Drama

Thriller

Black Bear

Blue Creek Pictures

Oakhurst Entertainment

Tandem Pictures

United States of America

English

Español

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

Jonathan Blitstein

Julie Christeas

Richard J. Bosner

Sophia Takal

Tracy Dishman

Matthew L. Weiss

Jennifer Durban

Paul Losada

Stephen Harrod

Allison Pearce

Marina Grasic

Jai Khanna

Andrew Chang-Sang

John Hills

Rob Leitzell

William G. Santor

Chazz Menendez

Bruno Vernaschi

Jesse Coyote Sanchez-Strauss

Rob Agulo

Henry Russell Bergstein

Hilton Jamal Day

Jesy Odio

Sarah Scepansky

Bryan Scary

Leo Giannopoulis

Chelsea Mahr

Gianna Llewellyn

Stephen Phelps

Nikki Maltezos

Jeanne Goehring

Allison Estrin

Erin LaSorsa

Giulio Carmassi

Dominic Martin

Eliot Marzano

Jenn Gaw

Tommy Mitchell

Roselani Goehring

Kirsten Lee Houck

Alanna Wray McDonald

Elizabeth Fox

Héctor Vargas

Karl Williams Jr.

Kris Hurysz

Katie Grant

Trevor Hart

Neha Simon

Ariadne Figueroa

Derek Sexton Horani

Daniel Hourihan

Kekepania Vasquez-Tamali'i

Wesley Swanson III

Emma Dornewass

Patricia Beaury

Josie Rodriguez

Theo Johnson

Adam McClellan

Hans Augustave

Lou Pecora

Raymond Calderon

Teddy Blanks

Tom Ryan

Vinny Alfano

Cat Long

Michelle Paulucci

Ben White

Kath Raisch

Anna Kelman

Lewis Goldstein

Chase Comming

Don Fuller

Andrew Mastronardi

Dylan Suchesk

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

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Black Bear

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Aubrey Plaza

Christopher Abbott

Sarah Gadon

Paola Lázaro

Grantham Coleman

Lindsay Burdge

Lou Gonzalez

Shannon O'Neill

Alexander Koch

Jennifer Kim

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