TH
COMPELLING DRAMATIZATION CREATED FROM BIKER CLUB STILL PHOTOGRAPHY AND AUDIO NARRATIVE FROM INTERVIEWS
The motorcycle club exists because of the riders love for their bikes and love for riding.
Director Jeff Nichols adapts a screenplay from a book of photographs and audio interviews of bike riders in the dramatization of a true story in The Bikeriders (2024)
Jodie Comer creates the narrative device as Kathy Bayer who is interviewed about the Vandals Motorcycle Club of Chicago, Illinois in 1975.
For openers, Kathy spots the ‘good looking guy at the pool table’ in a love at first sight occurrence that just needs to be pushed and cajoled a bit before the love birds get married five weeks later.
Austin Butler is Benny, ‘the good looking guy at the pool table’ who knows he has found his match and waits for Kathy to come out of the bar to give her a ride home late at night.
Tom Hardy slides in at the bar as well, as club founder, Johnny Davis.
Davis and his pals had been spending free time away with family and friends racing motorbikes around a dirt track until he gets inspired by Marlon Brando in the Wild One (1953) to form a bikeriders club.
The guys and their families belonged to a racing club. And now the guys and their families belonged to a bikeriders club.
Comer continues to compel the narrative forward by providing a voice over when the bikeriders take over the scenes. Kathy provides an outline for the camera to follow as she explains the history of the Vandals during the interview.
The original true story has been told through photographs and audio interviews by Danny Lyon. Mike Faist plays Lyon controlling the tone and atmosphere of the scenes.
Every so often, director Nichols shifts from the dramatization of the story Kathy is telling Lyon to the actual interview taking place 10 years later in California.
This second narrative subtly shifts the story to a documentary tone and atmosphere, which are really also dramatizations, except dramatizations of the interview.
Nuanced aesthetics are created by shifting back and forth between the genres while also framing the outside architecture and capturing the detailed interior conditions of sets.
The motorcycles and cars of the era add a subtle layer of aesthetics, while the camera does not forget the little details like the stubby beer bottles drank by the boys and the delicate cardigans worn by the girls.
The picnics and campouts and/or beer fests organized by the bikerider club are used as plot reversals as the popularity of the Vandals spreads across the American Midwest and new characters and side stories enter the storyline.
The camera allows enough time for the actors to develop the characters without becoming too static before more action adventure compels the narrative forward.
Jodie Comer has mastered the independent, tough minded but devoted love bird, while Austin Butler has redefined cool and independence, with little subtle mannerisms like the way he smokes cigarettes.
The other characters have these little endearing characteristics as well like Kathy being at times as tough as a biker by popping off the caps of beer bottles but at the same time wanting to be this devoted wife wearing a rose coloured cardigan over a purple blouse to keep warm in those poor Chicago neighbourhoods.
Tom Hardy has an ultimate transformation into a character that is simultaneously intellectually interesting, in terms of what motivates him to lead the club, and worthy, as in tough enough, to be followed by the other bikeriders.
Kathy has the most to say, being interviewed for Lyon’s book, but the other characters say a lot without speaking much. Nichols does a good job in keeping the camera on the characters just long enough to create a connection.
Davis must lead with reason and sensibility without showing any weaknesses, since one of the rules that binds everyone together is that anyone can challenge Davis for the leadership, if they disagree with a decision he has made for the club.
Hardy shows Davis as a genuinely straight forward leader that does not reveal his emotions but who nonetheless has appropriate emotional responses to his environment. Davis shows his strength to a challenger by offering them the choice of fighting with ’fists or knives’. Sometimes the challenger decides on fists, and sometimes the challenger decides on knives.
Nichols follows the original club members until the original founding ideas of the club are no longer relevant, as more and more criminal elements enter the club.
Overall, the script is an interesting description of one chapter in America’s history that does not rest entirely on aesthetics or realism or authentic props and motorcycles and cars – which reflects the interesting character composition of the original bikeriders.
The Bikeriders is streaming on Apple.
BUTLER BREAKS ROCK & ROLL TYPECAST
Director Denis Villeneuve explores the love interest while simultaneously building tension for the battle scenes.
The narrative is interrupted by desert militia attacks on the spice harvesters. These small skirmishes introduce the unique fighting techniques and military equipment to be used in a future battle with the House of Harkonnen.
Chalamet and Zendaya share a lot of screen time. And the actors are cast well together as the individual characters develop simultaneously with the love relationship. Chani is an independent desert fighter from whom Paul learns a bit better technique. And coincidently, Chani and Paul fall in love in the process.
Villeneuve maintains Paul as almost subordinate to Chani and the Fremen people as he learns to survive in the desert from them. But similarly to the original film, Paul is a quick learner, and eventually exceeds all expectations in achieving the training milestones.
