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.

Review: "Need for Speed"

I like video games and I like cars and I like car racing video games and I certainly like movies, but I did not care for this movie based on a car racing video game.

The problem with "Need for Speed" is that it's a goofy flick with aspirations of being A Serious Drama, and those things don't really mix well. Much like the dreariest parts of the "Fast and Furious" franchise, whenever the characters aren't zipping around in souped-up machines, crashing and taunting each other, the movie gets stuck in neutral.

It is, in fact, much like a muscle car sitting in one place revving its engine very loudly: it seems kinda cool at first and certainly draws a lot of attention, but after a short time we get itchy to see the thing, y'know, go.

Aaron Paul, best known as the "bitch" guy from TV's "Breaking Bad," hasn't had much of a movie career -- though he had a strong supporting part in the indie drama "Smashed" from not long ago. He's got serious thespian chops, but this movie -- directed by Scott Waugh ("Act of Valor") with a screenplay by rookie George Gatins -- requires him to deliver a lot of ridiculous dialogue and smoldering stares that don't seem to have a whole heaping helping of intellect behind them.

I'm not saying Tobey Marshall is dumb, but he certainly acts pretty dumb.

Tobey runs a performance car shop in tiny Mount Kisco, New York (though Georgia and its ferocious film production tax credits stand in). His dad has recently died, the shop isn't doing well, but he's got an amiable crew of mechanics/best buds (Ramon Rodriguez, Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Harrison Gilbertson) to help pass the time.

They contrive to set up elaborate street racing events, including a guy monitoring traffic from a Cessna in the sky, though the cops are seemingly nowhere to be found. Tobey is the top dog on this little circuit, but he's never had a car good enough to make it to the Big Time, where here is defined as an annual underground race of supercars called the Deleon.

This race is organized by a secretive billionaire named Monarch (Michael Keaton), who reputedly was once a great racer himself but a bad ticker made him quit. Now he sits in a room full of tech gear, delivering daily vodcasts in which he encourages and/or rags on drivers, with an exclusive invite to the Deleon as catnip. Apparently, every single gearhead in the country tunes into Monarch, though law enforcement has not yet paid him any notice. Strange, that.

Here's where things get screwy. The prize for the winner of the Deleon is he gets to keep all the other racers' cars. Of course, if you've every actually played the Need for Speed games or seen any car movie ever, you know that most of the vehicles end up as smoking roadkill.

(Maybe Monarch got so rich because he never has to put up any prize money, and his only major expenses are Web hosting fees.)

The heavy is Dominic Cooper as Dino Brewster, a teen rival of Tobey's who stole his girl (Dakota Johnson) and made it out of their dink town to race on the Indy circuit, which of course begs the question of why he bothers with illegal street races that likely pay a small fraction of his legitimate racing income.

Whatever. Cooper is an appropriately sneering, contemptuous presence.

The Deleon actually ends up as largely an afterthought, as most of the film's running time is concerned with the initial face-off between Tobey and Dino, during which Very Bad Things happen, and then Tobey's race to drive across country in time to make it for Monarch's little to-do in California. The "race before the race" has all sorts of roadway encounters, including incompetent cops, murderous rednecks in trucks and a rescue off the end of a cliff that is just completely preposterous.

Imogen Poots plays Julia, a British car expert who tags along with Tobey for reasons that are never made entirely clear, other than just to have an adorable chick around. The movie's third main star is a special silver Ford Mustang, supposedly the car Carroll Shelby was working on with Ford before he died, which Tobey and his crew finish into a 234-mile-per-hour beast.

Of course, driving a custom-built car 3,000 miles across country at high speeds is a really great way to mess up the engine right before a big race, but "Need for Speed" is not the sort of movie to bother with verisimilitude. The 'Stang is pretty awesome, though I thought the '68 Gran Torino Tobey drives in the initial race even cooler.

The racing sequences are the best thing about the movie, as Waugh & Co. eschew over-the-top computer generated mayhem for practical car stunts, which give these scenes a certain amount of verve and heft.

The talkie parts, though, are so cumbersome, and eat up an astonishing portion of the film's overlong 140-minute run time.

At one point, Tobey and Dino finally have a face-off inside a hotel prior to their race, which involves lots of shoving and grappling and strained threats. "We'll settle this behind the wheel!" Tobey snarls, because that's where every car movie ends. All things considered, though, a punch in the nose would have been quicker, safer and more satisfying.

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Review: "Short Term 12"

Grace gives good advice but doesn't take it. As the senior staffer at a foster care facility for troubled teens, she tells a new counselor on his first day that the job isn't to be their therapist or their friend, but simply keep them safe. Nonetheless, she finds herself getting increasingly engrossed in their problems, to the point the strife reverberates against her own past filled with pain.

It's a brave, unadorned and gutsy performance by Brie Larson, best known for roles in teen and/or comedy films. This dark, brooding but enthralling drama should be a game-changer for her.

Writer/director Destin Cretton settles us easily into the daily workings of Short Term 12, housed in a drab facility hidden away in a corner of suburbia. The rules are simple: while the teens are inside the property, their lives are more or less controlled by the staff. Once they get past the gate, though, all bets are off. Runners happen often enough the counselors trade funny stories about them.

Grace rules this environment through sheer force of will, getting boys a foot taller than her to knuckle under at the threat of a "level drop." Mason (John Gallagher Jr.) is her wingman, goofy and sensitive and, we soon learn, her surreptitious sweetie. They're both lost kids who were found, and want other youngsters to have the same chance.

Cretton's story is cyclical and sporadic, much like life at the center. The movie's attention wanders from this kid to that, and eventually onto Grace's own inner turmoil.

The film's strong point is the bond that exists between these teens, even when they're occasionally at each others' throats. They're linked by the idea that nobody's problems are insurmountable, since every person is screwed up in their own way.

Two of the foster kids stand out. Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) is the newest arrival, a referral from a friend of the facility director. She's jaded, cut off and too smart to fall for the normal tricks. She's unusual among the group in that she lives part-time with her father, who put her there after being unable to handle her destructive behavior.

Slowly, methodically, Grace worms her way into Jayden's good graces. They bond over their love of sketching ... and their horrible expression of self-hatred.

Most affecting is Marcus, the oldest of the group. Foster kids are only supposed to be there less than a year, but he's been around over three and is about to receive a mandatory boot upon turning 18. He's sullen and borderline aggressive, but also harbors a contemplative, poetic side.

Marcus keeps talking about wanting to shave his head for his birthday; Grace and company nod quizzically, not understanding the meaningful insistence behind this odd request. When they finally honor it, it opens up an emotional catharsis that just sweeps you away. It's Keith Stanfield's first feature film role, and he packs a punch.

The movie's not perfect. Cretton's sense of timing is occasionally off, as some events bring a sense of urgency that just melts away. Nate (Rami Malek), the new counselor who at first acts as the eyes and ears of the audience, sort of gets misplaced about halfway through. I also wanted more time alone with Grace and Mason; their romance feels more like a marker than something that breathes.

Still, "Short Term 12" is a powerful and genuine look at young, shattered lives and the painstaking process of piecing them back together again.