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.

RUSH

The short version:  There's nothing wrong with RUSH as two hours of good quality entertainment.  It's well filmed, well acted, takes you into the racing circuit with exhilarating speed, and delivers some nicely timed laughs.  But, ultimately, RUSH is a movie made by two people who don't really care about or know about Formula One. It's a movie about two drivers who weren't really rivals, weren't really as important as the movie claims they are, and who were probably more complex than this movie allows them to be.  Save yourself the worry: watch SENNA instead. 

The podcast version: You can listen to a podcast review of the movie below or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes. 

The long version:  Ron Howard, a director of indifferent and inconsistent quality and no discernible style, returns to our screens with his take on the 1976 Formula One racing season, as defined by the intense competition between Maclaren's James Hunt and Ferrari's Niki Lauda. The blunt-talking Austrian, Lauda, had the better car and better technical ability, but British James Hunt has the superstar lifestyle and the raw aggression that made him a fierce competitor, if not for the long haul.  According to Peter Morgan's script, Lauda was jealous of Hunt's playboy charisma, and Hunt was envious of Lauda's respect and settled family life.  This spilled over into such vehemence that Lauda took points from Hunt on a technicality and Hunt goaded Lauda's colleagues into racing a dangerously slippery Nurburgring.  All F1 fans know that this resulted in Lauda being engulfed in flame for a full minute, as his face and lungs burned, and how he forced himself back into the racing car within three F1 races, placing fourth - arguably the ballsiest race run in F1 history.  So much is revealed in the movie's trailers.  But if you really don't know how the 1976 season ended, I'm not going to spoil it here.

There are four problems with RUSH.  The first is that Peter Morgan creates a script that is chock-full of sporting clichés and one-dimensional characters that barely register any kind of character development. James Hunt is the handsome playboy with a heart of gold (witness his beating up of the mean journo who taunts a burned up Lauda).  Lauda is a clichéd rational Kraut.  (And all this while Morgan does the interview circuit complaining about the cultural pigeonholing HE experiences as an Anglo-Austrian.)  It gets worse with the minor characters:  poor Alexandra Maria Lara's sole contribution as Mrs Lauda is to stand around looking concerned at crucial moments, while Olivia Wilde as Mrs Hunt has to look hurt. The only moment of character evolution comes with Lauda in his pivotal Fuji race but that's shown through some pretty cheesy flashback inter-cutting.

The second problem is that the movie is deeply patronising.  And I don't mean it stops every five minutes to give us a Basil Exposition guide to Formula One racing. In fact, US audiences less familiar with this majestic sport might find themselves short-changed on the sport and drowning in melodrama.   Rather, screenwriter Peter Morgan sees fit to give us a final scene between Hunt and Lauda in which they basically summarise all that has just occurred in the last two hours and what it all means for them and, thus, for us.  In a story that is basically very simple* and features very simply drawn characters, this is hardly necessary and underscores the fact that the movie has no real natural end because it doesn't really deal with a real-life proper rivalry.

The third problem with the film is director Ron Howard's inability to focus on the majesty of F1. And yes, I know, the races are well-filmed, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle does a great job with his grass level shots of whirring tires and mist soaked visors, but this movie still plays in the register of cheesy daytime drama.  Just look at the excruciating and unnecessary soft-focus under-water love scene between Mr and Mrs Lauda - pure schmaltz - and inserted, no doubt, too soften the edges of King Rat.

The fourth problem is clearly nobody's fault but bad luck: this movie will, whether it wants to or not, stand in the shadow of Asif Kapadia's peerless documentary SENNA.  And it fails miserably by comparison.  Why?  Here's why.  For a start, Aryton Senna would be in many people's top three of all time great drivers and Prost in the top five.  Lauda maybe makes the top ten, partly because of his miraculous comeback.  It's harsh, but Lauda and Hunt just aren't names to quicken the heart in the way that Prost-Senna do.  And then, to make it even worse, the complexity of the characters portrayed in RUSH don't come close to SENNA.  Aryton is shown to be a conflicted, contradictory, fascinating enigma - deeply spiritual, biblical, but also a playboy.  The ladies man that Hunt was, but also the rationalist, arguing not to race in bad conditions, that Lauda was.  He is more interesting on his own than Peter Morgan's Lauda and Hunt put together, and that's before we get to the amazingly complete driver Prost with his dark relationship to the really sinister FIA chief Balestre.  

