Bohemian Rhapsody

Bohemian Rhapsody starts off at Live Aid in 1985 and then backtracks all the way to 1970 to give us a potted history of Queen that begins with Farrokh Bulsara, as he was then, forcing his way into a band called Smile. The next thing you know, he’s Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) and they're Queen, and they're touring the world. It seems Queen’s road to fame was pretty much as straight forward as it gets.

What then follows is a hugely enjoyable romp through the history of Queen accompanied by their multitude of hit records. Naturally a lot of the film focusses on their lead singer. Cue the main criticism of the film which has been that it offers a very sanitised and uncontroversial view of Mercury.

This is mostly apparent when it comes to his personal life where a lot of the film is devoted to his relationship with Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton). They became lovers and even got engaged, although it is apparently clearer to her than it was to him that Mercury was gay. Sadly, the film opts not to explore what this meant in the homophobic 1970s and therefore why he hid this for so long.

There are also many historical inaccuracies, presumably in a desire to add dramatic effect but real happenings that would have added dramatic effect are ignored. Prior to Live Aid Queen hadn’t split up as the film implies. The band had taken a break in 1983 to focus on all their solo careers but had long since got back together, had released the mega selling ‘The Works’ album and were in the process of completing a world tour to promote it when Live Aid happened.

Mercury would also have been hard pushed to reveal his HIV diagnosis to the band pre-Live Aid as he didn’t know this himself until two years later and hid this from his band members until 1989.

However it isn't a bad film, far from it. Rami Malek is excellent as Mercury and the other members of Queen are equally believable. Bohemian Rhapsody is great entertainment but ultimately not terribly fulfilling. A bit like Queen themselves perhaps.

While the film ends at Live Aid, Freddie Mercury would live on for another six years and would embrace his diagnosis with the likes of ‘Who Wants To Live Forever?’ and ‘The Show Must Go On’ but the film doesn't dare go there. Meanwhile Queen as a band live on to this day. There must be enough material for another two or three films there.

Blindspotting

Blindspotting is another film about racial bias but one with a different angle. The screenplay is written by its two lead actors and is set on the streets of Oakland, USA. It is here where Collin (Daveed Diggs) is working as a white van man alongside his childhood friend, Miles (Rafael Casal).

Collin is a former prisoner running down the clock on his last three days of probation and is therefore desperately trying to away from any trouble. Then, with his parole completed, he can move out of the halfway house he's living in and move on with his life.

The problem is that staying away from trouble isn't easy when your best friend is someone who seems to be seeking it out. Collin is a black man and Miles is a white man, but Miles is the one who acts and talks like a black gang member, something that Collin now finds very clichéd.

The social landscape of Oakland is changing fast and the once dominant black culture is being pushed aside by the incoming hipsters and their kale smoothies. Collin embraces this but Miles seems wrong footed by it all.

One night, just before his 11pm curfew, Collin sees a white policeman (Ethan Embry) shoot an unarmed fleeing black suspect in the back. He is faced with the dilemma of whether to report the incident or not. If he does, he’s admitting he was beyond his curfew which could potentially put him back behind bars. So he doesn't and goes off to get his hair done instead. 

They both work as white van men for a removals company where Val (Janina Gavankar) is their boss. She used to be Collin's girlfriend until the things that happened that sent Collin to prison happened. It is some way into the film until it is revealed what actually happened and why Collin is so keen to move on.

Then, while on a removals job, he comes face for face with the policeman.

Excellent film. Well worth a look.

On Chesil Beach

Ian McEwan is my favourite author that I've never read but I do like the films based on his work, so his 'On Chesil Beach' intrigued me.

It is the story of Florence (Saoirse Ronan) and Edward (Billy Howle), two young university graduates from different cultures. She is a talented and ambitious violinist from a wealthy parents (Emily Watson and Samuel West) while he is the son of a schoolteacher (Adrian Scarborough) and an artist (Anne-Marie Duff). His mother is brain damaged following an horrendous incident with train door.

