3 Alabama Men Die After Becoming Distressed While Swimming at Florida Beach

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. — Three Alabama men have died from likely drowning after becoming distressed while swimming at a Florida Panhandle beach, authorities said Saturday morning.

The young men had traveled to the Panama City Beach area Friday evening, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.

The sheriff’s office received an emergency call about the distressed swimmers shortly after 8 p.m., officials said. The U.S. Coast Guard and others began rescue efforts. The men, who were not immediately identified, were found separately and eventually pronounced dead at local hospitals.

Earlier this week, single red flags had been posted at the beach, indicating high-hazard surf and rip current conditions.

On Thursday, a Pennsylvania couple visiting Florida with their six children drowned after they were caught in a rip current while swimming. The man and woman were caught in the current on Hutchinson Island, along Florida’s southeast coast, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.

source https://time.com/6990914/alabama-men-deaths-distressed-swimming-florida-beach/

Justin Timberlake Breaks His Silence After Being Charged With Driving While Intoxicated

Just days after pop star Justin Timberlake’s arrest in the Hamptons, where he was charged with driving while intoxicated, he hopped on stage to perform a show in Chicago, his first public appearance since the arrest. Breaking his silence, Timberlake, 43, addressed the near 20,000-strong crowd.

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“It’s been a tough week,” he admitted. His fans immediately responded with an uproarious cheer. “But you’re here, and I’m here, and nothing can change this moment right now.”

Timberlake finished his short speech with: “I know sometimes I’m hard to love, but you keep on loving me and I’m loving you right back.” He then went on to perform his song “Selfish,” asking the crowd to engage in a “sing-a-long” with him.

The Memphis-born musician is set to perform another show at The United Center on Saturday night in Chicago, before he arrives in New York City to perform at Madison Square Garden next weekend.

#JustinTimberlake's first show since his arrest – "…it's been a tough week"

he played to a completely sold out crowd at Chicago's United Center • 24,000 people pic.twitter.com/CgVPKhatMR

— erik zachary (@ErikZ) June 22, 2024

The 10-time Grammy winner was charged early Tuesday morning with driving while intoxicated in a village in the Hamptons, New York, after police said he ran a stop sign and veered out of his lane. At around 12:30 a.m., an officer stopped him and deduced he was intoxicated, according to the Associated Press

“His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from his breath, he was unable to divide attention, he had slowed speech, he was unsteady afoot and he performed poorly on all standardized field sobriety tests,” the court papers said, per the AP.

He was charged with a DWI misdemeanor, and his next court date has been scheduled for July 26, the Suffolk County district attorney’s office said.

On Wednesday, the office of Timberlake’s lawyer Edward Burke Jr. was quoted as telling Page Six: “Mr Burke looks forward to vigorously defending Mr. Timberlake against these allegations. He will have a lot to say at the appropriate time. He is currently awaiting full discovery from the DA’s office.”

In March, Timberlake—who has been married to actor Jessica Biel since 2012—released his first new album in six years, the nostalgic Everything I Thought It Was. The dad-of-two began touring for the album on April 29, 2024, in Vancouver, Canada, calling it the “The Forget Tomorrow World Tour.” The tour spans more than 85 shows in at least 55 cities, according to Live Nation. The tour is now set to end on Dec. 20, 2024, in Kansas City, Missouri.

Timberlake’s court date in July coincides with a show in Krakow, Poland, during the international leg of the tour. 

The singer also made headlines last year after his ex-girlfriend Britney Spears released her memoir, The Woman in Me. The two stars dated for three years from 1999 to 2002 at the height of their fame. Spears’ memoir brought their notoriously messy and toxic breakup back into the limelight, as she claimed that Timberlake broke up with her over text, and that they were both unfaithful during the relationship.

source https://time.com/6990892/justin-timberlake-breaks-silence-arrest-dwi-charge-comment/

Taylor Swift Speaks Out After Reuniting With Prince William Following Viral Video

Taylor Swift’s critically-acclaimed Eras Tour finally landed in London on Friday night and, as expected, there were plenty of noteworthy moments.

The “Fortnight” singer took to the stage at Wembley Stadium to deliver a high-octane show in front of a crowd full of famous faces. Her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, looked on proudly, as well as her long-time friend, model Cara Delevingne. Meanwhile, Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan was photographed at the sold-out show. But it was the royal element that really caught fans’ attention, as Prince William attended the concert with his two eldest children, Prince George, 10, and Princess Charlotte, 9.

