Tag Archives: Mike Faist

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Ride or Die

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The Bikeriders

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Jeff Nichols has never made a bad movie.  Hell, he’s never made a mediocre movie. Nothing but glory with this guy. And The Bikeriders has everything a good Nichols film delivers—location, bruised masculinity, lyrical realism, Michael Shannon—but this time the writer/director has cast for days. Tom Hardy. Austin Butler. Jodie Comer. Shannon (natch). Columbus hometown hero Mike Faist, Boyd Holdbrook, Norman Reedus, Damon Herriman—all in top form, all clinging to camaraderie and connection and that fleeting American rebellion that is freedom.

Based on Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of photos and interviews of the Chicago-based motorcycle club the Vandals, Nichols’s tale catches a moment in history.

The setting—mainly areas in and around Cincinnati—captures the texture of the era, allowing this fine ensemble to transport you. Butler’s the James Dean to Hardy’s Brando. As gang leader Johnny, Hardy stalks the screen in a deeply felt performance full of pathos, tenderness and fear. His spiritual opposite, Butler (as Benny) haunts the film, a beautiful phantom forever outside anyone’s grasp.

But as Benny”s wife Kathy, it is Comer who drives The Bikeriders. As she warily enters this fringe existence, Kathy brings us along. And it is through her interviews with Danny (Faist, standing in for the actual photojournalist Danny Lyons) that the tales emerge, eventually interconnecting and expanding to mirror not only the Vandals’ evolution but a moment of cultural shift in American history.

Comer’s a force. Her Midwest accent is a strangely melodic storytelling device, but her impish facial changes tell us even more about Kathy. Marrying Benny barely a month after they meet, Kathy becomes the narrative lynchpin standing between Johnny and Benny’s undevided devotion.

This love triangle of sorts gives the film its magnetic center, but those oddballs who orbit the trio are almost as compelling. Shannon, with limited screen time, is transfixing and both Boyd and Reedus carve out memorable madmen.

Nichols’s character building and patient, lyrical pace combine with cinematographer Adam Stone’s gritty, gorgeous, picture postcard pastiche for an immersive experience that gracefully echoes the source material. Pages are turned and stakes are raised for these characters, their way of life and the country they call home.

And like most of us, that’s what these people are searching for: a place to feel like they belong. Weaving thematic threads from The Wild One, Goodfellas and even Shakespearean tragedy, The Bikeriders gives that search brutal beauty and compelling life.

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Triple Fault

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Challengers

by George Wolf

“This is about winning the points that matter.”

Honestly, the relationship triangle at work in Challengers could probably work outside of a tennis court, but director Luca Guadagnino does wonders with the sports angle for a completely engrossing drama of intimate competition.

Anchored around a three-set challenge match between Art Donaldson (West Side Story‘s Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor from The Crown), the film drifts back and forth in time as it immerses us in their series of entanglements with tennis phenom Tashi Duncan (Zendaya).

Through Grand Slam victories, unrealized potential and one career-ending injury, writer Justin Kuritzkes examines how three distinct personalities push and pull throughout their young lives, and their differing views on the points that matter.

Kuritzkes is married to filmmaker Celine Song, and his script often feels like the cynical cousin of her Oscar nominated triangle drama Past Lives.

Guadagnino’s camera is a sumptuous wonder, often following the three leads like an on-court volley, and then coming in close to focus on sweat, bare skin, and the constant draw of physical contact. The tennis action itself is also intense and effective, buoyed by blistering forehands barreling down our sightline and some frenzied POV shots during the final set.

Zendaya, Faist and O’Connor deftly handle the growth of their characters from fresh-faced teens to hardened adults. All three deliver terrific, well-defined performances, and Challengers quickly becomes a film to get lost in, where you’re happy to be hanging on every break point.

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New York City Serenade

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West Side Story

by George Wolf

This week on Twitter, director Edgar Wright reminded anyone doubting Steven Spielberg’s way around a musical number to revisit “Anything Goes” from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Okay, point taken, but West Side Story? That’s a big step up.

It is, and he makes it in stride.

Right from the opening minutes, Spielberg’s camera seamlessly ebbs and flows along with the street-roaming Sharks and Jets. Their threats of violence are more palpable this time, as Riff (Mike Faist, an award-worthy standout) and his New York boys want to settle their turf war with Bernardo (David Alvarez) and the Puerto Ricans once and for all.

At the dance that night, the first meeting between tragic lovers Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler, a newcomer with an amazing voice who beat out thousands in open auditions) now happens under the gym bleachers, the first in a series of subtle and not-so-subtle updates that Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner (Lincoln, Munich, Angels in America) employ to deepen the narrative impact.

“Dear Officer Krupke” seems more organic in the station house, “America” (led by an irresistible Ariana DeBose as Anita) is given more room to move across the west side city streets, while a department store full of mannequins depicting white suburban dreams proves an ironically joyful setting for Maria and her co-workers’ buoyant reading of “I Feel Pretty.”

And from one musical set-piece to the next, Spielberg’s touch is smoothy precise, starting wide to capture the breadth of Justin Peck’s homage to Jerome Robbins’s iconic choreography, zooming in for intimacy, and then above the dancers and rumblers for gorgeous aerials set with pristine light and shadow. Stellar efforts from cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and production designer Adam Stockhausen turn the everyday drab of hanging laundry and fabric remnants into an elegant playground for Spielberg’s camera eye.

In short, it looks freaking fantastic.

It sounds pretty great, too, even beyond the genius of Bernstein’s melodies and Sondheim’s lyrics. Because Spielberg couples his appropriate and welcome diversity of cast with a complete lack of subtitles, rightly putting the opposing cultures on equal narrative footing, and bringing more depth to the cries of “speak English!”

And as the gang fight turns deadly, all of the stakes are embraced more tightly. The offhand bigotry of Lt. Schrank (Corey Stoll, terrific as always) is more casually cruel, the identity conflict of Anybodys (Iris Menas) feels more defined, while Anita’s fateful visit to Doc’s store – now run by Valentina (expect another Oscar nod for the incredible Rita Moreno) – plainly calls it like it always was.

Then, as his (almost) parting shot, Spielberg unveils his grandest revision, a move nearly as bold and risky as the one Richard Attenborough face-planted with in 1985’s A Chorus Line.

By altering the context of one of the most emotional songs, Attenborough showed he didn’t know, or didn’t care, about what the show was trying to say. Spielberg, though, gently adds a perspective that makes Tony and Maria’s quest soar with a renewed, more universal vitality.

Just like most everything else in this West Side Story.