Review: "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Freddie Mercury was a beautiful, beautiful man. He had the voice of an angry angel and the strut of a smirking devil. The songs he created with his band, Queen, have already entered the hall of ages. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is an exuberant celebration of the man and the music.

But not just Mercury himself.

One of the things I appreciated about the film, directed by Bryan Singer from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten, is that’s not a simple biopic of the lead singer. The other three members of the band -- lead guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) and bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) -- are fully represented as living, breathing people and not just “the other guys.” They regard Mercury as a brother and equal, and aren’t shy about calling out his self-centered behavior.

Rami Malek embodies the soul of Mercury, capturing his ineluctable showmanship onstage and retiring nature off it. For the songs, the filmmakers combined Malek’s vocals with those of Mercury and Marc Martel, a professional sound-alike. It’s an effective innovation, sounding like Mercury’s own voice while authentic enough to not seem like just canned playback.

The story follows Mercury for about 15 years, from a kid of Persian ethnicity who moved from Tanzania to the U.K. as a teenager, to the height of his fame and ego. It’s a mesmerizing, bravura performance by Malek, one that I hope is remembered during the awards season.

We witness Queen evolve from a college pub band into something more, selling their touring van to pay for studio time to cut an album. Born to conservative parents and with a protruding overbite caused by extra teeth, Mercury hungers to break out of his assigned role.

He wanted to play for the weirdos in the back of the room, because he was one.

Fame and fortune soon followed, but Mercury was kept grounded for many years by the companionship of Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), his onetime fiancé and for whom he wrote “Love of My Life.” Eventually he came out to her as bisexual, which ended their romance but not their friendship.

Queen deliberately blurred gender lines in their act, slapping each other’s bums and dressing in drag for a music video. At a time when being openly gay could literally be fatal, they toyed with our proscribed notions of attraction and thereby made breaking them seem less dangerous.

The movie contains many of the hallmarks of the rock movie -- shady producers, spats between the band, a sycophantic personal manager (a slimy Allen Leech) who worms his way into the star’s life and sows the seeds of dissension.

But the film never feels rote or predictable. We celebrate the live recreation of Queen performances -- if you don’t inadvertently start stamping your feet during “We Will Rock You,” you can’t be helped -- and marvel at the collaborative creativity that went into making them.

We don’t just feel like we’re observing Queen, but have been invited inside the bubble.

(Note: Singer was fired with two weeks left in production and replaced by Dexter Fletcher; however, the Director’s Guild awarded him sole credit.)

There are two mirrored shots near the beginning and end that encapsulate the film. They chronicle the moment when Queen was about to take the stage for the massive Live Aid concert in 1985, which was their big reunion after a split of several years. Both follow Mercury as he strides from his trailer through the backstage area and then prepares to leap out of the curtains to a live crowd in the hundreds of thousands, and a television audience of over a billion.

In the first, the camera follows Mercury alone from behind. We appreciate his singular flamboyant personality and eagerness to bask in the wave of adulation. In the second, the rest of the band follows him as together they take the stage as a group. In the first, he is Freddie, a virtuoso; in the second he is part of Queen, a legend.

That’s the lesson of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Even those blessed with superstar talent need others to reach their ultimate potential. Freddie Mercury found his onstage by joining his abilities with others, and offstage by looking to people who cared about him as a person rather than just as a rock god. I can’t wait to watch this movie again, and again.

Video review: "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"

I grew up reading and loving the Arthurian Legends, and have mostly groaned at the cinematic adaptations of them. The sub-genre reached its zenith with 1981’s “Excalibur,” and hasn’t come anywhere close since. If John Boorman’s version was the pinnacle, then surely Guy Ritchie’s “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” represents rock bottom.

Some movies are confusing; others are simply confused. I doubt this seemingly random mash-up of King Arthur lore, martial arts chop-socky, steampunk criminal intrigue and New Age-y mysticism made much sense even to the people making the film.

Charlie Hunnan plays Arthur, reimagined here as a street urchin who grew up among thieves and has risen to be their lord. Just a little light extortion and prostitution, if you please. He watched his father, King Uther Pendragon, die at the hands of his evil uncle, Vortigern (Jude Law), and has evolved into a standard-issue Avoiding My Destiny protagonist, a la Simba from “The Lion King.”

Soon enough he pulls Excalibur from the stone, and assumes the leadership of the rebellion consisting of some Uther loyalists, the thieves’ guild, a wayward mage who can control animals and not much else, and the rest of the ragtag.

