Bohemian Rhapsody

The best:  Is it too easy to say the music?  If so, then Rami Malek

The worst:  Very sanitized telling of this story

Comments:
Full disclosure: Like many people, I love the music of Queen.  I would have gone to this movie it was just a bunch of old concert film, and probably would have given it an amazing review.  So with that out of the way...

Bohemian Rhapsody is a movie that tells the story of the early days of the band Queen through to their seminal 1991 Live Aid concert performance.  I am not sure I would call this a true biopic due to the many historical inaccuracies and extremely sanitized versions of some events (but more on that below).  The movie covers Freddie Mercury joining the band, personal live and relationships, early songs and albums, success, tension, decent into hedonism, Mercury's AIDS diagnosis, and the before mentioned Live Aid performance.  All of this is presented with Queen's most famous music.  The distinctive anthem rock sound served as the perfect backdrop for this peek behind the curtain of one of the biggest bands of the late 70's to the early 90's.

I imagine it would be very difficult to be the lead in a biopic (or faux-biopic), since so much of how people judge the movie will be done through the lens of your performance.  Rami Malek does not fail as Freddie Mercury.  While some clever prosthetics help with the shape of his face, the real magic is in the attitude and stage presence that Malek is able to recreate.  He brings just the right amount of glamour and eccentricity to the role for it to succeed.  His performance is the piece that carries the movie forward; his enactment of the evolution of Mercury is the mileposts that help us to see how much time is passing.

I was pretty disappointed with some of the inaccuracies in the film.  Nothing really breaks the story but having Queen be quasi-broken up just before Live Aid was unnecessary, the timing of his AIDS was all messed up to fit it into the movie timeframe, a lot of things with his first wife were out of order.  All of those were a bit disappointing.

Another small bit of disappointment was in how sanitized everything was.  The arguments were mild.  The parties were populated but not too crazy (the cleanup was pretty bad, though).  Success came easily and at the cost of selling a van.  The record deal was waiting in the wings.  The doctor appointment where Mercury finds out he has AIDS is the perfect analogy for this rosy version of the story:  spotless, clean, and empty.  This is Queen as told from people who were very concerned about protecting Queen's (and Freddie Mercury's) legacy.  Freddie could look selfish and bad at times because he comes begging back later!  Everybody else is a saint, only focused on the music and never engaging in undesirable behavior.

This reminds me of the movie Straight Outta Compton in that it tells a dirty story but forgets about the dirt.  I think this is a bit of hubris that plays through when the people who were a part of the experience are allowed to have producing credits for the movie.  Nobody wants to play the bad guy on screen, even if there were bad guy moments in life.  Everybody wants to be smarter, handsomer, better in every way.  A lot of that came across in this movie, and it was worse for having done it.

The movie was very enjoyable, but fell short of great.  No risks were taken in the storytelling, no dirt was dug up.  Anything potentially offensive was scrubbed out replaced with those spotless, clean walls.  I wanted more, but at least the music was fantastic!

Rating - 7/10  The music gets it 5.5 points all by itself.

Venom

The best:  The banter between Eddie and Venom

The worst:  Script.  Continuity.  

Comments:  Venom is an interesting movie.

This is a comic book movie through and through.  This is not a bad thing for me as those tend to be some of my favorite movies.  Eddie Brock is a report who crosses the wrong person and loses his job.  Venom is an alien to wants to kill - and potentially eat - everybody, but needs a host to merge with in order to survive our planet.  Mix well and you have our movie.

This movie is a mess.  The bad guy is terrible and so one dimensional it's painful.  The way Eddie gets fired is telegraphed so hard you'd catch it in your sleep.  Venom switching sides comes so completely out of the blue it will leave your head spinning.  The fight at the end is visually appealing but don't think too much about it.  There are more cheesy parts than I can count.  The side characters are so one dimensional they may have just done better using cardboard cutouts.  The story has no depth and I felt as if 8 people had written 8 different scripts for this movie and then merged them together to end up with a startling lack of direction to the story.

And it was pretty fun.  This movie has very little quality (and most of that quality is the superb acting of Tom Hardy) but was a fun time.  Admittedly, it was fun in a "so bad it's good" sort of way, but fun is fun.  Nobody will ever mistake this movie for an Oscar contender, but at least it isn't trying to be one.  They keep it lighthearted through "internal" conversations between Eddie and Venom, most of which are pretty entertaining.  They kept a movie about an alien that wants to eat people's heads at PG-13, which made for some odd scenes.  The action felt more like a video game than a movie.  They keep the story movie along - an absolute requirement for a movie like this to work - and don't hesitate to leave logic behind when it gets inconvenient.  

In the end I have filed this movie away with 'Road House' and 'Con Air' - movies that are a guilty pleasure in that I enjoy watching them even while being painfully aware of how bad they really are.

Rating: 6/10  Just bad enough to be good.

A Star is Born

The best:  Everything the two lead actors brought to the table

The worst:  I don't know what to put here.  Maybe that the script writers didn't realize Lady Gaga's nose is smaller than Barbara Streisand's?

Comments:  It has taken me over a month to write this review, not because I did not know what to say but because it took me this long to sort out how I felt walking out of this movie.

The story isn't new- in fact this is the fourth version of this tale.  Each is told differently -  the first two in Hollywood and the latter in music, some focus on the career while others on the relationships, and the quality and chemistry of the actors varies greatly between versions.  But although I had seen this tragic tale twice before, I was not prepared for the emotional impact that awaited me.

Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper, who also directed) is a big star on the back nine of his career.  And he has problems.  Drinking, drugs, relationship, daddy- you name it, he has it.  While looking for a drink, he runs into Ally (Lady Gaga) in one of the genuinely strange scenes in the movie.  Strangeness aside, there is an instant attraction that takes off and gives us a movie.

Let me say upfront:  this movie is not perfect.  But it would take a far more critical mind than mine to find specifics that need to be changed.  This movie was amazing.  Bradley Cooper blew me away both with his directing and his acting.  The chemistry between him and Lady Gaga was electric.  There is a scene that you catch glimpses of during the previews when Ally first sings on stage with Jackson that is easily my favorite single scene of 2018.  The music was incredible and memorable.  Lady Gaga shocked me with her acting and Bradley Cooper shocked me with his voice.  It was just that kind of movie.

But it's not a happy movie.  The characters are deeply flawed, and those flaws are laid bare over and over again.  Cooper's Jackson Maine in particular is hard to watch at times.  But in those flaws are where the soul of the movie lies.  The joy is offset by pain, the happiness find sorrow, and the love fights reality.  You will be elevated with the highs and you will be brought down with the lows.  By the end of the movie the emotions are overwhelming, and I saw the majority of my full theater with tears on their faces as the lights slowly turned on.  For every tear there was somebody humming the music or talking high praise for the movie.

I loved this movie.

Rating:  10/10 - Best drama I've seen in years.