For their 163rd episode, two leather jacket film critics, two un-helmeted dads, and two wild one teachers, Will Johnson and Don Shanahan, come together for a new release of the summer 2024 movie season. The guys rev themselves up to welcome back writer-director Jeff Nichols with The Bikeriders starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Tom Hardy. Neither of our hosts rides motorcycles, but they came to this movie with their own gassy exhausts and asphalt-rattling rumbling.
Read MoreAmid the ostentatious theatricality of actors making all kinds of noise in The Bikeriders, the other sound the film absolutely nails is the unmistakable deep bass rumble caused the asymmetrical arrangement of firing cylinders in Harley-Davidson engines. One by itself will get your attention. Five rolling together will rattle your windows. A dozen or more churning as a fleet becomes an aural maelstrom. Your selected reaction to that hellacious harmony will be your tinted gateway into Jeff Nichols’ petulant film.
Read MoreEven still, so much of the Dune: Part Two dialogue (a noted dislike of the director) that could be winning hearts and minds is delivered in hushed platitudes. It’s positively wild than one of the loudest movies possible utilizing the biggest film screens the industry delivers can move someone so little where it counts. The crazy part is, Villeneuve and Dune still aren’t done. What began and was sourced from one interminably written ordeal could quickly become an interminable cinematic one as well.
Read MoreProcessing such delirium for 159 minutes from what could have been 240, Elvis is an opus of exhaustion. Luhrmann’s fever dream veers from campfire fable to therapy session and is as gaudy as its subject. You don’t just succumb to the Aussie filmmaker’s trademark visual and aural excessiveness. You submit to it, because, goodness gracious, it’s Elvis Aaron Presley and the stature of his legend on this display is indomitable.
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