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Reviews
The Bikeriders (2023)
As drama and sociology, it succeeds admirably
As with mobster movies Like "Goodfellas" and "Donnie Brasco," the motorcycle gang genre provides crime drama and, at its best, insight into why members of outlaw organizations do what they do. "The Bikeriders" is such a film. It's about motorcycles, all right, but it's also about the interplay of friendship and crime. Set in Chicago during 1965-73, this somewhat fictionalized account of the life and times of a real Chicago-based biker gang, the Vandals, as chronicled in a late-60s book by journalist Danny Lyon, presents a classic character paradox: often repellent yet occasionally endearing. Like "The Sons of Anarchy" and Hunter S. Thompson's book on the Hell's Angels, the Vandals flip the bird at the rules of respectable society yet brutally impose their own rules on members. Group loyalty is everything. Nobody rides for free. Someone messes with one of your members, you retaliate ten times as hard. Yet on some level, these reprobates are looking for absolution.
Tom Hardy and Austin Butler, respectively, alpha dog and wing man, lead this cast of Bad Boys in their quest for speed, power, combat and comraderie and direction as a corrective to their own directionless lives. Hardy, who does his best Marlon Brando (his character early in the film can be seen watching a clip from a TV rerun of "The Wild One" with his wife and kids, is convincing, as much as his work in the British true-life crime flick of several years ago, "The Krays." Butler is as tough and charismatic as he was a couple years ago starring in Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis." The conflicts with rival bikers and with their wives (Butler's wife grows exasperated to the point of giving her husband an "it's them or me" ultimatum). Michael Shannon does a great supporting turn as a wild-eyed redneck member.
Interspersed at various points is a young journalist, a Danny Lyon-like character, conducting interviews with various members and wives, getting them to open up about their desires and insecurities. In other words, the movie can be seen as a documentary about how the book was written as well as a saga of the rise of a gang. It's also a series of character sketches on why loyalty and violence so often go hand in hand. Director Jeff Nichols ("Mud," "Take Shelter") knows this territory well.
The Vandals are Old Guard. Money and fame interest them far less than friendship and unlimited freedom. By contrast, their challengers for dominance, an upstart bunch of much younger punk bikers more obsessed with criminal empire-building.
Let it be known that I abhor what criminals do. But there are reasons for their behavior and their cynicism toward the straight world that doesn't have much use for them. "The Bikeriders" doesn't put a halo around the heads of the Vandals. And it shows how a biker's life expectancy can be short. But it also shows why misfits are capable of redemption. For these reasons, the film should not be missed.
Back to Black (2024)
A classic music biopic, up there with "Love and Mercy"
The reviews coming in thus far have been "meh." I think this assessment mistaken. The all too brief life of Amy Winehouse is superbly told. Those who complain that the movie focuses too much on her personal life, and not enough on her music, miss the point. Her personal life WAS her music, the source of her artistic identity as well as her personal volatility and decline. The music, drawn from various pop, jazz and soul female singers, felt very real. It would have been impossible to do justice to the subject without depicting the intertwined worlds of love-starved woman and singer-songwriter.
As with any biopic, the power of the movie rises or falls on the main subject. And Marisa Abela gets the details of Amy's voice, body language and spoken language right. Winehouse's emotional neediness comes through in her songs. Director Samantha Taylor-Johnson ("50 Shades") is unafraid to capture the erotic electricity between Amy and Blake. The supporting cast, especially the great Leslie Manville, is on the money, too. And of course, there is the music. I don't who her backing band is, but they sounded pretty tight to me.
Yes, Amy Winehouse was a train wreck waiting to happen. But those trains carried a lot of valuable cargo. It's to the credit of the makers of the movie that they revealed the contents of that cargo.
Golda (2023)
The right lady for the right moment in time
"Golda" is an example of a biopic subgenre that could be called a "crisis biopic." Like "Jackie," "13 Days" and "Darkest Hour," it focuses on a brief but defining set of events in the life of a major historical figure. And with the great Helen Mirren playing the lead (with the help of some Oscar-worthy makeup/prosthetics artists), it succeeds admirably, capturing the existential crisis facing Golda Meir -- and the Israeli people -- during the days leading up to the Yom Kippur War of October 1973 and then the war itself.
You can feel the toll that the war was taking on the lady, especially in her strategizing with her generals and politicians. Make no mistake; had Israel lost the war -- and yes, the Soviet-armed Egypt was the invader -- it would have ceased to exist. The in-person and phone scenes with Meir and Kissinger (played by Liev Schreiber) are classic, not just for the acting, but for its depiction of an age-old reality: Nation-states have interests, not alliances. Israel and the U. S. had distinctly varying interests. This is realpolitik hardball -- genteel hardball yes, but hardball all the same. The ending shows, accurately, that Golda Meir was far more instrumental in creating the groundwork for the Camp David Agreement that most people realize.
See "Golda" for the drama, not just the history lesson.
No Hard Feelings (2023)
Seductive but not in the way you think
If ever there was an example of why we should ignore the trailer and see the movie, "No Hard Feelings" is a prime example. The trailer suggested a fatuous, Eighties-style one-joke comedy and a hard-to-believe resolution. But the movie -- the whole thing, that is -- is a highly engaging variation on identity confluence in which two highly dissimilar characters realize that they had more in common they they had thought and, more importantly, fill the missing blanks in each other's life. Think of Robert DeNiro and Billy Crystal's wiseguy and shrink characters in "Analyze This."
Jennifer Lawrence's character in "No Hard Feelings" achieves that same sense. An early-30s, lower-middle-class local bartender in the rich man's playground of Montauk, Long Island whose past relationships with men have a way of tumbling down, she's about to get a lesson in housing foreclosure unless she come up with an idea for raising money fast. Spotting an ad placed by wealthy parents of a precocious , insular 19-year-old, Princeton-bound lad stuck in a shell and, needless to say, hasn't lost his virginity, she shows up at their luxury home, and gets the lowdown from Mom and Pop. "Date" him. This young guy needs lessons. Mrs. Robinson-style. Their initial rendevous occurs at his place of employment -- a pet shop. Repeated attempts at seduction ensue. That things don't according to plan is a given. But it's HOW the plan goes awry that makes the film so interesting. She's a woman who has too much independence and no real anchor; he's a man who has never known independence and no real anchor.
Does our young dork get laid? Well, I won't spoil things for you. But in the end Lawrence's character realizes that she's been living in a shell, too, though of a much different kind. And her ticket to realization is her target, er, young man. The movie ends with a moving van and a promising new life for each, though not together.
There are a few moments in which the "cute" overtakes the real -- this is a rom-com, after all. But the writing is quite good, indeed as good as any rom-com starring the cool Vince Vaughn. Forget the frequent f-bombs; the film is a sophisticated pleasure.
Marlowe (2022)
Not great, but it will do.
I saw "Marlowe" last night, and while not bowled over, the film was an inventive update of the main character Philip Marlowe by Irishman Neil Jordan ("The Crying Game, "In Dreams"). It certainly deserves a more favorable response that what we've seen so far from critics and wannabe critics. While a few notches below the gold standard of latter-day film noir -- think of "L. A. Confidential," "Sin City," and "Nightmare Alley" -- overall the storyline holds up; the cinematography is excellent; and fellow Irishmen Liam Neeson is convincing as a lead. Yes, I know. The principal photography was shot in Dublin and Barcelona; this isn't Los Angeles, now or then. And this isn't the first time the Philip Marlow character has made the large screen. Overall, however, this is an enjoyable, middleweight crime drama.