Monday new releases: 8 July 2024

The Bikeriders and 200% Wolf are in cinemas, Fancy Dance is on Apple TV+ and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is on Netflix

Editor’s note

It’s been a real ‘death and taxes’ weekend here. Yesterday, I was one of many who attended a memorial for a friend who passed away unexpectedly while on holiday in Japan a few weeks ago. Only 60 years old. Sobering.

And today is the deadline for my 2024 tax return.

So, I’ve ended up doing a little less watching than usual.

The film that Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders reminded me most of while I was watching was Goodfellas. It’s a similarly episodic examination of a violent subculture, in this case the midwest motorcycle clubs of the late 60s and 70s, and it’s told through a voiceover framing device.

It’s not quite as good as that makes it sound, but it’s certainly not bad. I just found myself wondering through most of it why we needed it right here and right now.

Inspired by Danny Lyon’s pioneering 1968 book of new journalism photography, for which he embedded himself with Chicago’s Outlaws motorcycle club, Nichols’ version centres the character of Kathy (Jodie Comer), wife of one of the early members of the gang/club, Benny (Austin Butler).

It’s her interviews with Lyon (Mike Faist) that form the aforementioned framing device and, because she’s an astute reader of character and not a traditional biker girlfriend, we see gang culture through her unromantic eyes.

For some reason Benny has his own name tattooed on his arm. Is that a thing people do? Your own name, not your mother’s or your girlfriend’s? Perhaps it’s so he can get a clue if he ever forgets who he is, which has sort of happened already.

He lives to ride and not much else and resists attempts by club founder Johnny (Tom Hardy) to become the anointed heir to the poisoned throne. Johnny decided to start the club after watching Marlon Brando in The Wild One and he even seems to have adopted Brando’s voice.

Everyone is good in this film, but Comer is sensational, carrying the emotional weight left behind by all these nihilistic man-babies.

The film tries to make the case that this was a kind of innocent golden age for freedom loving ruffians, before the clubs turned into full-blown criminal enterprises and their loose approach to vetting new recruits – many damaged by exposure to Vietnam War trauma – meant that it was an even less safe environment for women than it had been before.

However, a selection of photos from Lyon’s book that appear during the closing credits suggests that Nichols’ art and costume departments have somewhat sanitised the huge amount of Nazi fetishism that made up the biker aesthetic. These were not misguided innocents, is what I’m saying.

I was previously unaware of the 2020 Aussie animated film 100% Wolf and I’m barely any more aware now, the sequel leaving no kind of lasting impression. It was unable to stop this reviewer from spending most of the duration wondering what to have for lunch.

Based on a book by Jayne Lyons, the first film spawned a spinoff TV series and now a motion picture sequel. Freddie Lupin (Ilai Swindells) is the latest in a long line of werewolves but a mix-up at the moment of his first transition means he now becomes a pink poodle instead of a wolf. The werewolf Night Patrol consider this something of a deficiency and he doesn’t get to have the adventures that the others do.