The Bikeriders (2023 | USA | 116 minutes | Jeff Nichols)

Taking inspiration from Danny Lyon’s iconic book of photography The Bikeriders, director Jeff Nichols uses his admiration for the images of mid-century motorcyclists as the basis for a fictionalized account of a Chicago-based motorcycle club. He brings these snapshots of gritty, greasy, and freewheeling life in the 1960s by assembling an equally photogenic cast of some of Hollywood’s finest faces, from dreamy Austin Butler (channeling James Dean), Tom Hardy (cosplaying Brando), and chameleonic Jodie Comer (disappearing into an extremely affected, deeply committed Chicago accent). The story of these men of few words is recounted in faux interview format with Comer’s Kathy, whose attraction to these guys and the danger and excitement that came with being in their tenuous orbit as the primary source of perspective on their days. We revisit her over the course of a decade, her occasionally eliding recollections capture the rise of the club from a loosely-structured social organization of aggressive guys who loved nothing more than getting together to drink, talk about, and ride bikes into something more nefarious, criminal, and beyond their control.

Populated by a host of always-interesting actors like Michael Shannon and Mike Faist (who unfortunately has little to do beyond holding a microphone), the main enjoyment of the beautifully photographed film is the opportunity to watch such talented actors play dress-up. They cruise the open roads on period-appropriate motorcycles, terrorize the city streets with roaring engines, and seemingly can’t avoid geting up to trouble. At heart, though, they’re mostly just in it for the camaraderie of brawling and bullshitting. The camera adores all of them, from the most stunningly beautiful to the interestingly weathered faces.

However, in part because its sole perspective is the recollections of one beleaguered housewife, we never get beyond the admittedly compelling surface presentations of these men to understand what drives them. Hardy gives a wily performance as menacing yet reserved father figure to the club of lost boys. Austin Butler near-wordlessly succeeds purely as an empty vessel by virtue of the camera’s understandable love affair with his unsettlingly potent animal magnetism. Even though they’re a cool hang and filmed beautifully, as time stretches on, the story feels increasingly shallow and these vignettes across time never quite knit into anything as profound, inadvertently confirming the old adage that a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

The Bikeriders is scheduled for release on Dec 1

Rustin (2023 | USA | 99 minutes |  George C. Wolfe)

Colman Domingo goes all-in in the title role of Bayard Rustin in this glitzy and earnest Obama-produced historical drama that spotlights an unsung hero of the March on Washington. A longtime friend of Martin Luther King Jr and pioneer of passive resistance, Rustin was pushed out of the movement when threats an innuendo surrounding his sexuality posed a distraction to the movement.

Dustin Lance Black and Julian Breece’s occasionally stagey script gives each member of the stacked cast — Chris Rock, Jeffrey Wright, CCH Pounder, Glynn Turman among so many others — ample moments to shine as they embody a cavalcade of luminaries from the Civil Rights movement. At times, the level of celebrity in the carousel of special appearances of both the actors and titans of history they’re playing occasionally borders on distracting, but that’s not the worst problem to have. Nevertheless, where the film shines most is in Domingo’s dynamic performance that allows a depiction of Rustin as complex and flawed human being as well as in truly honoring the mastermind of the historic march by never shying away from highlighting the transformative power of community organization and the supreme importance of anticipating all the details and getting them right.

Saltburn (2023 | UK | 127 minutes | Emerald Fennell)

With her sharp satiric follow-up to A Promising Young Woman, Emerald Fennell gives always sublime weirdo Barry Keoghan a whole movie to finally let his freak flag fly. Almost certainly the horniest movie I’ve ever seen at Telluride, she brings a distinctly female gaze and twisty storyline to a class comedy about a Oxford scholarship nerd falling in (and in love with) with the college’s landed elite party people through the transformative power of a fortuitous favor for a fellow student.

Opening with Keoghan’s Oliver musing direct-to-camera over whether he loved or was in love with Felix (Jacob Elordi in full golden god sexpot mode), the story whips through the lonely early misfit days of college to gaining entry into raucous parties in some of the dreamiest falling-for-you more-than-friendship montages committed to the screen. Oliver only has eyes for magnetic Felix and the camera leaves no question as to why. Parlaying an unlikely friendship into an extended summer stay at an astonishingly posh English country estate is when the intrigue, oddity, and rivalries with errant cousins, and familial intrigue really ramps up.

There, Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant are hilariously clueless aristocrat parents in some of their funniest roles. The early aughties indie-rock soundtrack slaps. Jacob Elordi shows pit. As before, Fennell’s script is maybe too pleased with its own twisty cleverness and doesn’t always cut as deeply as it thinks it does. But with his commanding performance as a slippery chaos agent it’s all Keoghan’s show. Figuring out exactly what his Oliver really wants as he plays among the ultra-rich is a constant voyeuristic thrill. It is impossible to look away from his perverse calculated longing and the lengths he’s willing to go to to get everything he desires.