Meanwhile, Vortigern is building a magical tower that augments his own sorcery, which never really gets all that impressive. Behead that architect!

Ritchie’s whirling dervish directing style, which is the cinematic equivalent of attention deficit disorder, is known for jumping around in time and space with head-snapping velocity. It works in small doses with the right material -- see his 2015 “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” for a prime example.

But “Arthur” often seems like a random assembly of shots without any kind of cohesive aesthetic connecting them. We’ll see Arthur swinging his sword in battle, for instance, and then cut to a shot of the mage standing enchanted on a hill far away, a murder of CGI crows swirling about her in slo-mo.

It’s a great-looking movie, but the story, characters and tone are disconnected from each other, or anything that could be reasonably termed entertaining.

Video extras are decent. The DVD comes only with a single featurette, “Arthur with Swagger,” a profile of Hunnan’s take on the character.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition and you add seven more featurettes, focusing on Ritchie’s vision, sword training for the cast, creating a grimier Camelot, stunt choreography, behind-the-scenes relationships and the mythology behind Excalibur.

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Review: "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"

“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is the sort of movie that ends careers… or ought to.

This is just a stinking garbage pile of a movie. Director/co-writer Guy Ritchie, who turned the Sherlock Holmes stories into a dizzy Ferris wheel of grimy alleys and knife fights, takes on the Arthurian legend with the same aesthetic and considerably less skill.

It plays like a random assembly of Ritchie-esque shots -- slo-mo fights, cutaways to characters standing around looking cool as the wind swirls around them, and that thing he does where the people describe what’s going to happen, intercut with it actually happening.

It’s like they took the cut scenes from the video game version of the movie and made that the movie.

It’s a common insult for critics to say a movie plays like a video game. But I like video games, and such a comparison would be an insult to them.

The entire legend of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, the tragedy of Lancelot and Guinevere, etc. is tossed out the window by Ritchie and fellow script men Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram. Instead, Arthur is a street scamp who rises to become the quiet crime lord of Camelot, running brothels and collecting extortion money from merchants.

He’s played by Charlie Hunnan, wearing a smirk and one of those haircuts that are popular these days where it’s buzzed to the scalp everywhere except the top. (Note to men: If you’re north of age 14, don’t.) He manages to pull the sword from the stone pretty early in the going, and spends the rest of the movie working out his daddy issues.

Eric Bana plays Uther Pendragon, murdered by his brother (!), Vortigern, played by longtime Ritchie thespian Jude Law. He’s trying to build a tower to increase his magic powers, except we never see him do anything more impressive than light a candle with his mind. Well, he does have one other trick up his sleeve, but it’s actually the work of a strange sea creature that resembles Ursula from “The Little Mermaid,” who demands a heavy price.

Merlin is off away doing something, but he has sent another mage, known simply as The Mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), in his stead to help out. It seems Vortigern has been carrying out a genocide against the mages. She can do that thing where her eyes go all-pupil and she takes over the body of wild creatures. We keep thinking she and Arthur are going to hook up, but first somebody needs to feed her.

Rounding out the cast are Djimon Hounsou as Bedivere, a loyal general to Uther who helps out the son; Aiden Gillen from “Game of Thrones,” who apparently is now required to be in every medieval movie, as Goosefat Bill, who makes quips and flings arrows; and Kingsley Ben-Adir and Neil Maskell as Arthur’s criminal lackeys, Wet Stick and Back Lack.

There’s also a martial arts school in the middle of Camelot, with an Asian teacher named George, who tutored young Arthur in the ways of badassery. And David Beckham turns up in a cameo as a flunky with a nasty eye scar.

(Lots of people have eye scars, for some reason, including Arthur.)

Other weird stuff: Arthur passes out a lot. No, really, whenever he touches Excalibur, he just faints dead away like a Southern belle with the vapors. For some reason, the rebels looking to overthrow Vertigern keep following him.

There’s also Arthur’s odd montage quest to the Darklands, which is supposed to be his big descent into darkness and accepting of his lineage. Except he’s still a prick when he comes back.

I grew up reading and loving the Arthurian legends -- what, most 9-year-olds don’t tear through “Le Morte d’Arthur”? -- so to see them used for this sneering bit of tomfoolery pains me to no end.

There’s not a spark of magic in “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.” It’s a visually splendid movie that proves the limits of what eye candy alone can do.