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Enjoying their royal privileges, William—who was celebrating his 42nd birthday—took his children backstage to meet Swift, and the group immortalized the moment with a selfie. With Swift holding the camera, she took a snap of herself and her boyfriend enjoying time with the royals. Both George and Charlotte could be seen smiling widely. Taking to Instagram, Swift shared the selfie with her 283 million followers on Saturday afternoon. Speaking out about the reunion, she captioned the image: “Happy Bday, M8! London shows are off to a splendid start.” Marking the international unity, she posted a Union Jack flag alongside the star-spangled banner and a hand-shaking emoji.

But Swift wasn’t the first to share the special moment on Instagram, as just four minutes earlier, the Prince and Princess of Wales’ social media account had shared a photograph that captured Swift taking the selfie with the happy group. The royals’ account captioned the moment by writing: “Thank you, Taylor Swift, for a great evening!”

Kate Middleton, who continues to take a scaled-back approach to public-facing events following her diagnosis with an undisclosed type of cancer earlier this year, was not pictured at the concert. While the Princess of Wales, who has been undergoing “preventative chemotherapy,” recently made her public return at Trooping the Colour, she has expressed that her treatment is ongoing and will be for a few more months. “I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty,” the mother-of-three wrote in a public note shared on June 14. “Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much needed time to heal.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Prince and Princess of Wales (@princeandprincessofwales)

As for Prince William and Swift posing for photographs on Friday evening, this isn’t the first time the duo has enjoyed one another’s company. The pair famously went viral back in 2013 when they joined Jon Bon Jovi on stage to sing his 1986 hit “Livin’ on a Prayer.” A video of the moment that unfolded during the Centrepoint Gala Dinner, a charity event for a homelessness non-profit organization, at Kensington Palace, has since been widely circulated.

Bon Jovi revisited the viral moment once more in an interview earlier this year. “It was all her,” the rock star told the Independent, praising Swift for making the moment happen. “She literally grabbed him [William] by the arm and ran up on stage, and they both knew the words and sang along.”

Bon Jovi added that he’s “grateful to this day” that Swift encouraged Prince William.

Meanwhile, Prince William recalled the moment in an episode of Apple Fitness+’s Time to Walk podcast in 2021, with somewhat less enthusiasm. The royal, who was seated next to Swift at the event, said that “after Jon does his first song, there’s a pause, and she turns to me. She puts her hand on my arm, looks me in the eye, and says, ‘Come on, William. Let’s go and sing.’”

“To this day, I still do not know what came over me. Honestly, even now I’m cringing at what happened next, and I don’t understand why I gave in. But, frankly, if Taylor Swift looks you in the eye, touches your arm, and says, ‘Come with me…’ I got up like a puppy and went, ‘Yeah, okay, that seems like a great idea. I’ll follow you,” the Prince of Wales explained. “I walked up on stage in a trance, and then sort of halfway through Jon Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ song, I wake up, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Am I standing on the stage singing… when I don’t even know the words?’” 

However, despite his own hesitations, William noted that the crowd was “loving it and cheering away,” so he figured he might as well enjoy it, too.

source https://time.com/6990882/taylor-swift-prince-william-reunite-eras-tour-royal-family-video/

Supreme Court Upholds Gun Ban for Alleged Domestic Abusers

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.

In their first Second Amendment case since they expanded gun rights in 2022, the justices ruled 8-1 in favor of a 1994 ban on firearms for people under restraining orders to stay away from their spouses or partners. The justices reversed a ruling from the federal appeals court in New Orleans that had struck down the law.

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Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the 2022 ruling, dissented.

Last week, the court overturned a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, the rapid-fire gun accessories used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The court ruled that the Justice Department exceeded its authority in imposing that ban.

Friday’s case stemmed directly from the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. A Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, was accused of hitting his girlfriend during an argument in a parking lot and later threatening to shoot her.

At arguments in November, some justices voiced concern that a ruling for Rahimi could also jeopardize the background check system that the Biden administration said has stopped more than 75,000 gun sales in the past 25 years based on domestic violence protective orders.

The case also had been closely watched for its potential to affect cases in which other gun ownership laws have been called into question, including in the high-profile prosecution of Hunter Biden. President Joe Biden’s son was convicted of lying on a form to buy a firearm while he was addicted to drugs. His lawyers have signaled they will appeal.

A decision to strike down the domestic violence gun law might have signaled the court’s skepticism of the other laws as well. The justices could weigh in soon in one or more of those other cases.

