THE BIKERIDERS

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Writer/director Jeff Nichols based this wildly entertaining fact-based movie on photographer Danny Lyon's book, which celebrated the Illinois' Outlaws Motorcycle Club.

Through a fictionalized narrative, "The Bikeriders" makes profound commentary on subjects regarding toxic masculinity, cult mentality, and the role of women amid man's animalistic urges.

Nichols's beautifully formal approach is stunning to look at, and to digest on intellectual and emotional levels.

The Viet Nam War is a constant presence lurking in the film's subtext.

Inspired by a television airing of Marlon Brando's "The Wild One" (1953), truck driver family-man Johnny (Tom Hardy) starts his own motorcycle club, the Vandals.

Johnny goes so far as to adopt Brando's voice and speech patterns. Johnny's whole communal club is based on artifice.

What could go wrong with such a phony foundation for positive social interaction to occur? Add to that a repressed homosexual underpinning, and you've got problems.

In the words of Iggy Pop, "a heavy price for a heavy pose."

Iggy's "Stooges" era song "Down on the Street" makes narrative impact during one of the film's most harrowing sequences.

Real life is hardly as romantic as Hollywood would have you believe.

Johnny bites off more than he can chew as his Vandals Motorcycle Club grows rapidly with multiple chapters around the Midwest.

A hotbed of cult violence breeds like wildfire. Stupid is as stupid does.

Tom Hardy's Johnny hopes to pass his presidential club status on to Benny (Austin Butler), a young hothead adored by Jodie Comer's working class Kathy Bauer character.

It doesn't take much extrapolation to see the connection between motorcycle gangs and pseudo political cults such as the MAGA movement. Racism and sexism are baked into the mindsets of societal outcasts intent of instilling fear in all those they come across.

Primary to Jeff Nichols's brilliant five-act film is the female perspective of its protagonist Kathy.

Jodie Comer gives an Oscar-worthy performance that defies all expectatio

Ms. Comer's mastery of acting craft is astounding — next level stuff. Comer's Midwest exquisite Midwest accent and range of expressive physicalizations are a delight to witness. Wow!

All young aspiring actors should study Jody Comer's superb work.

Tom Hardy and Austin Butler have their hands full keeping up with Jodie Comer.

"The Bikeriders" is an actor's actors movie by far and away.

Rated R. 114 mins.

MADE IN SHEFFIELD

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The industrial city of Sheffield, England was the birthplace for the electronic pop explosion of cool post punk bands such as "Vice Versa," "The Human League," "Heaven 17," "ABC,” and "Cabaret Voltaire."

Slick style and a rejection of cultural limitations at hand, these daring musicians created a utopian attitude of romanticized clarity and precision. 

Songs pulse, heat up, and grow on an international level in a bastion of fearless creativity. Here is an essential chapter of musical history brought to relevant life and context in fun documentary.   

In this enthusiastic, if brief documentary (it clocks in at only 52 minutes), filmmaker Eve Wood charts the lineage of musicians whose music inspired modern-day bands such as "Stereolab," "Ladytron," "Client," and "Peaches."

Through insightful interviews with band members (such as Phil Oakey of The Human League), and rare live performance footage, "Made In Sheffield" fills an essential period that linked Punk to the British New Wave with bands intent on destroying rock music.

Interview subjects such as the late John Peel, The Human League’s Phil Oakey and Ian Craig Marsh, and music critic Andy Gill shed light on the indispensable influence of Sheffield’s electronic music scene. This thrilling documentary is an important film for any serious music lover to learn about the origins of a time and place where musical creativity ran wild. Perhaps the best thing about this essential documentary is that it might inspire new audiences to discover this music, and perhaps be inspired to create original music of their own.

Not rated. 52 mins.

 

NICO 1988

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Writer-director Susanna Nicchiarelli crafts a brief biopic about Velvet Underground legend Nico that is at turns inspired, frustrating, thrilling, and inchoate. Trine Dryholm’s unvarnished performance holds the film together with a weathered beauty teetering on the edge of an abyss that only her drug-addled character can see.

One element missing from the film is any regard for the stunning beauty of Nico’s youth — she worked as a model — who captured the hearts, minds, and libidos of Jackson Browne, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, Brian Jones, Jimmy Page, and notably Alain Delon with whom she had a son named Ari. Never mind that Delon never claimed the child who Nico abandoned when he was four-years-old.

Dryholm embodies the tone-deaf chanteuse with the same nihilistic charisma that Lou Reed freely exhibited for most of his career. Nico clearly copped Reed’s heroin habit and refused to ever let it go. Her fascination with death comes through in the songs of her later career as featured in the film.

Audiences unfamiliar with Nico’s ‘60s era collaborations with Reed and The Velvet Underground, under the guidance of Andy Warhol, receive no hand-holding in this film. If you don’t already know the haunting sound of Nico’s baritone European accented voice on the songs “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “Femme Fatal,” or “Sunday Morning,” then you’ve got some homework to do.

Living a junkie existence with a band of amateur musicians, save a classically trained violinist, Nico (real name Christa Päffgen) performs for small audiences around Eastern Europe. Border crossings pose imminent danger. She hates the communist youths that risk jail to host her performance. She also loathes her fans, especially if they appear in the guise of naïve young women.  

We get that Nico was a child of war; she carries around a portable recorder to capture source sounds from the environments she visits, in the hope of rediscovering the sound of Berlin being bombed when she was a tyke. Nico longs for annihilation.

Ultimately, “Nico 1988” fails because it never convinces the audience as to why we should empathize with this brutal person. That Nicchiarelli omits the moment of Nico’s lonely death on a bicycle in Ibiza, comes across as laziness on the part of the filmmaker. “Nico 1988” is a solid showcase for Trine Dryholm but it doesn’t make a case for Nico’s music. 

Rated R. 99 mins.