But even if RUSH had been a fictionalised account of Prost-Senna, it would have still failed because it cannot compete with the real live race footage, the real life exhilaration and ecstasy of Interlagos 1991; the real life sobbing tragedy of Imola 1994.  

The conclusion:  RUSH is a movie made by two people who don't really care about or know about Formula One. It's a movie about two drivers who weren't really rivals, weren't really as important as the movie claims they are, and who were probably more complex than this movie allows them to be.  Save yourself the worry: watch SENNA instead. 

RUSH has a running time of 123 minutes and has been rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language, sex and scenes of bloody injury.

RUSH played Toronto 2013 and is on release in the UK, Canada, Israel, Denmark, Hungary, Brazil, Finland and Ireland. It opens on limited release next weekend in the USA, as well as on wide release in the Philippines, Taiwan, Belarus, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovenia and Turkey. It opens on September 26th wide in the USA, in France, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Macedonia, Singapore, the UAE, Canada and Venezuela. It opens on October 3rd in Belgium, Australia, Germany, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Serbia, Norway and Sweden. It opens on October 10th in Hong Kong; on October 17th in Peru; on October 18th on Mexico and in February in Japan.

*Two formula one racers compete - one hot-headed one rational.  The rational one has a severe accident partly because of the goading of the hot-headed one but their rivalry helps him overcome his injury to race again. 

+I'm thinking something like Fangio, Clark, Senna, Schumacher, Alonso in the first rank.  Prost, Moss, Stewart, Vettel, Ascari in the second rank.  Then maybe Lauda, Villeneuve, Mansell, Piquet, Brabham, oh dear, maybe Lewis? in the third rank.  Hunt not even close. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 1 - 360

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz as an estranged couple in 360

It has long been my experience that the most interesting and exciting films showing at the London Film Festival are those tucked away in the heart of the programme, rather than the red-carpet galas, where one suspects the programmer's hand has been forced by the exigencies of publicity and sponsorship.  Sadly, 360 proved no exception to this rule.  Worse than that, one suspects that Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' early success with the dazzling CITY OF GOD was a fluke.  Ever since then, his films have maintained their visual style, but lost pace, energy, and tackled subject matter with a heavy handed earnestness that belies their insight.  One wishes that he would stop trying to be clever-clever with his narrative devices and just tell a good, simple story.  

The too-clever concept at the heart of 360 is to show the interweaving stories of people across the world  - the only commonality is how each of them experience a seemingly arbitrary event changes their lives.  The story takes us from a failing marriage in middle-class London (Jude Law, Rachel Weisz) to hookers and Russian mafiosi in Vienna (Moritz Bleibtrau) - from  sex offenders and grieving parents in Denver (Ben Foster, Anthony Hopkins) to forbidden love in Paris (Jamel Debbouze).  In each case, characters are introduced, their love affairs and dilemmas explained, an event occurs, its ramifications start to be explored, and the matter is dropped. Perhaps in a later strand we will meet the character again and see them from a different angle.  But by then, so much has been going on, so many characters introduced, so little time given to being able to emotionally bond with them, that we are past caring.  I left the cinema feeling totally "blah".  I had watched a parade of characters and frankly, didn't care about a single one of them.  And as for the "message" of this ponderous work, it's hardly revelatory or profound.  Some people are cynical sleazebags - some people still naively take a chance on love - the world keeps turning - and random events can change the path we move along. 

Jude Law and director Fernando Meirelles present
360 at the Opening Night of the BFI London
Film Festival 2011.

The result is a film that is utterly unmemorable and actually rather tragic when one considers the talent deployed.  To be sure, cinematographer Adriano Goldman (JANE EYRE, SIN NOMBRE, CONVICTION) creates some arresting visuals, but the rest of the talent is below par.  The actors have little to get their teeth into and are rather unforgettable, except for Anthony Hopkins hamming it up. To be fair, Hopkins is only responding to one of those awfully obvious crass Academy-Award-aspirant speeches by screenwriter Peter Morgan (THE QUEEN) when he finally comes to an epiphany in an AA meeting. 