Many of the gun law cases grow out of the Bruen decision. That high court ruling not only expanded Americans’ gun rights under the Constitution but also changed the way courts are supposed to evaluate restrictions on firearms.

Rahimi’s case reached the Supreme Court after prosecutors appealed a ruling that threw out his conviction for possessing guns while subject to a restraining order.

Rahimi was involved in five shootings over two months in and around Arlington, Texas, U.S. Circuit Judge Cory Wilson noted. When police identified Rahimi as a suspect in the shootings and showed up at his home with a search warrant, he admitted having guns in the house and being subject to a domestic violence restraining order that prohibited gun possession, Wilson wrote.

But even though Rahimi was hardly “a model citizen,” Wilson wrote, the law at issue could not be justified by looking to history. That’s the test Justice Clarence Thomas laid out in his opinion for the court in Bruen.

The appeals court initially upheld the conviction under a balancing test that included whether the restriction enhances public safety. But the panel reversed course after Bruen. At least one district court has upheld the law since the Bruen decision.

Advocates for domestic violence victims and gun control groups had called on the court to uphold the law.

Firearms are the most common weapon used in homicides of spouses, intimate partners, children or relatives in recent years, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Guns were used in more than half, 57%, of those killings in 2020, a year that saw an overall increase in domestic violence during the coronavirus pandemic.

Seventy women a month, on average, are shot and killed by intimate partners, according to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

Gun rights groups backed Rahimi, arguing that the appeals court got it right when it looked at American history and found no restriction close enough to justify the gun ban.

source https://time.com/6990608/supreme-court-rahimi-gun-case-decision/

Kate Middleton Breaks With Tradition for Family Photo Marking Prince William’s Birthday

To celebrate Prince William’s 42nd birthday, Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, turned to the whimsical, posting a fun photo she took of her husband and their three children, Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6.

In the photo, the four are holding hands, leaping over a sand dune at the beach, arms in the air and mouths agape. The image was shared on the Prince and Princess of Wales’ official Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) accounts on Friday morning, June 21, with the caption, “Happy Birthday, Papa, we all love you so much! Cx”

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As a self-described amateur photographer, Middleton is known to snap pictures of the family and post for different occasions throughout the year. This latest photo compliments the pair’s Father’s Day post earlier this month, which showed William and the children also standing on a beach, facing away from the camera, their arms around one another as they look out onto the water. The family is wearing different outfits in each post, though, despite the similar setting.

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A post shared by The Prince and Princess of Wales (@princeandprincessofwales)

The fun-filled birthday post comes after the family was seen together in public for the first time in months at the annual Trooping the Colour on Saturday, June 15. Following the parade, the Prince and Princess of Wales, along with their children, joined King Charles III and Queen Camilla to observe the Royal Air Force (RAF) flypast on the Buckingham Palace balcony. Their youngest son Louis was seen both dancing and yawning. The Trooping the Colour is one of the only events of the year that the whole family is present, and they showed up looking unified.

Middleton’s appearance at the event, also known as The King’s Birthday Parade, marked her return to the spotlight after stepping away from public-facing duties since December 2023.

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In a video message released on March 22, the Princess of Wales revealed she had been diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer following a planned abdominal surgery in January, and that she was undergoing a course of “preventative chemotherapy.”

Before the announcement, Middleton was the subject of circling rumors and conspiracy theories regarding her whereabouts, catching the interest of onlookers around the world.

As Colonel of the Irish Guards, Middleton had originally been set to attend the final rehearsal to the Trooping the Colour—also known as the Colonel’s Review—but could not attend as she continued to deal with her health issues, issuing an apology and offering thanks to the Irish Guards.

Ahead of her official attendance at Trooping the Colour, Middleton released a personal note to the public, where she shared that her treatment is ongoing and she is “not out of the woods yet,” but is hoping to attend more public engagements over the summer.

source https://time.com/6990563/kate-middleton-photo-prince-william-birthday-family-celebration/

How to Deal With Menopause When It’s Hot Outside

Menopause hit Amelia Cerbelli hard. Hot flashes ruined her mood, sleep, and outfits; she was sweaty, uncomfortable, and oh-so irritable (especially in the summer). The only thing that made her feel better was her silent rebellion in the workplace. Every morning when she arrived at the office, Cerbelli turned the thermostat way, way down, until she heard a click indicating it was at its lowest possible setting.

“Everyone was freezing and wearing sweaters,” recalls Cerbelli, 65, who lives in the Poconos in Pennsylvania and is now on the other side of her 12-year bout with menopause. “It was like a meat locker in there. They finally put some kind of lock on it so I couldn’t change it.”