Zendaya creates a three dimensional character that the audience can connect with before having to step back a bit as Chalamet’s character becomes more and more the leading protagonist figure fulfilling the prophecy.
Austin Butler has a recuring presence in the film as Feyd-Rautha. Butler does a good job of breaking the type-cast as a rock and roll star to play Feyd-Rautha.
Butler develops a special voice again to play the character, while the hair and make-up department and stage lighting alter his appearance just enough not to resemble his previous starring character.
Feyd-Rautha has been groomed to replace his father. The film’s antagonist gradually shows his skills as a fighter and the internal desire to do so a bit earlier than expected. Butler creates a passive aggressive character waiting for his time to shine, while also hiding a lot of hubris that eventually bubbles to the surface.
The film is compelled forward with the development of characters and relationships that all have a much more elaborate, yet untold, backstory.
Villeneuve applies an equally compelling layer of aesthetics with the rich gold and yellows and browns of the desert world, with ocean blue accents for the off-world motif. The dangerous isolation of the planet is almost immediately apparent with the tone and atmosphere created in part by the pleasing layer of aesthetics.
CAST UNDERSCORES HEROES FIGHTING IN THE SKIES OVER EUROPE FACING DEATH
The allied bombing raids inside Nazi occupied Europe took a heavy toll on the lives of the airmen operating the B-17 Flying Fortresses.
The personal sacrifices were often only balanced by the camaraderie among the crews and the relationships that would be remembered beyond a lifetime in the Apple TV+ Original streaming series, Masters of the Air (2024).
Austin Butler as Major Gale “Buck” Cleven, Callum Turner as Major John “Bucky” Egan, Anthony Boyle as Lt Harry Crosby, Barry Keoghan as Lt. Curtis Bibbick and Bel Powley as Sandra Westgate represent the cast of thousands of heroic characters defending democracy and freedom during World War II.
Directors Cary Joji Fukunaga (4 episodes) and Anna Boden (2 episodes) get the series underway with the first 6 of 9 episodes as the crews of the B-17 organize and find out just how horribly difficult the missions will be for them.
Dozens of crews join a single bombing run from England to inside Germany, but few planes return to the homebase.
Episodes vary in runtime from 48 minutes to 77 minutes, but each installment is filled with poignant moments detailing the best of humanity and the worst of what can occur during a global war.
Executive producers Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg bring to life the 100th Bomb Group of B-17 Flying Fortresses, based on a book by Donald L. Miller, who relied on letters and interviews of the surviving airmen.
The 100th is the third in a series, following Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010).
The directors gradually release the shocking casualty rate as the number of planes available and crews for repeat missions become drastically diminished.
Director Boden reverses the plot in Episode 6 when the Prisoner of War camps inside German occupied Europe are revealed to be specifically for the thousands of lost flight crew members that survived their crashing planes during bombing runs.
The narrative then follows the surviving airmen, as a few members of the100th reunite in the camps, and begin to learn to survive together all over again for a different purpose.
Austin Butler plays the senior officer in the 100th who is presumed killed when his plane does not return from a mission. But Major John “Bucky” Egan, played by Callum Turner, reunites with “Buck” Cleven as he arrives at the Stalag Luft III during August of 1944.
The D-Day Landings are being planned by Episode 8, showing the preparation work in bombing the German airfields in France prior to the allied landings on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.
Butler and Truner show how the airmen had strong individual personalities, but that they were united in the cause to liberate Europe, and they thereby followed the military chain of command, although begrudgingly at times.
The directors develop the characters through many scenes of the first few episodes, and then begin to sparingly trigger emotional responses as the airmen struggle with the loss of their comrades, while other flight officers find joy in being reunited with lost airmen, although within dire circumstances as the long brutal war slowly draws to a conclusion.
Masters of the Air underscores the strength of character of the thousands of airmen that heroically took part in the battle of the skies over Europe.
EXCITEMENT OF GLOBAL SUPERSTAR RECREATED WITH AUTEUR STYLE IN SYNC WITH ROCK & ROLL
The Elvis Presley story has been told and retold and spun more often than not into a parody.
But director Baz Luhrmann takes just a few seconds to indicate to the next generation of Elvis fans that the
2hr 39 minute film runtime will be something quite different in Elvis (2022).
The music biographical film stars Austin Butler as Elvis Presley.
Luhrmann films from the perspective of Elvis’ long time promotor, Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks.
A voice over by Hanks, as Parker, is frequently used to underscore that the perspective of the camera is that of the carny huckster that came to promote the first and possibly greatest global rock star.
Parker began his promoting career as part of the travelling carnivals in Tennessee and the American south that blended circus tricks, amusement rides and music performances, and a bit of vaudeville.
