BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Freddie Mercury was a superlatively talented and charismatic musician who lived a raucous, dangerous life.  He was a bold artist - his pop videos referenced Njinsky, and Fritz Lang and leather clubs - he gave a white hair band a provocatively queer name - he was both in the closet and out - he's one of the most famous victims of AIDS but only admitted he'd contracted the disease late.   And more than that, Freddie remains fundamentally opaque.  He didn't talk much about his private boarding school childhood in India, hundreds of miles from his parents in Zanzibar. He didn't talk much about how they felt to be transported from wealth and warmth to suburban London, and how he felt as a gay teenager of strict Zoroastrian parents, whose religion forbids homosexuality.  Do we really know why he went solo in the early 80s?  Do we really know why he returned to the band?  Do we know how he felt when gay friends starting dying of AIDS, whether he took precautions or altered his behaviour, or how he felt when he succumbed?

No. And this is not the film to tell us either.  Instead, what we have here is a sanitised, banal, paint by numbers biopic that does no justice to the audacity of its subject, or the interest of his fans. It's all surface. All staged set-up. There's barely a conversation that doesn't show a simplistic version of how some hit song was written. This is the stuff of pantomime villains and white-washed heroes.  Most insultingly, the film portrays Freddie as unaware he was gay until the late 70s, as basically straight laced until led down the path of danger and disease in the 80s by the villlainous parasite Paul Prenter (Allan Leech - DOWNTON ABBEY).  Even when he does come out to his parents in an absurd last minute hook up with Jim Hutton on the DAY OF LIVE AID!!! there's no confrontation or consternation. It's all just tied up nicely with a bow so that the stakes can be at their highest for that concert. Oh yes, and he supposedly also told the band he was dying just before it and was worried his voice wouldn't hold up.

This is all palpable bollocks of course.  And one would've hoped that the surviving members of the band would've been better than settling old scores with the original reviewers of BoRhap, or the original record producer who wouldn't put it out as a single.  One might even have hoped that they would be more honest about their shagging and drinking, let alone Freddie's, rather than just the odd sly comment about Roger Taylor's extra-marital affairs.   And for heaven's sake, could any of this have been done with slightly more subtlety that the leaden dialogue by THE QUEEN's Peter Morgan and Anthony McCarten? Seriously this was little more than an afternoon TV Movie of the week.

The only thing that saves the movie - I'm afraid to say as he's apparently a despicable man - is Bryan Singer's visual styling - particularly an opening dynamic walk through the backstage of Live Aid, and a lovely shot that takes us into the band's tour bus. 

Rami Mallek doesn't act - he does an impersonation. A very good one of Freddie's accent and physical performance.  But he struggles with his prosthetic teeth and an impersonation is NOT a holistic acting performance. That said, Freddie and Queen were just so bloody good, that even seeing an impersonation  inspires a lot of nostalgia and feel-good singalong warmth.  But that doesn't make this by any stretch of the imagination an awards-worthy film.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY has a running time of 134 minutes and is rated PG-13.  It is on global release.

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is a long and convoluted film. That it remains engaging says something for the quality of the cast it has assembled, the ballsiness of its premise and the elegance of its action scenes.

The movie sees Wolverine sent back in time to the 1970s by Kitty Pryde to persuade Professor X and Magneto to come together and prevent Mystique from being captured by an evil inventor called Trask.  He will create robots called Sentinels who use Mystique's own mutated blood to become the ultimate Mutant killing machines.  If she isn't stopped Mystique will unleash a future in which Mutants are all but extinct.  But the mission isn't an easy one. Wolverine has to persuade a disillusioned, drugged up Professor X to help; he has to bust Magneto out of prison for killing JFK; and that's before he even gets to Trask.