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Not everyone experiences menopause-related hot flashes—but for those who do, record-breaking summer temperatures can turn the heat up on frequency and severity. That’s physically unpleasant, of course, but also mentally draining. “Hot flashes give one a sense of a loss of control, because they come on suddenly and unpredictably,” says Dr. Kathleen Jordan, chief medical officer of Midi Health, a virtual care clinic focused on navigating perimenopause and menopause. “People think it’s temporary—that you just have them for a year or two, and then it goes away, and they need to suffer through it or grin and bear it. But for a significant number of women, these go on for over a decade, and some in perpetuity. So we need to figure out how to deal with it.”

We asked a range of people—women who have or are currently going through menopause, as well as doctors—how to best cope with hot flashes in the summer heat.

Avoid caffeine, smoking, alcohol, and spicy foods

Dr. Kelli Burroughs, department chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital in Houston, has noticed that patients’ anxiety about hot flashes spikes with the temperature. They tell her that when one strikes, it feels like “a wave of heat has overtaken their entire body,” she says, followed by sweating and then chills that last anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes.

Read More: Menopause Is Finally Going Mainstream

Burroughs advises patients to avoid caffeine, even in the morning: “I hate making that recommendation, but it can be a trigger for hot flashes,” she says. The same goes for smoking, alcohol, and spicy foods. It’s best to eat as healthy as possible and try to exercise, she adds. Some patients see improvement in symptoms once they make lifestyle changes.

Try to de-stress

Anxiety is a common menopause symptom—blame the hormone changes. To make matters worse, research suggests women experience more hot flashes when they’re stressed. One proactive way to combat that is to build time into your schedule so you don’t have to rush around, says Dr. Robin Noble, chief medical officer of Let’s Talk Menopause, a national nonprofit that promotes greater understanding of menopause, plus more comprehensive care. That can help lower the chance of an anxiety attack when you’re, say, dashing to catch the train.

Meditating or experimenting with different breathing techniques are also effective ways to reduce stress, Noble says. She recommends trying box breathing when you start to feel your anxiety levels spiking: Breathe in through your nose while counting to four, hold your breath for four seconds, and then exhale through your mouth to a count of four, and hold your breath again for that length of time. Repeat until you feel calm.

Wear a damp bathing suit under your clothes

Since entering perimenopause, Tawni Pargman has noticed that she’s warmer all the time. She sleeps with her window open year round (even in the cold Spokane, Wash. winters) and wears a tank top or T-shirt when other people have hoodies on. So when she walks her yellow labrador in the summer, she wears a damp bathing suit underneath her clothes. It’s a trick she learned from her mother. “Back in the ‘80s, she would do that too,” says Pargman, 46. “It doesn’t need to be soaking—but that coolness on your skin makes such a huge difference.” 

Take an extra outfit with you (or get rid of it altogether)

Cerbelli regularly overheated so much that her coworkers feared she might be having a heart attack or stroke. “You feel the wetness going down your body, your armpits,” she says. “I would be drenched. I used to carry extra clothing in case I needed to change.”

Read More: What to Wear When It’s Really Hot Outside

That resonates with Karen Giblin, 70, who’s president and founder of Red Hot Mamas, which provides menopause education and support programs in the U.S. and Canada. Giblin used to work in local government, and she always took a second set of clothes to town meetings. Before going home, she would strip down in the bathroom for a few minutes. “I put my body up against the tile,” she recalls. She also accepted the fact that sometimes, when she was at home, she’d have no choice but to rip off her clothes. “If the FedEx man came to the door, I thought, ‘Oh, my God. What am I going to do?’ And I don’t think I’m an anomaly. I think other women have had to strip down to nearly nothing.”

Hit the grocery store freezer

If you’re out running errands on a summer day and a hot flash strikes, what do you do? Cerbelli devised a creative solution: She ducked into the nearest supermarket, opened the freezer doors, and flung herself in. “I put my whole body in there,” she recalls. “The funny part was, one time, a few doors down there was another woman in the freezer.” There were certainly some strange looks from other shoppers—but after a few minutes, she had cooled down, so it was worth it.

If you’re spending time outside, get your hair wet

Pargman likes backpacking the trails of Washington with her family, and she’s learned an important lesson: Always hike with wet hair. She usually dips hers in the first stream she comes across, and finds it keeps her cool for hours. “It makes such a huge difference in your energy levels,” she says. Plus, it’s armor against potential hot flashes.

