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: "X-Men: Apocalypse"

“X-Men: Apocalypse” continues the saga of the mutant super-heroes in their brave new retconned world, in which the course of history has been altered and new, younger actors have taken over (nearly) all of the roles.

(Comic book heroes may be able to bench-press buildings or regrow their own flesh. But their Hollywood counterparts are still batting .000 in the long war against their arch-nemesis, Father Time.)

It plays out a lot like “Captain America: Civil War” – a messy but vigorous smackdown between super-powered beings. The mayhem definitely overpowers the characterization here, as we jump from one action set piece to another, with little pauses for talkie scenes that tend to drag.

The story here is that an ancient Egyptian evil has been unleashed in the form of Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), who has the ability to absorb the powers of other mutants. He quickly forms himself his own team of henchmen, including Storm, Angel and others. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is also recruited after a personal tragedy while trying to live a normal life.

The good guys are less organized, led by Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who’s taken on the mantle of the outlaw voice of reason in the mutant community. Sophie Turner takes over the role of Jean Grey, while Tye Sheridan and Nicholas Hoult are Cyclops and Beast, respectively.

The movie is overlong at nearly 2½ hours, though it’s more a matter of emphasizing stuff that didn’t deserve so much screen time to the detriment of things that did. Still, I’d call it the best of the lot of a weak field of 2016 superhero movies.

Bonus features are quite robust. Director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Simon Kinberg do a feature-length audio commentary track. Singer also introduces a handful of deleted and extended scenes. It also comes with a gag reel, an hour-long making-of documentary, concept art and photo gallery plus a wrap party video.

Movie:




Extras: 

Review: "X-Men: Apocalypse"

So here is the other other big Marvel Comics film franchise, though don’t expect any crossover between mutants and Avengers anytime soon.

“X-Men: Apocalypse” is a big, rousing, sprawling and often messy epic, the sixth in the series and the fourth directed by Bryan Singer. (Not including the “Wolverine” spinoffs.) Still, it hits its themes of alienation and xenophobia solidly, brings in an effective new villain to threaten humanity and gives us some entertaining super-vs.-super scraps.

I liked it about as much as I did “Captain America: Civil War,” which plumbed similar subject matter. What’s different here is that with the previous film, “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” the entire franchise has been retconned, i.e. reimagined with an entirely different flow of history and events.

Essentially, they hit the “Restart” button on the X-Men. This is their first adventure in a new universe.

Part of this was simple logistics: the actors playing Storm, Jean Grey, Beast, Cyclops, etc. were getting a mite long in the tooth to play characters who are supposed to be stuck in that comic book realm of perpetual late 20s to early 30s. (Let’s face it, watching Kelsey Grammer trying to hump around in a blue suit was getting downright embarrassing.)

So now the cast is led by Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy and Nicholas Hoult as Mystique, Professor Xavier and Beast, respectively. We also introduce a bunch of new actors to take over other roles: Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, who has uncontrollable killer beams projecting from his eyes; Kodi Smit-McPhee as transporting shadowman Nightcrawler; and Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, a telekinetic/telepath with untapped power.

The story is set in 1983, 10 years after the last movie. Humanity has begrudgingly come to accept the existence of super-powered folk. Though, as one character notes, “Just because there’s not a war doesn’t mean there’s peace.” Mystique, previously a villain, is actually held up as a role model by many young mutants, such as Storm (Alexandra Shipp), here a fledgling thief in Cairo.

Meanwhile, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) has moved on from his vengeful ways, working as a humble steelworker in Poland, and even has a wife and young daughter. But, as always with him, dark urges beckon.

Events are brought to a head with the resurrection of Apocalypse, though he does not call himself that, an ancient being who regards himself as the father of mutants. Over the centuries he has transferred his consciousness into new mutant bodies, acquiring their abilities. Played by Oscar Isaac in impressive purple/black armor and makeup, he’s determined to cleanse the world of weakness and rule those he deems strong enough to live.

The story (screenplay by Simon Kinberg) is all go-go-go. We jump from one threat to the next, one confrontation to another. Along the way there will be many deaths and wholesale destruction, including Xavier’s entire School for Gifted Youngsters.

Quicksilver, who made such an impression in a brief spot in the last movie, gets a bigger role here, again played by Evan Peters. He can move so quickly that to him it seems the rest of the world is moving in slow motion – even bullets and explosions. If you thought his hyperactive exploits were impressive last time, wait till you see how he lends a hand now.