Overall then, 360 is yet another film by Fernando Meirelles that is technically accomplished, but fails to provide us with characters that we care about and situations that are compelling.  A serious own-goal by screenwriter Peter Morgan too, moving from his typically more straightforward biopic material into some more narratively ambitious, and clearly beyond his capabilities. 

360 premiered at London 2011 and will play Toronto 2011. It will open in Sweden on October 19th 2012.

THE DAMNED UNITED - hubris, nemesis, half-time oranges

Peter Morgan specialises in well-crafted but slightly obvious and simplistic screenplays that efficiently capture British cultural figures - Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Blair, Henry VIII, David Frost and now Brian Clough. Once again, Morgan turns in a solid script that takes David Peace's savage biography and creates a more even-handed treatment of "the greatest England football manager we never had". The resulting film is an entertaining and very well-acted biopic that works as a relationship drama whether or not you know or care about The Beautiful Game. (I don't: my family support Spurs, so maybe I'm just bitter.)

The key dynamic is between Brian Clough (Michael Sheen), a cocky, mouthy Northern twat but also a genius football manager, and his Assistant Manager, Scout and professional wife, Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall). Clough had the ambition; Taylor the better temper: together took a piss-poor club called Derby County from the bottom of the second division to the top of the first division in just two seasons. It all went wrong when Clough took Taylor for granted and took their jobs at Derby for granted too. Having bad-mouthed the directors in public one too many times, Clough and Taylor were effectively sacked. Worse still, while Taylor wanted to see through their commitment to third division nobodies Brighton and Hove, Clough wanted to knive Brighton in the back and take up the better offer of managing Leeds United.

I say "better offer" but it wasn't really. Clough had spent his professional life very publicly slagging off the Leeds players and their manager Don Revie (Colm Meaney). Leeds were the best club in the country, chock-full of Internationals, and that no doubt invoked Clough's jealousy. But he had a substantive reason to be pissed off too: why did such a talented club insist on playing such filthy football? So when Revie was bumped up to England manager and Leeds offered Clough Revie's old job he took it, even though it meant parting ways with Taylor. The Leeds players hated him. The fans hated him. Taylor hated him. Within 44 days he was sacked. (Although as we know, he had the last laugh. Today, Clough is remembered as the only British manager to win the European championship twice, while Revie fell into disrepute.)

The Clough-Revie relationship is up there with Mozart-Salieri for poisonous professional jealousy and sheer viciousness. And Michael Sheen and Colm Meaney are superb in these roles. Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent are also strong as Taylor and Derby Chairman Sam Longsonn respectively. In general, the film does well to focus on the friendships and rivalries and to skip over matchplay, which, let's face it, has never been done well on film. I guess my only niggle is that feeling of samey-ness and polystyrene efficiency that all Peter Morgan scripts have. Did we really need another drunken midnight phonecall between antagonists?

But this is a small quibble. Clough is a brilliant character - witty, cocky, a real showman - and his story is entertaining. Non soccer-fans shouldn't be put off by his job title. The subject matter transcends the game.

THE DAMNED UNITED is on release in the UK. It opens in Australia on August 13th; in France on September 9th and in Sweden on September 11th.

London Film Festival Day 1 - FROST/NIXON never convinces

FROST/NIXON never convinces in its assertion that the 1977 TV interview between the British talk-show host and the disgraced ex-President was a pivotal moment of catharsis for the US public. Indeed, playwright and screen adaptor Peter Morgan (THE QUEEN) diminished his case by pandering to the “all or nothing” school of melodrama. It’s not enough that Nixon is fighting for rehabilitation and Frost is fighting for his reputation as a serious journalist. Nixon must be seen as a man on the psychological edge – making drunken midnight telephone confessions. Frost must be seen a playboy dilettante who stands to lose all his TV shows and his personal fortune if the interview is a failure. Moreover, in a particularly crude narrative choice (whether based in reality or not), Morgan decides to give Frost a third-act montage (so beautifully spoofed in TEAM AMERICA WORLD POLICE) wherein the talk-show host goes from zero knowledge or interest in the mechanics of Nixon’s skulduggery, to uncovering deep truths thanks to a bit of all-night study and black coffee. I also found it implausible that years after the scandal broke; a single document in a public library would be uncovered and force the confession of a President.