Seek out cool activities

Giblin entered menopause after undergoing a hysterectomy at age 40, and she quickly started experiencing 20 to 30 hot flashes a day; each one lasted about three minutes. In the thick of her recovery from surgery, she thought to herself: “Where am I going to cool off?” It dawned on her that she had always loved ice-skating, and that it would be an ideal life stage for her to return to the cold rink. She started spending hours a week gliding around the ice. “It did put out the fire,” she says. “I never, ever got a hot flash while ice skating. It was my secret weapon for my hot flashes.”

Test out cooling products

A few years ago, Giblin did a segment for QVC focusing on her favorite cooling products for menopausal women. After a while, the segment started airing overnight—and she wondered who would possibly see it. But it turned out that viewers bought more in the middle of the night than they did during the daytime—likely because they were awake, hot, and unable to sleep.

Read More: How to Spend Time Outside if You Hate Getting Sweaty

New cooling products are marketed constantly, and Giblin notes that it can be worth experimenting to figure out which make a difference for you. Many people find relief by wearing battery-operated neck fans, for example, or carrying tiny fans they can whip out of their purse when they feel a hot flash coming. Embr Wave makes cooling bracelets that claim to provide on-demand temperature relief; there are even cooling pearls you can freeze before wearing. You might also like slipping discreet gel pads into your bra—the ones made by Opal Cool can drop to 58°F after being refrigerated. The company is known, too, for cool wraps designed to be worn around your upper neck and shoulders, plus frosty eye masks that can improve long, hot nights. Spend some time researching your biggest pain points, and you might be surprised at the innovations that have popped up to help alleviate them.

Ask your doctor about treatment options

If you’ve made lifestyle changes and lowered your stress levels, but you’re still experiencing persistent hot flashes, ask your doctor about prescriptive therapies, Burroughs advises. Among the options: hormone replacement therapy, low-dose selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), gabapentin, clonidine, and fezolinetant. Ideally, these treatments would completely eliminate hot flashes, but people respond differently. “The more intense your symptoms, the harder it could be to get them under control,” she says. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. 

Burroughs wants people to know that they’re not destined to suffer, even on the hottest summer days. “Yes, it’s a natural part of transitioning, but that doesn’t mean symptoms have to be tolerated,” she says. “Don’t feel as if just because this was designed biologically, that we can’t help you make the easiest transition possible.”

source https://time.com/6990548/hot-flashes-menopause-hot-outside/

The Ghost of Marlon Brando Haunts The Bikeriders—And Not in a Good Way

A movie that brings great still photographs to life should itself be a thing of greatness, a way of connecting us not just with a photographer’s art but with his subjects. The direct inspiration for Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders is the 1968 book of the same name by New Journalism photographer Danny Lyon, who spent three years chronicling the lives of the members of a Chicago motorcycle club. Lyon’s pictures—of skinny, mischievous-looking tattooed guys in leather vests, of women whose hair seems perpetually windblown, even if they’re not riding—are raw and immediate, but there’s a lilting tenderness in them too. Lyon had lived among these people, and his pictures are about as far from a clinical anthropological study as you can get; instead, he opened a portal into their lives and the things they loved best. What motivates them most is the idea of getting on a bike, sans helmet, and riding, fast; the women sometimes ride too, but mostly they just seem to adore being around these men. Lyon’s photographs, in pearlescent black-and-white, bring them to life, to the point where the images themselves seem to breathe.

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So why does Nichols’ film feel so lifeless, and so listless? It features a cast of terrific, appealing actors, including Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, and Mike Faist. Shot for shot, it shows clear affection and respect for Lyon’s work, often echoing it with artisanal specificity. (The cinematographer is Adam Stone, also the DP on other Nichols movies like Take Shelter, Mud, Midnight Special, and Loving.)

Read More: Danny Lyon’s Original Photos of the Bikeriders

But reverence can sap the life out of a film—that and too much acting. And boy, is there a lot of acting in The Bikeriders. The movie opens in a bar, where Butler’s Benny sits, minding his own business, until two thugs accost him. He’s wearing his club’s jacket—they’re called the Vandals—and these troublemakers strongly object. The three take the fight outside, and Benny, a lean, mean, scrapper, seems to be holding his own in this two-against-one-fight, though we find out later he hasn’t gotten off so easy.

