Bohemian Rhapsody

I'll admit to a sense of trepidation going into Bohemian Rhapsody. Queen have been my favourite band since the mid-80s, I guess, and I really didn't want the film makers to fuck this up. So, after a couple of hours of spine shivers and leg jiggles, I can confirm that any impending fuck-up was averted. Much of the thanks for this has to go to the casting director, Susie Figgis. The actors playing the four band members were as close to the actual lads as no mind (Freddie was a tad taller than Rami Malek but that's a small quibble). I actually forgot I wasn't watching Mercury, May, Taylor and Deacon, especially in the concert scenes. Special mention must go to Joseph Mazzello for getting John Deacon's unfussy feet movement down pat. The voice amalgamation was a nice trick too - Malek has said in interviews that it's probably about 90% Freddie that we hear on screen.

There's a messy history to Bohemian Rhapsody. It's been knocking around for a decade, at one stage Sacha Baron Cohen was down to play Freddie but pulled out due to 'artistic' differences. Later, Ben Whishaw got the nod, with Dexter Fletcher as director but this never got off the ground. Finally, the current iteration was green-lit and moved along bumpily until director Bryan Singer was fired for absence and cast/crew clashes, with Fletcher coming in to complete. Very rock and roll.

The film itself, as a film, is nothing ground-breaking. It follows Freddie from the start of the 1970s, meeting Brian and Roger and joining their band, Smile; the family's disapproval of his lifestyle; Freddie's friendship with Mary Austin and his recognition of his homosexuality; and so on. All this seems to be a reasonably accurate account of Freddie's life but there have been some digs at the film for supposedly sanitising things. Maybe I'm blinkered, but I don't see what else they needed to do in that respect. Play up the lifestyle angle? Homosexual promiscuity? Drug and alcohol binges? More flamboyance? To my mind, this would have been to the detriment of the musical side of the story. That's where it's at, the rest was covered.

It's really all about what it should be - the music. The band jamming, recording and especially, playing at the pinnacle of the film, Live Aid in 1985, are incredible sequences. That Wembley gig is the film's secret weapon of sorts. All the tribulations and betrayals lead up to this cathartic rock-god affirmation. On a slightly more critical note, the soundtrack of the film is as expected, like a greatest hits album, with most of the stadium anthems but, sadly not many of the more intricate gems (see below).

There's some great dialogue here too (thanks to Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan), notably in the recording sessions for A Night at the Opera and the displaying on screen of the critical notices about the song Bohemian Rhapsody (mostly shit to average ones) might possibly mirror the reviews for the film itself. Not from me, though. I had a great time watching this and it's even encouraged me to crack open Queen, Queen 2 and Sheer Heart Attack once more. Glorious.

Hear also:

My Fairy King and The Night Comes Down (from Queen - 1973), Ogre Battle and The March of the Black Queen (from Queen 2 - 1974), Brighton Rock and In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited (from Sheer Heart Attack - 1974), The Hero (from Flash Gordon - 1980), Machines (Back to Humans) (from The Works - 1984).

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King of Thieves

Back to the Windsor Cinema in Nedlands and not much has changed since catching The King's Speech in 2010 or 2011. I reckon Merv and I were among the youngest punters there, and we're not exactly gambolling lambs anymore. But this demographic was pretty apt for King of Thieves, the latest film to explore old spivs getting older and trying to stay relevant. This iteration is based on the true story of the Hatton Garden safe deposit robbery in London in 2015. It stars Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone and Paul Whitehouse ('I was very, very drunk') as the geriatric villains who come together at Caine's wife's funeral. A positively pubescent Charlie Cox instigates the gig. 

The heist premise of King of Thieves has been done before, even factoring in the 'grey pound' aspect. It's not the most original film but it's worth the ticket price just to hear Caine and gang effing and jeffing all over the place. It's actually quite close to a geezah version of Caine's other recent musings on ageing, the Paolo Sorrentino directed, Youth. Close but so, so far away.

The director is James Marsh, who has some solid pedigree with films such as Shadow Dancer, The Theory of Everything and Project Nim to his credit. There's some nice dialogue that sometimes, just occasionally, tips over into unlikely adjective territory. The actors iron out any rough edges though. Just great to watch these old pros work with halfway decent material. Oddly, Charlie Cox's character's final act seems out of place, though I'm guessing at this point the director wanted to focus on the golden oldies. Incidentally, this character isn't mentioned in official dispatches of the actual crime.

Some other points to note - The drilling through the wall is similar (though more watery) to the heist in Sexy Beast, another Ray Winstone film. I also quite liked the flashback scenes, especially the ones with the actors in films from their younger days. The highlight for me, though, is all the Cockney wide boy phrases, such as, "We gave him a drink", "That's put the kibosh on it" and my personal favourite, "He's lost his arsehole". Can't really argue with a film littered with this type of poetry.

See also:

Certainly, Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast (2000), one of the best British crime films of all time. And have a crack at another James Marsh film, Man on Wire (2008), if your knees don't go wobbly.

First Man

After initially being a bit ambivalent about seeing First Man, I decided to give it a chance, mainly due to the goodwill held over from Damien Chazelle's first directorial effort, the excellent Whiplash. Apparently, Chazelle had been sitting on this Neil Armstrong story since before La La Land and got started after Josh Singer (Spotlight) handed over a script. And a pretty prosaic script it is. Thankfully avoiding the trap that many other biopics have fallen into, this shies away from the cradle to grave narrative and focuses on about 8 years of Armstrong's life, from 1961 to 1969. Trim the fat, this is the meat.

The main theme of First Man is obsessive drive and this is a watering hole Chazelle likes to return to, as there are obvious similarities to his previous two films. Armstrong's determination to get to the moon is, to an extent, explained by a tragedy that I won't go into here. Accurate or not, it adds a filmic poignancy that works depending on your level of acceptance. Perspective is another focal point. Armstrong, played slightly soporifically by Ryan Gosling, spends a lot of time peering at the moon through an old home film camera and the best looking shot in the film is a simple suburban street bathed in moonlight. This perspective is finally mirrored by Gozzle looking at Earth from the moon (spoiler!).

A couple of sequences in the rocket's cockpit get the old blood pumping and these are probably the best things about the film. Chazelle has a knack for raising tension. This side of the film is handled in an almost documentary style and it's left to the family and friends section to provide the heart, the grounding. Claire Foy, as Armstrong's wife, Janet, is as tense as Gozzle is laid-back and they actually work quite well together. Her ultimate emo-ruption is worth waiting for - "You're a bunch of boys making models out of balsa wood! You don't have anything under control!"

Justin Hurwitz's fine score helps to accompany the astronauts on their flight attempts and the recreations of the era are great, as you'd expect, but I just couldn't get fully on board the First Man rocket. 

See also:

Chazelle's debut, Whiplash (2014) is fantastic, exhausting, sweaty film making and, for a touch of NASA conspiracy, Peter Hyams' Capricorn One (1977). Mars, not the moon, but it's all space.

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