The cast is impeccable. Fassbender vs McAvoy as Magneto vs Professor X is just the ultimate buddy movie with consequences.  You need actors will real heft to pull of a man scarred by the Holocaust and another who has to go back into his wheelchair for the good of humanity.  Jennifer Lawrence plays a woman on the brink of a massive ethical decision. The new additions are Peter Dinklage as the bad guy, Trask, fine but nothing spectacular, and Evan Peters as Quicksilver. (Yes, you're right - a different Pietro Maximoff to the one in AVENGERS....)  Peters doesn't have much to do, but he does star in the most awesome action sequence of any X-MEN movie to date, in which he goes so fast the reality around him slows down and he literally re-arranges bullets in the air.  Amazing scoring for that scene too. As for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, well, he's played Wolverine so many times by now I almost don't think of him as acting anymore.

The heart of the film is the relationship between Mystique and Magneto.  Is he going to stay good or go bad?  And between Charles Xavier and, well, the world. Is he going to give in to depression or grasp the future, the future he can create?  It's this more than anything else that keeps us coming back to the franchise.  It's not just ever bigger and bolder action sequences but that these are grown up, complex, scarred characters that wrestle with their doubts and dissatisfactions. There are no easy choices. Everything carries weight. Everything matters.  That's what elevates X-MEN, and this instalment in particular, to something very special indeed.

X-MEN DAYS OF FUTURE PAST has a running time of 131 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie is on global release.

iPad Round-Up 2 - THE CONSIPIRATOR

Yet another thumpingly pedestrian issues-film from Robert Redford.  The movie takes the form of an historic court-room drama, with James McAvoy playing the lawyer defending Robin Wright's Mary Surrat of conspiracy to murder President Lincoln (she was Booth's landlady and her son has mysteriously fled.)  This being a Redford film, the politics are naively simple and oppositional: McAvoy's lawyer is the champion of all things good - liberty, the constitution and the right to a fair trial even in the wake of an appalling political crime.  Kevin Kline's war minister represents the forces of evil:  putting ends before means, willing to sacrifice right to expediency, with a contemporary relevance in that Surrat was denied a civilian trial before her peers, and tried under military law. 

The issues are fascinating, the casting top notch, Newton Thomas Sigel's cinematography is superb, and the dilemmas at the movie's heart are clearly highly relevant today.  The problem is that it feels like a college debate rather than a movie.  Movies must entertain. If they educate and provoke as well, then all to the good. But no-one ever learned anything while their eyes were rolling to the back of their head in boredom.  Castigat ridendo mores. Moliere knew this. Redford apparently does not  He needs to treat his subject matter with a little less respect and his audiences with a little more.  

THE CONSPIRATOR played Toronto 2010 and opened in summer 2011 in the USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, Ireland, the UK, Portugal, Australia, Turkey, Kuwait and Germany. It opened last month in Singapore. It goes on release in Belgium on November 16th and in Spain on December 2nd. It is available to rent and own.

DRIVE - A Real Hero

I know a lot of guys who mess around with married women, but you're the only one I know who robs a place to pay back the husband. 

From the Hot Pink titles; to the electro-kitsch soundtrack; to Ryan Gosling's silver satin jacket; to the neon lights of Los Angeles, DRIVE is a movie that oozes cool.  It's hero, simply titled "Driver" is so cool, he barely needs to speak, has no discernible back-story, merely exists. As both a stunt- and get-away-driver, he barely breaks a sweat, and even when for a sweet girl (Carey Mulligan) and her son, he barely cracks a smile.  The courtship is so low-key, chaste, Driver's attitude so stoic, at times I even doubted he had been moved at all. And then, when his girl needs a hero, that's exactly what he becomes.  The change comes by stealth, jarring, shocking, and the movie, like its hero (now capitalised) shifts from quirky romance into hard-core ultra-violence.  Driver becomes the man his angelic, virginal girlfriend needs - maybe the man he always wanted to be, and just needed the excuse to become - the violence evidently so close to the surface.  Within what feels like seconds, we have descended into overwhelming violence, no-way-out kind of snowballing craziness.  Driver seems to welcome it.  It seems to be his fate.

