Austin Butler

The Bikeriders

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Benny

Since Shotgun Stories, his 2007 debut, there hasn’t been a bad Jeff Nichols film. But The Bikeriders comes close, a downbeat affair quietly putting the glamorous image of the motorbike gang to the test, if not to the sword. The film is based on a 1960s photo-book by Danny Lyon, which followed the Outlaws (here renamed the Vandals) motorbike club for several years, photographing the guys and girls and talking to them about their lives. Constructed as a series of flashbacks, it is strung together by interviews Lyon (played here by Mike Faist, of Challengers fame) conducts over the years with a young woman called Kathy (Jodie Comer), who fell badly for a … Read more

Elvis

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Elvis on stage in the early years

It was Elvis’s misfortune to die in 1977, just as punk rock was coursing through mainstream culture. Old and worn out at 42, sick and fat, the King became an instant shorthand for everything that this new wave of music wanted to drive to extinction. He died on the toilet, the story went, with an impacted colon. What a metaphor – the man was literally full of shit. None of that features in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, a gaudy and joyous celebration of the man from cradle to grave, stopping off mostly at the best bits and leaving the dark stuff way off to the sides. This would be terribly problematic, if Elvis were the … Read more