Despite all this, the film does get near to an emotional truth. Nixon finally confessed to the cover up because he was tired of lying. Not because of Frost’s new found skill as a crack cross-examiner. The film also gets near to an even more important and significant truth: that Nixon was tremendously insecure; resented the way in which elites bent the rules (notably JFK’s dubious presidential victory); and thought that was simply how you had to play the game. The tragedy is that he was a hard-working and intelligent man who had tremendous insight into Cold War relations but that he made poor decisions because paranoia and a sense of entitlement had trumped his personal morality.

Frankly, I don’t think you needed to artificially inflate the importance of the Frost-Nixon interview; the stakes for David Frost; or the importance of that final shred of evidence (all very Perry Mason). You certainly didn’t need to make some sort of cod psychological link between Frost and Nixon as insecure boys-made-good who’ll never quite be accepted by the establishment. Nixon is the story and when this movie focuses on Nixon it’s brilliant. Frank Langella’s performance is captivating. But frankly, there’s too much dancing around until we get to it.

FROST/NIXON opened London 2008. It opens in the US on December 5th and in Australia on December 26th. It opens in Spain and the UK on January 9th; in Belgium and France on January 14th; in Finland on January 23rd and in the Netherlands on January 29th. It opens on February 6th in Sweden and Norway and on January 12th in Germany, Hungary and Denmark. It opens in Argentina on February 19th.

THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL is strewn with cowpats from the Devil's own satanic HERD

THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL is an adaptation of Philippa Gregory's historical novel. She portrays the Boleyn and Howard family as eager to advance in wealth and position by pimping out their daughters to Henry VIII. First, Henry knocks up docile Mary, but then casts her aside for her more intelligent and ambitious sister Anne. Her pride piqued by her rejection at the hands of Henry Percy and her family's prior support of Mary, Anne pressures the King into divorcing his true wife, Catherine. But as Queen, Anne's position will only be safe if she can deliver Henry a son.

It's a fantastic story written in clear unpretentious English. Best of all, Gregory manages to balance our base instinctual need for trashy romance and a happy ending with a more profound depiction of a society where women were chattel, and those who made their own way were liable to be seen as abominations.

The movie, however, is problematic.

The problems start with the script. Peter (of THE QUEEN fame) takes an intellectually superior work of historical fiction and strips it of any subtlety. He leaves behind a work that is much reduced - in terms of scope, motivations, credibility and enjoyment. The novel made the relationship between the two sisters more complicated. Yes, there were jealousies and rivalries but there was also a shared commitment to success and wrongs on either side. By contrast, the film has Mary as a pantomime do-gooder heroine and Anne as a malicious little whore. (Anne's relationship with Henry Percy is so quickly skated over that we have no time to see her softer side. It's also ironic to see Anne portrayed in the first half of this film almost as maliciously as she would have been portrayed at the time. So much for historical revisionism in a post-feminist world!) The motivations of Henry VIII are rendered especially opaque and Peter Morgan creates a particularly crass scene in which Henry rapes Anne. This strikes me as a particularly lazy and insidous short-hand. The mechanics of how Anne comes to be accused of being a witch are also reduced to a crude and obvious incest charge - a theme that is handled with far more subtlety and intrigue in the novel.

Finally, the most grave charge against Peter Morgan's adaptation is slovenliness. He introduces themes only to leave them hanging in the air. A classic example is that we are introduced to Mary's husband William Carey. He sort of disappears and then before we know it William Stafford is offering to take care of her. The informed viewer will realise that Carey has died in the interval, but Peter Morgan doesn't bother passing on this information. Morgan also allows a couple of lines of jarringly anachronistic dialogue to creep into the script. So, one moment we are talking of "piss-pots". The next, we're being asked to "look on the bright side". Morgan also makes the Boleyn's mother, Lady Elizabeth, the voice of feminist dissent. This is rather patronising. I think I might have worked out the social importance of the film without having a character precis it for me.