By that time, we’ve also become acquainted with the woman who fell in love with Benny at first sight, Comer’s Kathy. She pours her story out with the passionate earnestness of a Shangri-La. (That girl groups’ glorious anthem “Out in the Streets” is a major feature of the movie’s soundtrack.) A scrawny, serious-looking guy, Faist’s Danny, captures it all with a tape recorder. Kathy describes the evening she stepped into a scary biker joint; she doesn’t like the look of these guys and tells her friend she wants to leave. “And that’s when I seen Benny, standin’ over the pool table,” she emotes emotively, before proceeding to dem, dese, and dose through nearly two hours of The Bikerider‘s not-so-vrooming runtime.

We learn everything about how the Vandals came to be: Hardworking truck driver Johnny (Hardy) sees The Wild One on TV and becomes entranced, as any normal human would be, with Marlon Brando. Why can’t he start a club for the guys around town who love to bike? Who love to speed down the highway with the wind in their greased-up hair, who love to commune down at the local watering hole, who really just love to feel free? It’s all very innocent, until it isn’t. These are guys who also love to fight, either to defend their turf or just for the heck of it, and Johnny, though he’s one of the oldest of the gang, is one of the toughest. We see him beat the bejesus out of a guy who respectfully asks if he can start a chapter of the group in another city—only, in the end, to tell the guy that of course he can. This is pure biker logic, as laid out by Nichols (who also wrote the script), and it makes a certain kind of sense.

Read more: The 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades

Until new guys come in and ruin it all. Isn’t that always the way? Nichols takes care to give each of these biker guys his moment in the sun, just as Lyon did with his photographs. We learn that the rough-around-the-edges man of few words Zipco (played by Nichols regular Michael Shannon) really wanted to go to Vietnam, though he was turned away for reasons that don’t really need explaining—you can see it all in the crazy flash of his eyes. We see, and Kathy affirms, that Johnny envies Benny; he’s also at least a little in love with him, but how could he not be? As Butler plays him, he’s a laid-back god in working men’s denim, even though we never see any of these guys work. He strides and rides through the world as if it were his for the conquering; he doesn’t say much, but his penetrating gaze speaks volumes. No wonder Kathy is nuts about him, as she repeats repeatedly.

But there’s trouble in that paradise, and one of the movie’s problems is that although we’re told how much Kathy adores Benny, there are very few scenes of them together. In one, they cuddle on the bed as Benny recuperates from the surgery that’s supposed to repair his shattered foot. (That injury is the handiwork of the goons we met in the first scene.) They’re laughing at an episode of Bewitched, both in thrall to the patently wonderful ridiculousness of mid-1960s television. Then Johnny intrudes; he’s got to get Benny riding again, messed-up foot be damned. And so forth. The trials and troubles pile up, and before you know it, it’s the end of an era.

Still, we feel we’re being moved through this world as if we were experiencing the Hall of Presidents rather than stepping right into the lives of a group of wild, yet deeply human, guys and gals. Maybe the problem is outside of Nichols’ control. The faces we see in Lyon’s photographs are so resolutely self-contained that to make up a story around them feels almost sacrilegious. Everyone looks right: Comer’s hair has just the right bouffant swoop; she’s dressed in the exact synthetic stretch crepe mock-turtleneck shells we see in Lyon’s pictures. And you can’t drink in Butler’s unworried, unstudied sex appeal and not fall in love with Benny, at least a little.

But the ghost of Brando haunts The Bikeriders, and not in a good way. We can see how assiduously every one of these actors has studied and prepared; it’s as if the tenets of method acting—at least method acting as it’s commonly misunderstood—were seeping, like sweat, through their pores. That’s the antithesis of the lived-in vitality we get in Lyon’s pictures. (Another problem is that the puckishly charismatic Mike Faist gets just a few minutes’ worth of screentime, sprinkled through the movie.)

Nichols is a smart, sensitive filmmaker. His 2016 film Loving is superb: Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton play Richard and Mildred Loving, whose fight to live as a married couple spurred the 1967 Supreme Court decision that struck down laws banning interracial marriage. That film also took inspiration from great historical photography, specifically the Life magazine photos shot by Grey Villet, played by Shannon in the film. Those photos captured the Lovings’ everyday affection: the point wasn’t to make them seem exceptional, but to show just how average they were. With The Bikeriders, Nichols tries once again to open a door into the lives of people who lived before us. The romance of the streets—of being out in them, on a fast set of wheels, and of having your girlfriend wrap her arms around you once you’ve safely hopped off the bike—is all right there in Lyon’s photographs. They’re complete in themselves. The Bikeriders adds color and movement and a fleshed-out backstory. And still, somehow, it feels like subtraction.

source https://time.com/6990290/the-bikeriders-review/