DRIVE is another example of director Nicolas Windig Refn's obsession with, and objectification of, men who define themselves through violence.  Again and again - whether Tom Hardy in BRONSON or Mads Mikkelsen in VALHALLA RISING, Refn glories in the image of "hard" men covered in blood and gore.  The objectification is sometimes pretty disturbing, it feels voyeuristic, slippery, fascistic - we are being made complicit in, and enjoying to the point of nervous laughter, heinous violence. This sense of deeply, deeply black humour is heightened by some genius casting in the supporting roles - Albert Brooks playing against type as a sleazy B-movie producer cum mobster - Ron Perlman as a West Coast mafiosi - and Bryan Cranston as the semi-father figure who pimps Driver out for heist jobs.  (Sadly, Mad Men's Christina Hendricks' is underused in a cameo.) The humour also comes from Hossein Amini's tightly written adaptation of James Sallis' novel. But ultimately, given the glossy, seedy, look and feel of the movie, the ultimate praise has to go to Refn, for creating both his most mainstream movie to date, but betraying none of that particular brand of "violence and romantic sexiness" - and Gosling, who with but a flicker of eyes can betray a complexity of emotion beyond most of his generation of actors.  

DRIVE played Cannes, where Nicolas Windig Refn won Best Director, and Toronto 2011. It opened on September 16th in the US, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Bulgaria, Canada and Poland. It opens today in Greece, Ireland, and the UK. It opens on September 30th in Malaysia and Italy. It opens on October 5th in France; on October 7th in Finland, on October 13th in Hong Kong, on October 21st in Estonia and Norway and on October 27th in Australia. It opens on November 3rd in Russia and Singapore, on November 18th in Sweden, on December 8th in Portugal and on January 26th 2012 in Germany.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - LEAP YEAR

LEAP YEAR is a piss-poor, predictable, charmless romantic comedy penned by serial offenders, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, and directed by Anand Tucker (HILLARY AND JACKIE) who should know better. Amy Adams plays an uptight realtor who is so tired of waiting for her medic boyfriend to propose that she follows him to Ireland to propose to him on Leap Day. This being a romantic "comedy", bad weather and other mishaps conspire to keep her away from him and in the company of a good-looking local lad (Matthew Goode - passable Irish accent). He's obviously a huge cynic, having been cruelly dumped by his ex- but traipsing around in the Irish countryside results in the two leads falling in love. There is nothing in the film that moves beyond cliche and predictability. Indeed, it is deeply ironic that Goode's character teases Amy's character for being "diddly-i" about such a cheesy tradition as girls proposing on a Leap Year, when this movie is peddling exactly that same vision of the Emerald Isle as a place of wide old yokels and crumbling castles. Not even Amy Adams intrinsic charm can save this thing. Avoid at all costs.

Additional tags: Randy Edelman, Adam Scott, Deborah Kaplan, Harry Elfont, Anand Tucker.

LEAP YEAR was released in Spring 2010 and is available to rent/buy.

VALKRYIE - superficial conspiracy procedural

VALKYRIE is a straightforward conspiracy procedural about Claus von Stauffenberg's failed assassination of Hitler and anti-Nazi coup. Given that we all know the bare bones of the story, it's laudable that writer Chris McQuarrie and director Bryan Singer manage to sustain tension. Indeed, when Stauffenberg gets back to Berlin, convinced that Hitler is dead, and starts convincing territories to join his cause, I almost believed that the SS might capitulate to the sheer force of Tom Cruise's personality. In particular, I really like the fact that McQuarrie manages to open up the movie from being about an assassination to the wholesale seizure of power - a far more difficult feat.

Where the movie fails is in its ham-fisted, clumsy dialogue. Lines like, "To understand National Socialism, you must understand Wagner". The movie also has a tendency to slip into kitsch. Note the fetishistic treatment of Stauffenberg's glass eye. Would Stauffenberg really have put his glass eye into a glass of whisky to summon the attention of Fellgiebel?

I was also a bit disappointed that Singer didn't have more ambition. To say that this movie basically succeeds as a B-movie is to admit that Singer hasn't even bothered to make a more psychologically involved film. After all, the key point of this movie is that in a country where decision-makers were too self-interested, weak-willed, callow and drunk on power and ideology to make a stand; a small group of men did. Why them? Yes, Singer and McQuarrie do hint at Stauffenberg's faith as a driver, but what about his sense of obligation as an aristocrat or his political views? This movie raises more questions than it answers.

