If you think about it, run clubs and biker clubs (motorcycles, not bicycles) are not too different. I know this seems like an odd statement, but when I was watching The Bike Riders, that was the thought going through my head. They have set days, where they all meet up and go for rides, and when they are done with their ride, they finish at a bar and drink. For run club, we meet somewhere, typically a brewery or a bar, run, and then come back and drink beer, and in some instances eat pizza. There might not be any violence ingrained in run club, except the own pain we choose to inflict on our bodies from running, like there is with biker clubs, but the police did get called at Green Lakes for a brawl that involved STC runners (the brawl did not actually happen, it was just a silly dispute over a water fountain, but that is how some lady reported it).
The bikers even have picnics, which is probably closest attuned to a race. Different clubs get together, hang out, and show off their bikes. Instead of showing off bikes, runners talk about their shoes or show off a new singlet and talk about their injuries and training. So the conversations are a little different, but the purpose is basically the same. A place to go and show off what you have been working on, and then you celebrate afterward, again with beer, food, and music. This week, Lake Effect is having a literal picnic, so we even have those. Thankfully, runners do not have to worry about wearing the wrong club shirt to a bar and then getting hit in the back of the head with a shovel.
The Bike Riders does not have a strong narrative structure to give a full synopsis of. It is basically the rise and transformation of the bike club, The Vandals. It was started by Johnny, a family man, but a man who was not afraid of a challenge, but really, he just wanted to ride bikes and talk about them with his friends. The story more closely follows Benny, a member who loves fighting, and Benny’s wife, Kathy. Both Kathy and Johnny are trying to pull Benny in different ways. Kathy sees the problems that are starting to rise due to the newer members of the club being more like hooligans, so she thinks Benny should quit. Johnny sees the same problem, and he thinks that Benny should take over the club, because Benny is more of an enforcing presence. Despite the two most important people in Benny’s life pulling him in opposite directions, he just wanted to ride his bike, so he ignored the two and rode off to be alone.
The defining part of the story is old verse new. The new members were bringing problems, and part of the problem was the allowance of chapters of the Vandals outside of their vicinity. If there are other chapters that are going unchecked, this helps to build a different reputation, and one that the club did not necessarily want. The main group participated in some illegal activities, but it was only when provoked by others, and the times when they were the provocateurs, it never got too out of hand. The newer guys had less morals and less rules, and the laws that were being broken now were more severe and there was less of the “moral” high ground to stand on.
Overall, it was a fun movie watching experience. It was weird that there was a mom there with her two kids that were like around ten years old. It was not an overly hard R rated movie other than the cursing and a spattering of violence, nothing too wild, but still it just seemed like a weird movie to bring your kids to. The rest of the crowd seemed to be vibing with it too. There are some solid performances and some good accents. I was pleasantly surprised that I really enjoyed Tom Hardy in this and the weird way he talked. Also Jody Comer completely committed to her accent, and I loved it! A solid movie 3.5 Stars.
This week I also had the chance to see the extended edition of Midsommar in IMAX. I saw it in theaters, when it first came out, but not in IMAX, and I had not seen the extended edition either, and it is one of the 35 movies that I have rated as 5 Stars out of the 1200 that I have watched. This was either my third or fourth time viewing it, and it is the kind of movie that can be watched over and over, and each time a new detail will unveil itself to you, even more so when seeing the extended edition in IMAX. After this viewing, I raised it way up my list. I put it second overall, which is high esteem and probably recency bias, but this movie rules. It is unlike anything I have ever seen.
The extended addition added about thirty minutes of run time, which is a lot, considering the original movie is two hours and twenty minutes, but some of the added scenes felt very important. The one that stuck out the most was the night scene, once they are already at the commune. There were no scenes outside in the dark in the original, so this caught me totally off guard. It started with another ritual. This one seemed more like a play than a ritual. A girl that was either a preteen or an early teen volunteers to have herself thrown into the river, so they pick her up and put a giant stone on her stomach, and then a woman in crowd shouts out no do not do it, like a planned response, and so they put the teen down, but at the end of the movie, when they are putting all of the bodies in the house to burn, they showed the girl being wheeled in in a wheelbarrow, so it seems like she sacrificed herself later anyways? This probably was cut form the original because it is a tough look to sacrifice a kid in a movie.
Then there is a second part to that night scene, where Dani and Christian are walking back to the camp, and they basically have a breaking up conversation, where Dani lays it all out that she can feel him pulling away, and he is a jerk back to her in a way that is laughable. In a previous scene, she brought him flowers in what seemed like a totally innocent and polite gesture, and he started to argue with her that she was trying to make him feel bad by giving him flowers, and he felt like now he owes her something. It was wild, and he came off so bad in the fight, and it ends with him storming off without any resolution.
The dude is like an all-time bad boyfriend. At the start of the movie, he does a terrible job of comforting her when she is worried about her sister, and then her worst fears come true, and his ability to comfort her even after that is not great, this includes him deciding to go to Sweeden for over a month, and not telling her until he was two weeks away from going. Awkward to say the least. Then while at the commune, he continues to be a terrible boyfriend. He flirts with this one lady, and eventually he agrees to get her pregnant, which leads to one of the most uncomfortable scenes you could watch with someone, unless you are totally comfortable with them. He also forgets her birthday, and he did not even have a present for her, he just finds a small piece of cake and gives it to her, after he was reminded by someone else that it was her birthday. Thankfully, this is a movie that is rich in justice, if you are a jerk American that disrupts their ceremonies, and pisses on their ancestral tree, you will get what is coming to you!
This movie has imagery that is disturbing, and it will forever be burned into my head, and it has been there since watching it for the first time back in 2019, which I am sure most people would probably be against, but to be this messed up and basically all in the day light is an incredible feat. The one idea that intrigued me the most was Ättestupa, which was the idea that when people became 72, that they then would jump off a cliff to finalize their life. This would be so that they would not have to grow old and completely fall apart and be a burden on their loved ones. They said that each 18 years of a person’s life represents a season, and once you make it to 72, your life has finished its cycle. An interesting idea, that probably seems like a good idea at the time, but once you get close to that, it probably becomes a much more difficult reality to accept, although it would be nice to have a known expiration date goal. Also with the way modern medicine is, maybe it should be amended to 80. I do not think I personally would ever be able to convince myself to jump off a cliff, but I would not be surprised, if I was that age, and I fell off a cliff by accident while hiking something I probably should not be at that age.
Anyway, if horror is your thing, and you have not seen this, one I would be surprised, two you should definitely see it. Is it gruesome and disturbing? Yes, but it takes place almost solely during day time, once you get past the first part, and it is an absolutely beautiful film. There is so much care put into this, and the attention to detail is on a whole other level. I cannot wait for Ari Aster’s next film. 5 STARS!!!!
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