); both parts end with the appearance of the titular Ursus americanus, but could very well have ended with a sign saying ‘Dead End’.

In a remote lake house in the Adirondacks, Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Blair (Sarah Gadon), welcome Allison (Aubrey Plaza), an up-and-coming film director. Like the stereotypical artists, these three are creative and intelligent, but also childish and belligerent.

Allison is a bald-faced pathological liar, Gabe is immature and manipulative, and Blair doesn’t let her pregnancy get in the way of a burgeoning alcoholism (the casting, by the way, is spot-on). Their interactions are fraught with patronizing passive-aggressiveness.This is plain good ol’ rubbernecking fun. The dialogue is both obscene and highbrow(I especially enjoyed the use of the word “solipsistic”), but sadly the biggest insult, to the audience’s intelligence, takes the form of a cliffhanger —for lack of a better term — that segues into BB2.The second half is a meta-textual quagmire wherein there’s a movie-within-the-movie, but that inner movie isn’t really the movie we were watching thus far, so presumably there’s a hypothetical third movie buried somewhere in this conceptual nightmare.

If BB1 was a about a train wreck from which we could not take our eyes off, BB2 is just a train wreck, period. The only quality that crosses over from the first half is the acting, which is probably even better — but that just makes me feel sorry for the cast.

All things considered, what we have here are two drafts of the same admittedly good idea, which doesn’t equal a single finished product. Instead of going back to the drawing board, the writer/director has simply opted to present the same underdeveloped premise twice in a row, both times neglecting to come up with a proper conclusion.

LIVING ROOM Q&As: Black Bear star Aubrey Plaza hosted by Hanna Flint

BLACK BEAR - Q&A | Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon | Film Independent Presents

Black Bear( 2020)

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A review by tmdb15435519

Written by tmdb15435519 on Thu Apr 15 2021

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