LOGLINE: The 1960s set “The Bikeriders,” a new drama starring Jodie Comer, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy, and now playing in theatres, is about the rise and descent into lawlessness of The Vandals, a motorcycle club founded as a surrogate family for its members.
CAST: Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, and Norman Reedus. Written and directed by Jeff Nichols.
REVIEW: “The Bikeriders,” based on a 1967 photo-book of the same name by Danny Lyon, wants to be an ode to individuality, but lacks the grit and spirit of rebellion required to feel authentic. It does do a good job of essaying the evolution of motorcycle clubs from groups of outsiders who didn’t belong anywhere—except with one another—their loyalty and camaraderie, to criminal organizations that used fear and illegality as currency.
As a timeline of how male bonding turned toxic within this subculture, the sociological history lesson is interesting, but director Jeff Nichols allows the biker aesthetic and posturing to overshadow the nitty gritty of biker gang life. It’s more effective in its portrayal of how this shift in culture affects the leader of the gang, Johnny, played by Tom Hardy. He becomes a tragic figure when he realizes his club is out of control, and legacy is not what he intended.
Using the chatty narration of Jodie Comer as Kathy, wife of the sensitive but rebellious rider Benny (Austin Butler), as a framework, Nichols injects a different and welcome point-of-view to the story. Biker movies often treat female characters as afterthoughts, but Kathy is the hub from which the story emanates. This is essentially a love story, a story of the platonic love between the bikers, and Kathy’s almost unquestioning love of wild child Benny. It’s a showcase for Comer and her plain-spoken mid-western accent, allowing the “Killing Eve” star to reveal the personality layers of someone who says, wistfully, “I used to be respectable.”
The episodic “The Bikeriders” plays it by the rules to tell a story about people who don’t.
“Challengers,” a new love triangle movie from director Luca Guadagnino, starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, and set against the backdrop of the world of sports, gives new meaning to the term “love” as it applies to a tennis score.
The story focusses on three tennis players, the hardworking Art (Faist), the wild child Patrick (O’Connor) and the ultra-competitive Tashi (Zendaya). “She’s in another league,” Patrick says of her all-or-nothing style of play.
The guys have been friends forever, and are very close, to the point that when they meet Tashi, and ask for her number, she declines, thinking they are a couple. “I’m not a home wrecker,” she says.
She finally relents, promising to hand over the digits to whoever takes the next tennis match.
The story then leaps to-and-fro from their teens, twenties and thirties, to portray Art and Patrick as rivals, on the court and in a shared love for Tashi.
This is a Guadagnino movie, after all, so, once again, as he has shown in movies like “I Am Love,” “Bones and All” and, most famously, “Call Me By Your Name,” he delves into themes of desire and identity through the lens of complex relationships.
Their complicated pasts come to a head in the present as Art, a pro player on a losing streak, accepts a low-level Phil’s Tire Town Challenger match against the washed-up, sleeping-in-his-car Patrick. In the middle of it all is Tashi, Patrick’s former girlfriend and Art’s current wife.
“You don’t know what tennis is,” Tashi tells Patrick. “It’s a relationship.”
Relationships are at the heart of “Challengers.” Whether it’s with one another or with the game, the movie is fueled by the passion of fevered relationships. On and off the court the trio are fierce players who rely on the sparks that fly between them to keep the flames of competition alive. It’s a ménage à trois of interchangeable power games, mind games and tennis gameplay in which the power dynamics are batted back-and-forth, just like in a tennis match.
Guadagnino’s tennis scenes are shot with flair. Sometimes it feels as though the camera is attached to the player’s rackets, other times the ball rockets towards the lens in a yellow blur. But as exciting as those scenes are—the climax is pulse racing—this isn’t about the sport. It’s about the thing that makes them good at the sport. The passion for life and for winning.
“Challengers” is a flirty, intimate and indulgent film, often shot in intense close-ups as the actors invade one another’s personal space. Guadagnino rarely strays away from his leads, who match the director’s intensity, theatricality and seductiveness. The combination makes for a playfully exhilarating story, accentuated by an effervescent techno score courtesy of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, that is unlike almost any other sports movie ever made.
The list of films Hollywood considers sacred and untouchable is a short one. Only a bugger for punishment would attempt a redo of “The Godfather.” And imagine the jeers that would accompany the announcement of a reimagined “Casablanca” or “Do the Right Thing.”
Until recently I would have put “West Side Story,” the classic 1961 musical that won ten Academy Awards, in the top five of films on the No Go list. But just as that show riffed on “Romeo and Juliet,” a classic if there ever was one, Steven Spielberg takes another look at a memorable movie the TCM crowd considers untouchable.
Set in 1950s New York City, the story of love at first sight is plays out against a backdrop of the gentrification of the Upper West Side, a then blue-collar neighborhood. Two gangs, the Puerto Rican Sharks and the Jets, the “Last of the Can’t Make It Caucasians,” run the streets as the NYC Department of Slum Clearance chop up their home turf. The only thing they have in common is a “womb to tomb” membership motto.
Into this comes Tony and Maria (Ansel Elgort and newcomer Rachel Zegler), star-crossed lovers whose infatuation causes friction between the gangs. “You’re going to start World War III,” says Anita (Ariana DeBose).
Tony’s best friend Riff (Mike Faist) runs the nativist white Jets—“Everything is being taken over by people I don’t like,” he sneers.—while Maria’s brother Bernardo (David Alvarez) leads the Sharks.
Tony is on parole for almost beating a boy to death in a rumble, but has turned over a new leaf. “I want to unlike myself,” he says, “because I was headed to the sewer.” He also puts to rest the notion that “once you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way.” He wants out of that life, but most of all, he wants Maria.
As Riff and Bernardo plan a rumble to viciously work out their differences, Maria begs Tony to put an end to the violence. “We can’t pretend what we do didn’t cause this trouble,” she says. Tony intervenes, but the situation quickly spirals out of control.
Steven Spielberg’s take on “West Side Story” feels rooted in the tradition of movie musicals but vibrates with current themes. The social mindfulness that was revolutionary for musical theatre in the 1950s Broadway run is present and expanded on. Tony Kushner’s script offers context and backstories for underdeveloped characters and plays on hot button themes of racial animus, poverty and violence.
Most of all, however, it’s about love.
It’s love that causes all the trouble but also gives the movie its beating heart. As the couple in question Elgort and Zegler are appealing, wide-eyed romantic figures. Zegler is a convincing swirl of determination and innocence, with a beautiful voice. Elgort can wrap his mouth around Stephen Sondheim’s lovely lyrics—”Maria, say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying”—but doesn’t shine as bright as some of his co-stars.
As Bernardo, Alvarez brings the menace, smooth charm and athletic dance moves to steal his scenes. Faist also impresses as hardheaded gang leader Riff. DeBose gives a high stepping performance as Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita, a role that grows more poignant in the movie’s third act.
But it’s a returning cast member from the 1961 film who gives the movie its soul.
Rita Moreno won an Oscar for playing Anita in the original. Here she plays drug mart operator Valentina. Kushner expands the role, making the character the conscience of the neighborhood. She is luminous in the part, and, in a major departure from the 1961 film, does a solo rendition of “Somewhere,” a song of hope usually sung by the romantic leads. Here it is devastating, played as song of longing and loss. If my goosebumps voted for the Academy Awards, Moreno would have another statue to put on her shelf.
“West Side Story” is Spielberg’s most compelling film in years. It reinvents, reimagines and recontextualizes a classic story with energy, respect and lots of finger snapping.