“X-Men: Apocalypse” is a big, big movie -- 2½ hours long, dozens of characters. I haven’t even mentioned who makes up the Four Horsemen. If you’re like me, you may lose track of the names and faces. Plus there are brief cameos, including a certain bestial fellow with a harsh point to make. From a pure entertainment perspective, it gets the job done.

Video review: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"

Once storytelling franchises have been around while -- especially ones involving science fiction and/or super-heroes -- it can be hard for filmmakers to find enough creative real estate to let their imaginations sprawl. After all, histories have been set, great and terrible deeds done, characters evolved or killed off, and it's a bad notion to retread over familiar territory.

So what to do? More and more, these movies are going retcon.

Retconning is when a new set of creators essentially reboots everything we know about a mythos, blanking the slate so they can start over from a zero point of their own choosing. "Star Trek" did this recently, and now the X-Men comic book heroes have, too.

This bold new film, the best super-hero flick since "The Avengers," looks at a post-apocalyptic world where nearly all mutants have been destroyed by the menacing robotic Sentinels. Clawed, nearly unkillable warrior Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent 50 years into the past to occupy the mind of his younger self, and must convince the Professor X of that era (James McAvoy), who is wallowing in a pit of self-pity, to take action to prevent the terrible tide.

That means diverting power-mad frenemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and shape-shifting skulduggerer Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from their mission to make mutants the master of regular humans rather than the object of their hatred. Needless to say, they're not happy to go along.

There's one scene that may just be the most entertaining action sequence of the summer, and it involves a new mutant named Quicksilver who is so fast he practically lives in his own dimension of time.

A satisfying mix of action, convincing characterizations and plot twists, "X-Men: Days of Future Past" delivers one for the ages.

Video extras are quite hefty, and include deleted scenes with audio commentary by director Bryan Singer, a gag reel, gallery and several making-of featurettes.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "X-Men: Days of Future Past"

I am the guy who has been known to complain about superhero movies being too somber and serious. But I don't think it's a contradiction to celebrate that same quality in the new X-Men film.

In other comic books and movies, superheroes were usually regular folks who acquired powers through happenstance. Even if they might struggle with controlling them or the implications of their newfound responsibilities, these stories rode an underlying fantasy about becoming special.

The X-Men were always different. They were mutants, born the way they were, and their powers were not a source of joy but an instrument for prejudice and even hatred. And the stakes were always higher: X-Men comics were the only ones I read as a boy where people died on a pretty regular basis.

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" is based on the concept of a 1981 storyline in which a future was envisioned where mutants had lost the war against their kind, with most of our favorite characters having been killed by monstrous Sentinel robots. It also attempts -- quite successfully in my estimation -- to combine the original X-Men trilogy from the last decade with the 2011 "First Class" movie that depicted the nascent days of the mutant movement in the 1960s.

Pop culture aficionados will recognize this as "retconning," in which storytellers retroactively alter the mythology of a franchise to fit their new schemes. (They recently did this with the "Star Trek" flicks.) But this is the mother of all retconning, in which both the present and future of the X-Men, as established in the previous films, are cleverly made to go kerbloowie.

In tackling this ambitious new project, they brought back original director Bryan Singer, who along with screenwriter Simon Kinberg manage to make a movie that is at once entertaining and sobering.
There's a darkness and a grandiosity to "X-Men: Days of Future Past" that has been missing from these movies.

Initially set in the near future, we witness a world where telepath Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and his few surviving students fight against the Sentinels, which can adapt to and even copy the powers of mutants. Losing seems inevitable, so they hatch a plan to send the consciousness of animalistic warrior Logan (Hugh Jackman) 50 years into the past, inhabiting his younger self in 1973.

There, he must convince a distraught Xavier (now played by James McAvoy) to join with his friend-turned-arch-enemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to prevent the assassination of a power-mad scientist named Trask (a terrific Peter Dinklage) that sets off the war against mutants.

At the center of the mission is heading off Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), a shape-shifting assassin whose loyalties lie somewhere between the just-get-along sentiments of Xavier and the them-or-us creed of Magneto.

What makes this movie work is that even as we bounce through all these intrigues about robots and time travel and telepathy, the filmmakers never forget to focus on the characters. So the emnity between Xavier and Magneto feels personal, and Logan's battle between his berserker side and his better instincts has a tragic note.

Not that they forgot to include some terrific action scenes. Some of the best involve Quicksilver (Evan Peters), a super-fast teen who lives in a world that's almost another dimension, since he can do dozens of things in the blink of an eye. One scene where the team is breaking Magneto out of an impregnable prison is an utter delight.

