Film Reviews: The Bike Riders and The Critic

 It is always refreshing to see a film or simply, a story, progress along its route, purely informed by the characters and their own motivations and the circumstances in which they live. 

Whether it is the sixties in the American Midwest or the thirties in London, the principle and the tangled web that they weave among themselves and seemingly insignificant others, the appeal remains the same and keeps a strong hold on you from beginning to end.

In both, you have a main character who will act as they see fit, regardless of how it affects others around them, as long as their life remains the same. The circumstances of both have times and attitudes who would either turn a blind eye or an indifferent one. The authorities in both are scornful and resentful but they appear when it seems right to act. 

You, the viewer, see the seeds of their own downfall early on. They appear in the background, looked down on and dismissed by the main character, but in the back of your mind, you know that these will be the people who will come back and rain down destruction on the main character and that oh-so delicate web of their fragile existence. 

Both lives seem like a faraway dream, viewed as they are in the 21st century, the old worlds these characters inhabit, and yet it is our own history as it informs our current circumstances. 

Both Sir Ian McKellen and Austin Butler fully inhabit their roles, with Alfred Enoch and Gemma Arterton looking on in horror in one, and Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy looking on in awe and wonderment in the other. The rest of both casts, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Lesley Manville and Romola Garai in the first, and Michael Shannon, Damon Herriman and Boyd Holbrook in the other, all of whom give first rate, sterling performances. 

The Bike Riders was a long, passion project by Jeff Nichols and in the length of time it took to bring the story to life, you can see it in the care each frame receives. 

Neither film will disappoint.