VALKRYIE is on release in the US. It opens on January 22nd in Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea and the UK. It opens on January 28th in Belgium, France, Russia, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. It opens on February 12th in Egypt, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Singapore, Brazil, Estonia and Poland. It opens on February 20th in Denmark; February 27th in Italy; March 12th in Croatia; and March 20th in Japan.

Bryan Singer retrospective - X2 (2003)

What comes after a massively commercially successful comic book adaptation? Why, the sequel of course! And basically all my comments regarding Singer's X-MEN go double for X-2. In general, Singer does a fine job in creating a slick, entertaining summer blockbuster movie full of spectacular set pieces. At the same time he remains faithful to the original books. Without the need to do all the character establishment heavy lifting, Singer even has room to develop characters and emotional relationships. The love triangle between Cyclops, Jean Grey and Wolverine is developed and Singer sensitively introduces the Jean Grey/Phoenix theme. Singer even gets to probe the intellectual heart of the books with a classic scene in which a teen mutant called Iceman "comes out" to his family. Best of all, the classic conflict between "good" and "bad" mutants is complicated by the insertion of a human arch-villain called William Stryker (Brian Cox) - hell-bent on mutant genocide. Cox is yet another impressive actor added to the roster, and more than makes up for the sub-par performance from Halle Berry and the fact that Cyclops is once again short-changed. The same flaws persist - too many characters, too much material - but it's hard to pin them on Singer. Indeed, despite the proliferation of characters, he does as well as one can imagine in still crafting a coherent movie.

All in all, X-2 was a stylish, entertaining, intelligent comic book movie - a more satisfying feature than the already impressive X-MEN.

X2 went on release in 2003.

Bryan Singer retrospective - X-MEN (2000)

After the brilliant USUAL SUSPECTS and the interesting but directorially rather anonymous APT PUPIL, Bryan Singer hired himself out for the first in the X-MEN franchise. The resulting movie was slick, full of spectacular special effects, and had a convincingly dark and brooding look and feel. It established a high water mark for comic book reimaginings that would only be broken by Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS. To that end, X-MEN represented a return to form, and proof that Singer could handle different types of material - carefully balancing commercial and critical requirements. That said, the movie still had its flaws - namely that the plot is smothered by the need for spectacle and the amount of time it takes to establish the back story of all the different characters. 

To quote my review of LAST STAND: the basic idea "is that there are a bunch of people in the world who are mutants, with special psychic or physical abilities. The world of "normal" people is understandably nervous at having such powerful people in its midst. The mutants react to this fear in one of two ways. The "good guys" try to control their powers and use them only in ethical ways. They are led by Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). But another group, led by Magneto, take a more Werner Herzog view of the world. They believe that the natural order of human-mutant relations is aggression and cruelty. The conflict between these two camps forms the back-bone of every X-MEN movie, usually triggered by some half-assed action on the part of bigoted "normal" humans." In this film, the half-assed bigoted action is requiring all mutants to register with the state - a move that spooks Magneto (Ian McKellan) - who lost his family in the Holocaust. In turn, Magneto decides to abduct Rogue (Anna Paquin)- a teen mutant who can leach other's powers - and use her in a bid to turn all the world's leaders mutant, thus rendering their discriminatory policies unthinkable.

Bryan Singer was brave to take on this movie. X-MEN books are some of the biggest selling of all time, which means that there's a vocal and rabid fan-base just waiting for you to trip up. BUT you have to balance the fan-base's desire for accurate details with the demands of the non-fans who still need to understand and engage with "another" summer blockbuster with spectacular action set-pieces. A second challenge - and certainly a bigger challenge than re-imagining BATMAN or SUPERMAN, is that X-MEN has an unwieldy cast of characters, each with their own particular back story that needs to be fleshed out, underneath the wider umbrella mythos. And a third challenge is that X-MEN is intellectually richer than most comics - explicitly discussing bigotry, political accountability and - and that doesn't always sit well with the special effects set-pieces and compressed run-time of your typical summer blockbuster.