This carny theme recurs throughout the film with shots of the Presley family home in Memphis overrun by a kind of the carnival atmosphere, including fans pressing at the mansion gates and the evolving shapes of go-carts driven in circuit on the front lawn of Graceland to indicate the passage of time where nothing else changes.
Luhrmann’s task is clear: to portray a pop culture icon whose impression has barely been faded from the collective consciousness even though his presence has passed long ago.
The director uses satire to spin the desire for international fame and the corresponding unimaginable riches into something ever so slightly more real than a comic book.
Multi-media collages of newspaper headlines and banner notification are pasted over early scenes as if the film’s producers are avid fans of scrapbooking.
In this way, the director mirrors the rapid ascent of Elvis from the draw of carny visitors to the Louisiana Hayride to the impact of performances in front of global television audiences.
Luhrmann also uses film montage scenes to accelerate the passage of movie time through important moments of the world famous biography.
The narrative begins with Elvis as a child in poverty stricken Tennessee running into childhood adventure and finding the early influences on his career of black gospel and black rhythm and blues music.
Elvis would become the world’s first global rock star by fusing the influences from black culture and black music with white country music, including the physical movement and dance of black performers.
Luhrmann shows that these black influences compelled the music and artistry of Elvis as a showman into the popular mainstream where black artists had still not been accepted.
Elvis also found his own style in the singing joints on Beale Street in Memphis, where he would mingle among the audiences drawn in by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, B.B. King and Little Richard.
Yola plays Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Kelvin Harris plays B.B. King, and Alton Mason, Little Richard.
The script though is more complicated than another modern musical biopic about superstars struggling personally with their own demons.
To Elvis, family is always important, and he creates family and maintains family through his rockstar career, but then he consequentially becomes heartbroken by the loss of his mother and the separation from his beautiful wife and young daughter.
Olivia De Jonge plays Elvis’ wife, Priscilla, while Helen Thomson plays mother, Gladys Presley, and Richard Roxburgh plays Elvis’ father, Vernon.
Luhrmann makes the racial conflict in the United States at the time of the Civil Rights Movement a recuring theme throughout the film, with Elvis revisiting the black musical establishments on Beale Street after obtaining fame and fortune. Scenes are dedicating to the life of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King and United States Presidential Candidate Bobby Kennedy, and on how their assassinations affected Elvis.
Through these real moments of Americana, Elvis continues on as the personification of America in decline, with the director using a satirical tone to push the script ever so gently toward surrealism.
Elvis had all the fame and fortune one could wish for, but the Elvis Presley Enterprise always found money to be in scarce supply as a business.
Butler totally transforms into Elvis after just a few introductory scenes. Luhrmann seemingly splices in real footage of Elvis to make the transference all the more surreal, with Butler wearing a facial prosthetic for the last performances of Elvis in Las Vegas as an overweight, prescription drug addicted, obviously near death global phenomenon.
Butler captures the public personality of Elvis, drawing in the movie audience as much as the rock star did his millions of fanatical admirers at rock and roll concerts.
Hanks pulls off another iconic transformation by putting on a body suit and facial prosthetic, including a prosthetic nose, to become Parker. But Hanks also acts behind the makeup, shifting through the human emotions while delivering several lines in that Hank’s trademark humor.
The film does seem a bit overdone at certain points in the narrative, particularly at the beginning when the collage becomes distracting after the director had already made the point about comic book superheroes and the real time ability to obtain the real world powers that come with fame and fortune.
Luhrmann also embarks on a career retrospective beginning with the early recordings by Sam Philips at Sun Records and ending with the last Las Vegas shows as part of the five year residency, instead of focusing on one moment in time, such as the four sold out shows at Madison Square Gardens in New York City.
The narrative remains pretty linear but becomes complicated and multidimensional with all the goings on in the real world as well as the global impact of the Elvis phenomena on the world and on Elvis personally.
And Luhrmann seems to purposely keep the cohesion of the film tethered to the end of a long thread, much like Elvis’ meteoric career.
The other problem with the film is that the script more or less retells a well known storyboard of rock star events, such as the ’68 Television Comeback Special and the Las Vegas residency.
And in musicals, the use of a popular music to compel scenes, and the popular music performed in scenes by the biopic character, in place of an original movie score seems like a cheat, whereas an original music score used in a biopic drama to compel the narrative is more powerful.
The fine camera work is artful with many scenes fueled by a type of imagination that may have been influence by other films about this culture in the American south such as the Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and Mississippi Burning (1988).
The camera seamlessly flows from Beale Street into the upper floor windows of the rhythm and blues clubs, as if the director is fulfilling his dreams like little Dorothy in Oz, caught on the edges of a tornado.
And so, the ensemble cast of Australian actors, wearing American country costumes and Memphis metaphysical masks, instead of a cast of American actors from the South, is all the more befitting the international celebrity status that everyone the world over claims a bit as their own.
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