From The Bikeriders to I Saw the TV Glow: What’s coming to the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse in June and July 2024
Our film critic, Mark Walsh, looks at what’s coming to the big screen in this column, sponsored by the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse.
The Bikeriders
Passion projects of directors are relatively common: Christopher Nolan first had the idea for Inception well before The Dark Knight or The Prestige, and Martin Scorsese developed Silence for over a quarter of a century before finally bringing it to the screen.
Jeff Nichols toyed with the idea of a biker movie for close to a decade before finally getting behind the camera to make it a reality, having not made a film since the double of Midnight Special and Loving in 2016. The result might be his best film since his second feature, 2011’s Take Shelter.
Nichols takes his inspiration from Danny Lyon’s 1968 photobook of the same name, which followed the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club between 1963 and 1967, using black-and-white photos and interviews with the gang members and their families. Mike Faist plays a journalist based on Danny Lyon but this time following the Vandals MC, also set in Chicago, and its varied members as they either hold picnics or get into fights.
Their leader Johnny (Tom Hardy) takes his inspiration from watching Marlon Brando on TV as he attempts to hold the gang together and to keep order. One of the more volatile elements is young hothead Benny (Austin Butler), but he’s nothing compared to the less savoury elements who start to latch onto the gang and whose links to organised crime threaten the group’s structure and safety.
However, the film is told predominantly through the eyes of Jodie Comer as Benny’s wife Kathy and her interviews with Danny, lending a sympathetic note to the rough and tumble of life on the road with the bikers.
Nichols captures the monotonous thrum of the life of men simply looking to enjoy the open road, but then punctuates it with moments of tension and violence. Hardy is his ever-reliable self, Butler has a level of smoulder that James Dean would have been jealous of, while Comer is the film’s heart, reflecting on both the excitement that draws in the members and their families but also the descent into amorality and the gang’s gradual unfolding. An excellent cast on top form make Nichols’ gang one you’ll want to spend time with.
The Bikeriders opens on Friday, 21 June.
Kinds of Kindness
Fresh from the success of Poor Things, and in particular the sweep during awards season of Emma Stone, Yorgos Lanthimos returns with another film starring Stone, their third collaboration after Poor Things and 2018’s The Favourite.
Not content with giving her one role, this time Lanthimos has cast Stone, as well as six other actors, in a trilogy of roles, each playing different roles in what’s been described as a “triptych fable”, with loose connections and themes running through the three stories.
The three stories include a man trying to break away from the control of his over-powering boss, a policeman whose wife returns after being missing at sea but who seems changed by the experience, and a woman on the hunt for a spiritual leader.
As well as Stone, Willem Dafoe makes a second (and technically third and fourth) appearance in the Greek director’s films this year, while Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn and Mamoudou Athie all take different roles across the three stories.
The tales, all set around contemporary New Orleans, continue Lanthimos’ fondness for the absurd, the surreal and the darker side of life that’s been present though all his films, including The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer.
Here those themes are put to service in an overall examination of how the universe manages to keep doing the same bad things to different people.
Kinds Of Kindness opens on Friday, 28 June.
Doctor Who Finale double bill
There might have been some surprise when Russell T Davies announced that he was returning to Doctor Who, but the showrunner for the first five years of the BBC show’s 21st-century revival took the reins of the show again for the programme’s 16th anniversary before an eight episode run this year.
The Beeb’s partnership with Disney has brought the show to a worldwide audience once again, but the last two episodes of Ncuti Gatwa’s first series as the fifteenth Doctor are receiving an airing in the cinema to coincide with the final episode arriving on the iPlayer.
As so often with Doctor Who, the story thread running through this season has been the question of where Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) came from, having been raised by a foster mother after being abandoned as a baby.
But Davies has also seeded other ideas throughout the episodes, from a running joke about Sir Isaac Newton having got the name of gravity wrong after meeting the Doctor and Donna, to the actress Susan Twist appearing in every episode as a different character.
One episode even reminded audiences that Susan is the name of the Doctor’s granddaughter, so what other secrets and surprises will be revealed in this double bill?
The Legend Of Ruby Sunday and Empire Of Death are screening on Friday, 21 June at 11pm.
Out Preview - I Saw the TV Glow
Julia Schoenbrun made a real impact during the pandemic when their first feature film, a low budget horror We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, made a big impact at the Sundance Film Festival when it was held online in 2021, drawing favourable comparisons to the likes of Paranormal Activity.
They’ve followed this up with the story of two teenagers who develop an affection for a cult late-night TV show, which is then mysteriously cancelled.
Schoenbrun has created a world (set around the Nineties and Noughties) for characters to inhabit that feels almost like an alternate almost like an alternate reality, from its pop-culture references to original songs to original songs by Phoebe Bridgers and Caroline Polachek.
Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) bond over late-night fantasy show The Pink Opaque as teenagers, but when the show is cancelled they barely speak. However, a reunion a decade later sees them question the very nature of their reality. Schoenrbrun pulls in a sense of uneasiness that their previous film also captured so well, while reflecting on the isolation and difficulty that can so often accompany adolescence.
I Saw the TV Glow is screening on Monday, 15 July.
