28 Years Later

 Twenty-three years later... director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland return to the zombie movie that pretty much made them (yeah, yeah, I know, The Beach, but who's talked about that one in the last couple of decades?) The thing is, they don't really seem all that interested in following up on 28 Days Later.

 The British isles have been quarantined and left alone in the last twenty-eight years since the rage virus broke out and turned most of the population into feral, fast-moving zombies. Survivors were left to fend for themselves.

 In this brave new world, one population's been doing pretty well for itself: a tiny, self-sufficient community at Holy Island off the coast of Scotland, cut off from the mainland by a causeway that is submerged under the ocean come high tide.

 The film follows one of the villagers, Spike (Alfie Williams) - a 12-year old whose father (Aaron Taylor Johnson) is pushing to go for a coming-of-age ritual zombie hunt in the mainland. It goes about as well as you could hope, but upon returning a rift opens between young Spike and his father. Disillusioned, and learning that there may be a doctor further inland, he resolves to slip away from the community and take his ill mother (Jodie Comer), to see the physician.

 28 Years Later is an excellent movie with some fairly idiosyncratic choices which may or may not impact your enjoyment of it... I don't know you, what do you expect me to say? I really liked it.

 The first of those choices is a shift in genres: this is not, on the main, really a horror movie; Boyle and Garland use the zombie apocalypse as a backdrop for a coming of age drama instead. That's not a criticism, by the way, just an observation; It's a fine coming of age drama. Just be aware that it's closer to, say, Vesper than 28 Days Later.

 The second point of contention is that the movie feels fairly experimental in its visuals and editing. 28 Days Later came out in the early 2000s, so it had plenty of frame-skipping and shaky cam, and that goes double here: The film's signature visual gimmick is that the action will frequently do a small freeze-frame as an arrow pierces some zombie body part - shots also jump jarringly between different angles, and we still get hyperactive shaky cam and frame-skipping shenanigans. To be fair, Boyle's been tinkering with highly personal ways to shoot action pretty much since he started; These mini-action beats can go into the 'misses' pile.

 Outside of the zombie hunts, the experimental touches are a little more successful - footage from old war and medieval movies is intercut into the proceeds fairly often to give a feel for the mood at the Holy Island community, and the editing gets a little too frantic whenever tensions ratchet up. The cinematography (by a returning Anthony Dod Mantle) is lovely, and scores a lot of really interesting visuals by juxtaposing the natural beauty of the North with zombie grotesquerie. The music, by hip-hop band Young Fathers, is bloody excellent.

 The last thing to have in mind is the project was approached as a trilogy; The film ends with a bit of a cliffhanger and a very strange tonal shift. It tells a complete story and I like what it seems to be setting up next, but that ending really is a bit jarring.

 Other than that, the film does introduce some slight tweaks to its zombie lore - mainly, it tries to show the ways in which people infected by the rage virus are actually different from zombies. My favourite new element were the alphas, powerful zombies that look like raging Ted Nugents - swinging donkey dicks and all, and give the movie a much needed shot of energy. Also interesting (and diametrically opposed) are the infected equivalent to bottom feeders, the series' creepiest creation yet. There are a decent amount of chases and whatnot, and they're fun even if some of them seem to be viewed through the eyes of someone suffering a seizure.

 There's also some lovely footage of the North being seized back by nature, complete with huge herds of roving deer, and a couple shots of the sycamore gap tree before it was cut down. A friend who knows the area confirmed that the protagonist's itinerary seems plausible, which is neat.

 The acting is excellent, with both Comer and Williams giving two great performances. A third well-known actor pops up later as a major character and gives a characteristically soulful performance.

 I love that they took all these chances with what the studio must consider a franchise, even if not all the risks pay out. You just know there's going to be a somewhat deserved backlash. But now I'm really interested in finding out what they do for its two planned sequels, if they ever come to be.

The Bikeriders

 Johnny (Tom Hardy) - a truck driver and family man - forms his motorcycle club, The Vandals, after watching Rebel Without a Cause. It's funny, sure, but it's also key.

 But The Bikeriders is not Johnny's movie. Nor is it Benny's (Austin Butler), the club member who epitomizes the biker way of life - a biker's biker, so to speak... but little else. No, the movie centers on Kathy (Jodie Comer): a young woman who, to her surprise, falls in love with Benny and spends the rest of the film somewhere between affectionately putting up with the life and the extended family it comes with, and trying to peel her partner away from it.

 We also get to hang out with a colourful cast of characters: Zipco (The one and only Michael Shannon) as a burnt out bullshit idealist, easy-going Cal (Boyd Holbrook), a guy who defects from The Hell's Angels (Norman Reedus) because he likes the vibes in Johnny's crew better - they all make an impression. It's easy to see why they'd try to hang on to what they have together even when it's clearly not going to end well.

 As an eventful year passes, Kathy narrates to a photographer (Mike Faist) how everything went to shit once the group got too big for its own good and the new guard pushed to shift Johnny's social club into a gang. Things will be what they got to be, to paraphrase the film spelling out one of its main themes.

 It's a simple movie that isn't really interested in the rise and fall story its superficial similarities to Scorsese-influenced crime epics suggest - except in how they inform the characters who drive that action. When, say, a critical challenge for the club's leadership comes, it's almost comically underplayed; The fireworks are reserved for loaded conversations, the devastating fallout from an attempted sexual attack, or a falling out between friends that's subtle and understated and as final as a gunshot.

 The acting is beautifully calibrated, the script (by director Jeff Nichols) is sharp and often very funny, and all the surfaces are immaculately kept: The soundtrack features a wealth of not-only-the-biggest-hits from the era, the cinematography (by Adam Stone, who came up with Nichols on Shotguns Stories and has worked with him since) gives the film a grounded, documentary feel while remaining very cinematic, and the sound mix never lets you forget how powerful the beasts these people ride in are.

 For all its energy, it's an oddly passive film. The script was very loosely adapted from a seminal book of biker photographs and interviews by Danny Lyons, and his (as played by Mike Faist) talks with Kathy provide structure to the movie, hopping around chronologically to give the thin narrative a little more impact. The trickery works, but it also makes the film feel deceptively slight.

 Stay for the credits for the now-standard real-life pictures, and even better, a Lucero song that almost acts as a recap of the movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-style. The song is almost twenty years old (from 2005's Nobody's Darlings, a cast-iron classic) and based on the same interview that forms the backbone for the movie; Ben Nichols, the songwriter, is Jeff Nichol's brother and turned him onto the book.

 This is a deceptively great film, one that gets better as I unpack it. I hesitate to say it's deep - many of the things it does have been done before - but it's all done uncommonly well, with character moments and song selections carefully reinforcing its handful of themes. I keep coming back to Johnny, mesmerized by Rebel Without a Cause, his family and day job momentarily a distant concern. Enthralled by a vision of an open road, his adoring buddies at his side. Funny, sure. And more than a little tragic.