Where do the X-Men go from here? Wait until after the credits for a (vague) glimpse. All I know is this movie blows up the franchise while also delivering the best film we've seen in the series.

Video review: "Jack the Giant Slayer"

Poor Nicholas Hoult. The young actor has the dis-privilege of starring in two of the year’s most underrated films.

First was the whimsical horror-romance “Warm Bodies,” which didn’t cause too much of a ruckus at the box office. And then came “Jack the Giant Slayer,” an action-heavy take on the classic beanstalk tale that bombed, despite lavish production values and a budget approaching $200 million.

It’s a shame, because “Jack” stands much taller as a piece of pure entertainment than similar movies like “Oz the Great and Powerful” or “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.”

Hoult plays Jack, a humble farm boy whose life goes on a wild ride after the magic beanstalk carries the beautiful princess into the clouds. It seems the giants were banished there eons ago by the humans, and their two-headed king has half a mind to seek his heaven on earth.

Stanley Tucci, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan McGregor and Ian McShane nicely fill out the cast as, respectively, the villain, the princess, the dashing knight and the gruff king.

But the real stars are the computer-generated giants – great, hairy burping beasts whose brutish manners and seeming lack of a feminine gender make their abode seem like the ultimate oversized frat house.

Director Bryan Singer, a veteran of the “X-Men” films, keeps the mood light and the action scenes coming at a furious pace. A great many men and animals get squished underfoot by the less-than-graceful giants, and the CGI captures the mayhem in all its glory.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” is a fun, goofy, giddy ride that never dares to take itself too seriously.

Unfortunately, the film’s lackluster performance in theaters may have contributed to a paucity of goodies for the video release. The DVD comes with a few deleted scenes and a gag reel. Upgrading to Blu-ray adds the “Become a Giant Slayer” interactive feature, and that’s it.

Too bad they didn’t go big for the video rollout.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Jack the Giant Slayer"

Just a short review here today; Joe Shearer is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so head there to get his complete write-up.

There sure is a trend lately of turning children's fairy tales into splashy CGI action spectacles. Last summer's "Snow White and the Huntsman" was the testosterone-ized counterpart to "Mirror, Mirror." Earlier this year we had "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," a title that suggests how successful it would be. Now "Jack and the Giant Slayer."

All these movies have employed the same methodology: Take a well-known (and conveniently public domain) story, punch it up with huge action sequences, add scary boogums rendered with computer animation, and then slather it all with a dark-and-grimy look and mood.

"Jack" is easily the best of the lot, perhaps because it doesn't take it self quite so seriously. Yes, there are some profoundly silly moments, but the cast and crew seem to recognize and embrace them. Stanley Tucci as the titular villain is practically doing a stand-up routine in medieval garb.

Nicholas Hoult is by design the least interesting character in the picture as Jack, a pleasant, placid farmboy stand-in for the audience in this high-flying adventure. There's a beautiful princess -- of course! -- played by Eleanor Tomlinson who's in need of rescuing. Ewan McGregor has a nice supporting turn as the plucky captain of the guard, and Ian McShane is around to do that growly thing that McShane keeps getting called upon to do.

The giants are the real stars of the movie. Thirty feet tall, hairy, lumpy and barefoot, they stroll about their kingdom in the skies, having been banished there by a mythical human king who wielded a magic crown to command them. They spend their days eating sheep, picking their noses and issuing troubling sounds and smells from various parts of their bodies.

Basically, it's Big Bachelor Heaven.

Anyway, those pesky magic beans turn up, accidentally get dropped in some water and grow into a massive beanstalk. Unfortunately, the princess is trapped inside Jack's house at the time and gets carried into the sky. The beanstalk also provides a convenient mode of transport for the giants to come back down and wage destruction.

Bill Nighy does the voice of the giant general Fallon, who has a second head that is not quite as developed. The little one mimics the speech of the big one, but in slurred, halting words. It's almost like the giant king having his own jester permanently attached to him, whispering idiot nothings into his ear.

Director Bryan Singer stages clean, thrilling action scenes and encourages his cast to keep the mood light. And the CGI melee is decently gruesome in a PG-13 sort of way, with plenty of unfortunate extras getting squished underfoot by giants or become fodder for their craving for man-meat.

"Jack the Giant Slayer" is a big, goofy thrill ride that manages to metastasize its fairy tale legend without getting too full of itself.

3 stars out of four