Given these triple challenges how did Bryan Singer fare? Well, on the first call, the movie garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success. He pleased fans by remaining loyal to the original books - characters made it to the screen largely in tact and the screen-writers mined the rich history of the books for plot lines. The movie went on to spawn two sequels and rumours of an X-4 and WOLVERINE spin-off. To that extent, Singer established the franchise against all odds. The second challenge was to fill in the back story of the book and make all the characters intelligible to the non-fans looking for summer thrills. Here, I'd say that Singer only half succeeded. He successfully established the basic idea of the X-MEN but establishing the back stories to all the significant X-MEN takes forever and they are more or less short-changed by a cramped script. Only Wolverine comes out with anything like the appropriate screen time. As to the third challenge, the intellectual substance of the book has little room to play out given the pressures of establishing character and still fitting in a spectacular end-sequence. Nonetheless, it's clear that we are dealing with issues of prejudice and McCarthyism and than Magneto and Xavier present two reactions to that - broadly speaking an activist/passive stance that some have likened to the difference between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Singer wasn't fully successful on this count either but had at least succeeded in setting up an interesting debate between both sides of the argument.

X-MEN was released in 2000.

Bryan Singer retrospective - THE USUAL SUSPECTS (1994)

Bryan Singer's latest movie - VALKYRIE - will be released in the UK next month - an opportune moment to review his previous movies. I haven't written about any of Singer's movies before despite the fact that his 1994 flick THE USUAL SUSPECTS is one of my favourite films of all time and one of the few movies that I own on DVD. I love THE USUAL SUSPECTS because it proved that it was still possible to make slippery, haunting thrillers in the manner of those 1940s classics - full of real men, complex heists, bent cops and ambiguous loyalties. The script was intelligent and gripping, with just enough allusion to the supernatural to be frightening but still credible. The visual style was bold and captivating. The acting was superlative - and better still for introducing us to the soon to be iconic Benicio del Toro and reintroducing us to great character actors such as Gabriel Byrne and Chazz Palminteri. What was even more astounding was that the movie had been directed and written by a team of relative unknowns - Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie - collaborating again on their second flick - both still in their twenties.

The movie grips you from the opening scene - a harbour at night - a match flares showing the face of a battered, dying man, who voices enmity for a man with the unusual name of Keyser. The gasoline barrels on the ship catch fire - dramatically silhouetted against the sky. The central mystery has been established with admirable efficiency and style - who is Keyser - and what crime has been perpetrated here?

We cut to contemporary New York. "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey) begins his voice-over. He will be our narrator - fashioning our understanding of this tale. But we know he's a con-man - and that colours our belief in what he is saying. We see our group of suspects rounded up by New York's finest and interrogated, but it's clear they're innocent of this particular crime. Nonetheless, the personalities and the pecking order are established. Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) - the man we have just seen dying - is the alpha male. He's suave - he's was evidently trying to charm himself into a new legitimate life as a restauranteur. Trying and failing in the great tradition of movie mafiosi. Next comes Kevin Pollack as Todd Hockney - foul-mouthed, angry, clearly good at what he does and under no illusions about it. Then we have Stephen Baldwin - an unpredictable live-wire - as Michael McManus, clearly a partner in many senses of Fred Fenster (Benicio del Toro stealing every scene with his unintelligible accent.) All four have professional respect for each other as crims. Verbal Kint is the patsy - frightened - out of his depth.

Again, with remarkable economy we switch to intensive care where a cop is interrogating the survivor of the explosion on the ship - he's petrified and screams the name "Keyser Soze" again and again in heavily accented English. It's a truly frightening moment thanks partly to the exotic name, partly to the bandages. Either way, the film-makers have established a true sense of urgency and that the stakes are high.

