Filmland, an annual celebration of filmmaking from Arkansas and beyond, has played an important part in the Arkansas Cinema Society’s work to grow and nurture a passionate local film culture. Throughout its seven years, one of the anchors of Filmland has been director, screenwriter, and ACS co-founderJeff Nichols. An Arkansas native, Nichols’ investment in growing his home state’s film community has been invaluable.

As a filmmaker, Nichols has several notable signatures that give his movies their particular appeal. His stories tend to have a distinctly southern flavor and shrewdly represent a region of the country he knows very well. He also has a knack for writing characters who feel incredibly organic to the worlds they exist in. These things are only enhanced by the fact that Nichols is a natural storyteller.

Among the highlights of last year’s Filmland was Nichols’ new movie “The Bikeriders”. It’s his first feature since 2016’s “Loving” and his biggest film in terms of budget and ambition. It’s inspired by photojournalist Danny Lyon’s 1968 book of the same name that explored the members and firsthand stories of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club. The book featured a collection of Lyon’s photography and interviews captured during his time as a member of the Outlaws in the mid sixties.

Much like Lyon’s book, Nichols sets out to deconstruct the somewhat romanticized view of this 1960s motorcycle subculture. At the same time he doesn’t shy away from the nostalgic allure of the time. Instead he embraces it, creating a near longing for a bygone era while also viewing it as something best left to a very specific period in American history. His film is an incredible balance of gritty realism and heartfelt sentimentality.

Merely inspired by Lyon’s work, Nichols takes several ideas from the book and then builds his own fictional story. He frames it through a series of interviews that Danny Lyon (played by Mike Faist) conducts with a woman named Kathy (a sublime Jodie Comer). Through three meetings spanning nearly a decade, Kathy talks about her time with the Vandals, a Chicago based motorcycle club that rode to prominence during the 1960s.

The meat of the story follows the club’s rise from a close-knit brotherhood to a vast mob-like menace. Over the course of the movie, what starts as a small pack of local outcasts emulating Marlon Brando’s “The Wild Ones” morphs into a violent network of riders from different cities across the country. It’s a fascinating evolution that in many ways is shaped by the shifting social and political landscapes of the time.

At the very heart of “The Bikeriders” is a captivating trio of characters whose interconnected relationships humanize the story and shape the drama. Tom Hardy is a force of nature playing Johnny, the founder and leader of the Vandals. There’s no doubting Johnny is in charge, but he’s well respected by the members. His idea is that one day his kid brother Benny (Austin Butler) will take his place. The problem is Benny is a wild card – loyal but volatile. Butler is magnetic, embodying a smoldering bad boy image that you can’t turn away from.

And then there’s Kathy who finds herself stuck within this testosterone driven coterie. She sees the Vandals for what they are and often pushes back against their macho codes and rituals. Yet there’s a part of her that’s fascinated and drawn to their world – at least early on. She’s especially enchanted with Benny who she meets in a bar and then marries five weeks later.

Benny’s bond with his brother is every bit as strong as his bond with Kathy which inevitably leads to tension between all three. It’s only amplified in the second half as the club starts to grow and the once intimate camaraderie starts to crumble. It’s here that the story takes a darker turn, becoming a “Goodfellas” type of mob drama but with a biker movie bend. The violence ratchets up and the romanticism of the early scenes all but vanishes.

While the three central performances shine brightest, Nichols amasses a superb supporting cast who play an assortment of colorful characters, many based on actual photos from Lyon’s book. There’s Michael Shannon as Zipco, Boyd Holbrook as Cal, Norman Reedus as Funny Sonny, Damon Harriman as Brucie, and Emory Cohen as Cockroach, just to name a few. They fill out the world well (though some disappear for stretches), but it’s Nichols’ interest in their psychologies that make them so individually compelling.

While it’s technically more Midwestern than Southern, there are still several wonderful similarities between “The Bikeriders” and other stories Jeff Nichols has told. The big difference here is that Nichols has opened a window to a notoriously private world. His presentation is strikingly authentic, highlighted by incredible sound, cinematography, costume design, and a cracking 60’s flavored soundtrack. It all helps to create a transporting experience – one that lures you in with its infectious cool before hitting you hard with the grim and violent reality. “The Bikeriders” opens in theaters June 21st.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

In my recent review of 1975’s “Death Race 2000”, I took some time to talk about the film’s producer, the legendary Roger Corman who just recently passed away at the age of 98. I shared how the independent cinema icon had been instrumental in launching the careers of numerous high profile filmmakers. Among them was none other than the ten-time Oscar nominated director, Martin Scorsese.

Roger Corman was hungry for another female gangster movie and was drawn to Ben Reitman’s 1937 novel “Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha”. A script was written by the husband and wife duo of John William and Joyce Corrington and Martin Scorsese was hired to direct after impressing Corman with his debut feature, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door”.

“Boxcar Bertha” has many of the usual markings that accompany the majority of Corman’s early exploitation flicks. But the crafty Scorsese brought his own gritty sensibility which made it feel a little different. Regardless of what you call it, you can see the fingerprints of the director that Scorsese would quickly become. His specific attention to detail, his knack for immersing the audience into his well-drawn setting, his fluid use of the camera – it’s all on display and in many ways saves the movie from itself.

Set in the Depression era South, “Boxcar Bertha” follows an orphaned and dirt-poor young girl named Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey) who begins trainhopping after her father is killed in a cropdusting accident. A couple years later Bertha crosses paths and falls in love with a down-on-his-luck union organizer Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine). The couple are later joined by Rake Brown (Barry Primus), a slick but cowardly gambler who Bertha saves at a poker table, and by Von Morton (Bernie Casey), an old family friend who worked for Bertha’s father.

The group tries the ‘straight and narrow’ path, but in such hard times our foursome has to resort to robbing banks and passenger trains just to get by. They eventually accept that they’re criminals which ends up putting them in the crosshairs of a powerful railroad magnate (played David Carradine’s real-life father, John). Soon the press is covering their antics – embellishing their hardened status for big headlines. But much like in “Bonnie and Clyde” (a clear inspiration for Corman), the attention eventually catches up to them.

Though bound by the exploitative tropes of bare flesh and blood (a Corman dictum that even Martin Scorsese couldn’t escape), there was still room for the director to take a few of his own swings. Not all of them hit their marks. Take the handful of messy cuts and quick camera pans. And a couple of woefully unconvincing fight scenes that look even more dated that usual for that era of movie history. But then you have his deft handling of his performers along with the detail he pours into his rich Southern setting. And unlike many of Corman’s exploitation films, there’s no glamour in the violence. It’s rough, crude, and abrupt.

Through it all Bertha remains the centerpiece, wonderfully played by Hershey who guides the character from naive to streetwise, always adapting to survive yet maintaining a level of vulnerability that earns our empathy. Her performance can’t fully cover the handful of glaring flaws, and those with a distaste for Corman’s brand of exploitation will likely struggle to get past his obvious influence. But watching Scorsese at such an early stage of his career, playing around with formula, exploring techniques, and finding his cinematic form makes it worth watching on its own.

VERDICT – 3 STARS