The director and cinematographer, Justin Chadwick and Kieran McGuigan, do little better, making choices that reduce their film to a cheap bodice ripper with no self-respect. From the start, the movie is drenched in a warm honey glow - soft-focus love scenes and dappled sunlight that renders the actors faces orange in the interior scenes. This is so starkly in contrast to the aggressively modern, grimly real look of Chadwick's BLEAK HOUSE that one can only assume that the critically acclaimed BBC adaptation was a success because of fine editing and production design rather than its direction. Or maybe Chadwick was hamstrung by producers and marketing departments going for a "heritage" TV look and a simple tale of sibling rivalry?

There's little joy in front of the camera. Scarlett Johansson (Mary Boleyn) doesn't so much act as look doe-eyed and slow-witted. Natalie Portman (Anne Boleyn) is the better actress. At least, she is very good at working herself up into fits of hysteria. Her mastery of the English accent is less certain. Jim Sturgess (George Boleyn) looks uncomfortable and inadequate. David Morrissey (the Duke of Norfolk) delivers his lines in a modern style that stands out from the self-conscious affected period melodramatics of the lead actress. Accordingly, he seems mis-cast, or at least misdirected. Eric Bana (Henry VIII) is a fine actor but Peter Morgan's script doesn't offer him much opportunity to portray the complexities and gravity of Henry VIII's decisions. There is some compensation in the smaller roles. Mark Rylance (Sir Thomas Boleyn), Kristin Scott Thomas (Lady Elizabeth Boleyn) and Benedict Cumberbatch (William Carey), all do brilliantly well is largely under-written parts.

Finally, what more can one say than that this movie is a dreadful disappointment?

THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL is on release in the US, Netherlands, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Spain, Egypt, Russia, Germany and the UK. It opens later in March in Australia, South Korea and Iceland. It opens in April in France, Singapore, Belgium, Israel and Italy. It opens in May in Brazil; in August in Norway and in Finland on Septmeber 12th.

THE QUEEN - another one for the export market

Stephen Frears' latest movie is yet another one for the export market. It is an over-long re-telling of the week following the death of Princess Diana, contrasting the public's hysterical mourning with the Queen's more dignified and yet brutally-condemned response. Her Majesty comes out of it very well - as a sovereign who is utterly devoted to her people and yet absolutely unable to understand what Her People - people she prides herself on understanding - are up to. The acclaimed British actress, Helen Mirren, gives a superb performance, never descending into pastiche, and managing to convey conflicting emotions behind the ever-dignified famous face. Michael Sheen is also tremendously good reprising his role as Tony Bliar. Blair comes across as an inept twat in the first half hour but gains in stature as the movie progresses - much to my surprise. The supporting cast are less successful, perhaps because their parts are written like watered-down Spitting Image puppets. Prince Philip is a string of rather funny, politically incorrect one-liners and Prince Charles a wet tree-hugging toady.

The primary problem with THE QUEEN is that the movie is far too long and tries to inject drama where precious little existed. Yes, the royal family misjudged the mood of the nation, but who could have predicted the breast-beating of the masses? Within a few days, the royals realised they had boo-booed - no doubt partly thanks to Blair - and came to London. The nation forgave them. Dear lord, this is such a conservative (with a small "c") nation that the monarchy was never really under threat. (The central premise of this melodrama.) Cherie Blair admits as such when she points out to her husband that all Labour Prime Ministers have gone weak at the knees for the Queen. And given the general acceptance of the new Duchess of Cornwall the Diana-related trauma seems awfully old-hat.

A secondary problem is one that I suspect will only affect UK viewers. That is that the script contains an awful lot of basic education on who everyone is and what everything means. You know, one character explains to another the symbolism of the flag being at half mast. It's like British Heritage 101 for interested foreigners.

Overall, despite Helen Mirren's superb performance and a pant-wettingly funny joke at Waiting for Gordo's expense, THE QUEEN feels like a glossy tele-novella that would have been better suited to US subscribers to the Hallmark Channel. I do wish Stephen Frears would get back to more ambitious stuff like DIRTY PRETTY THINGS.

THE QUEEN premiered at Venice 2006 where Helen Mirren won a prize for her perfomance. It is currently on release in Italy and the UK. It opens in the NYC on September 30th and in other parts of the US on October 6th. Finally, it rolls into France on October 18th and the Netherlands on November 30th.