Monday new releases: 8 July 2024

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.

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.