And now we're into the meat of the story and we're hooked. Chazz Palminteri plays cocksure Officer Kujan, throwing every form of intimidation at Verbal Kint as he tries to work out what went down. In flashbacks, Kint tells his side of the story. It's a battle of wits - but three-way - between Kujon, Kint and the audience. Kint's telling us a tale of a heist gone wrong, a mysterious man named Kobayashi, murder and deceit. He's mixing it up with seemingly absurd details about barber shops quartets and suchlike. And he alternates between fear and arrogance. It's a bravura performance from Kevin Spacey, who won an Oscar for it.

Verbal: Where's your head, Agent Kujan? Where do you think the pressure's coming from? Keyser Soze - or whatever you want to call him - knows where I am right now. He's got the front burner under' your ass to let me go so he can scoop me up ten minutes later. Immunity was just to deal with you assholes. I got a whole new problem when I post bail.

Dave Kujan: So why play into his hands? We can protect you.

Verbal: Gee, thanks, Dave. Bang-up job so far. Extortion, coercion. You'll pardon me if I ask you to kiss my pucker. The same fuckers that rounded us up and sank us into this mess are telling me They'll bail me out? Fuck you. You think you can catch Keyser Soze? You think a guy like that comes this close to getting fingered and sticks his head out? If he comes up for anything, it will be to get rid of me. After that, my guess is you'll never hear from him again.

Kint's story ends without resolution for Kujan, who later discovers the true identity of Keyser Soze - surely one of the best twist endings in cinema. The brilliance of the script is that once you know the ending you can see the clues - it's not just willfully obscure. Moreover, my enjoyment of the film has not been diminished by knowing the twist at the end. Rather, every time I watch it I marvel at the ingenuity of the plot and I revel in the genuine feeling of menace and peril. To that end, THE USUAL SUSPECTS is the perfect marriage of style and substance. The movie looks great and feels eerie and has a cool ending but underneath all that it has a logical and whip-tight structure and fascinating power relationships - between the members of the gang and between the gang and the rozzers. All in all, a modern classic.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS played Sundance and premiered Cannes 1995. It opened in 1995 and 1996. Christopher McQuarrie won Best Original Screenplay and Kevin Spacey won Best Supporting Actor at the 1996 Academy Awards,

LEATHERHEADS - in which Clooney tosses up genres like so much confetti

Yet another flaccid movie squelches its way into cinemas this weekend. In another directorial effort, George Clooney unsuccessfully splices together the under-dog sports genre, the screwball comedy and the 1960s sex comedy. He chooses to set the unhappy cocktail in prohibition-era America.

Clooney plays an ageing lothario struggling to keep his pro-football team above water in the era before mega-bucks sports. He does so by hiring a fantastically popular college player, who's a war hero to boot (John Krasinski from the US version of THE OFFICE - wasted in this role.) The old hand may be resentful of the young gun's newfangled methods, but he loves the massive increase in gate receipts. Problem is that a feisty investigative reporter (Renee Zellwegger) is trying to expose "The Bullet's" impressive war record as a hoax, as well as causing romantic jealousy all round.

The sports movie component of LEATHERHEADS is fairly thin. It's basically just a wry comment on the irony of getting what you wished for. In order to survive, the team bring about a mew commercial era, but that very commercialisation means an end to the good old rough-and-tumble of the sport they loved.

As for the rom-com element, I found it pretty weak. Sorry to sound ageist, but Renee Zellwegger is simply too old for the part and partly for that reason she has no chemistry with John Krasinski. It looks like Mrs Robinson's trying to mack onto the new kid, rather than a genuine love triangle with Clooney. I'm also a little bit tired of Zellwegger trying to pull off these Doris Day sex-comedy roles. Clooney desperately wants the banter between his and Zellwegger's character to be brilliantly witty, but it's obvious and flat. And, despite her feminist aspirations, Zellwegger's character rolls over annoyingly easily.

LEATHERHEADS is on release in the USA, UK, Ukraine, Canada, Estonia and Italy. It opens on April 23rd in France; in Argentina on May 8th; in Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden on May 30th; in Germany and Spain on June 5th and in Belgium on July 2nd.