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.
Funerals & Snakes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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.
The content below was originally paywalled.
In the new film, he discovers a wishing circle in the forest and he asks the Moon Spirits for help. Sure enough – like Tom Hanks in Big – he gets his wish to be more physically substantial but remains mostly pink. His wish also brings a playful baby moon spirit – with the awesome name of MooPoo – to come to earth and they start to cause trouble for all and sundry.
Of the voice cast, only Swindells and Samara Weaving return and the rest – apart from Jennifer Saunders as the film’s villain – are largely second-tier this time around. As is the film, to be honest.

Fancy Dance is another terrific film in the renaissance of indigenous North American film and TV – a gritty first feature from documentarian Erica Tremblay.
Lily Gladstone stars as petty crim Jax, looking after her teenage niece Roki (Isabel DeRoy Olsen) because the girl’s mother has gone missing. Because they live on the “Res”, the federal police are the investigating authorities – in an alarmingly typical situation – they are unmotivated.
The government is, however, motivated to remove Roki from Jax’s care – an uplift situation of the kind we are familiar with here in Aotearoa. Jax decides to do her own uplifting and take Roki from her white father’s house and go on a road trip to the annual powwow where Roki believes her mother will join them for the special mother-daughter dance-off – the Fancy Dance of the title.
There’s a scene in the film where Jax and Roki are stopped by an ICE agent. He suspects they are illegal immigrants, a final humiliation for descendants of America’s first peoples.
I love it when a film can be dramatically satisfying and teach me new stuff and Fancy Dance managed to do both pretty well.

The biggest problem with Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is that there isn’t enough Eddie Murphy in it. At least, not enough of Eddie being an effortlessly amusing and charismatic movie star. We know that he – like Axel Foley – can turn that on and off at will but I wish he didn’t spend so much of the film stuck in low gear.
The second biggest problem with the picture is first-time feature director Mark Molloy who can’t stage action – or even two people talking – so that it makes any visual sense.
But the script, by Will Beale, Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, does have some nice moments – and some bizarre but amusing non-sequiturs – but the need to squeeze in all the nostalgic references to the previous films derails whatever momentum the film looks like gaining. There’s a particularly misguided cameo from Bronson Pinchot that simply hurt my eyes.
Murphy is a conundrum. He’s a gifted comedian – and an under-utilised dramatic performer – but it all comes so easily to him that even the perception that he’s somehow working for a living seems to be beneath him.