They meet when Edward, a little drunk after celebrating his exam results, gate crashes a CND meeting because he feels he badly need to share his success with someone, anyone. In Florence he feels he's hit pure gold and wants to share more than just his exam results with her.

Like other McEwan adaptations all this back story is revealed in flashbacks from where they are now which is their bedroom in a quaint seaside hotel on Chesil Beach in Dorset on honeymoon.

Edward is eagerly anticipating the big moment of consummating their marriage while Florence is absolutely dreading it. I think she’s too posh for that sort of stuff and despite the fact he’s positively gagging for it, he bottles it. This creates an uncomfortable situation and even the waiters who serve them dinner laugh at them. This is the 1960s but nothing is swinging here. Nothing is zipping either. Why did they never sort that zip out?

It is excruciating for them but especially for us and a bit of a surprise really considering how natural, normal and intimate the scenes of their courtship were. Then the thing that understandably finally kills off their attempts at sex is Edward’s premature ejaculation. Clearly this wasn’t covered in the sex manual Florence had been terrifying herself with but how he got himself that worked up when so little progress seemed to have been made on the seduction front I’m not sure. The film is so overwhelmed by its momentum impeding flashbacks that its enough to put anyone off their stroke.

Florence legs it on to the beach where they argue and eventually she offers a compromise deal, herself as a dutiful but sexless wife. He’s not buying that, he thought he'd signed up for the whole package, and I don’t blame him. So apparently that’s it. One crap shag and its all over. That’s a worry and if true how did anyone ever get born?

Given that the book is only a short novella, the film feels padded out and McEwan has indeed added some extra scenes. These include quite an eye-opening one thirteen years later, set in a record shop run by Edward. A child, Chloe, appears in his shop and she is clearly Florence’s daughter. She is aged about twelve.

So whatever Florence’s hang ups were she got over them pretty quickly didn't she and with a member of her string quartet, Charles. Whereas in the book she remained single and filled with regret, here that is clearly not the case. Perhaps her failure to consummate her marriage was actually down to unresolved feelings for another man?

In all a disappointing film, that never really exploded into life even when you think it ought to. Sorry Ian, I don't buy it.

Funny Cow

Funny Cow is about a stand-up comedienne (Maxine Peake) taking on the men at their own game in the dingy working men’s clubs of the 1970s. It is in one such place in the north of England where she sees the depressive Lenny (Alun Armstrong) up on stage, going through the motions with his dire material, and effectively dying, that inspires her in the first place. 

When she talks to him about his act, he assures her that ‘women aren’t funny’, and suggests she tries singing or stripping instead but it is comedy that she wants to do. Comedy is a release for her from her miserable life. 

From a childhood living with an abusive father (Stephen Graham) through to a dysfunctional marriage to the violent and controlling Bob (Tony Pitts) via a mother (Lindsey Coulson) driven to drink by life.

Finally leaving her husband and taking up with bookshop owner Angus (Paddy Considine), who takes her to see foreign films which fall way outside her comfort zone, turns out to be not that much of a trade up.

Meanwhile she struggles to gain a foothold in the world of the gungy pub carpet. She suffers from terrible nerves when she attends an audition where she is up against a singer (Richard Hawley), a ventriloquist (Vic Reeves) and an Elvis impersonator (John Bishop) with his dog (Bilko).

Eventually she blags her way on to stage when the promoter has little choice when faced with an empty stage. There she finally gains acceptance, and later success, but only by winning round the hostile audience by embracing the 1970's reality of doing racist and homophobic gags, while dealing with the inevitable hecklers.

In the film we see her after her success, then before, then after again in series of Dave Allen like scenes in front of the camera. Scenes that for me distract from the narrative of the film and therefore drag down what was a generally strong film. 

The later scenes seem to show her just as cynical and disillusioned with everything as she was before she became a comedienne. Even being a success doesn’t appear to have brought her any happiness but then she probably never expected it to.

Beast

Moll (Jessie Buckley) works as a tourist guide for a coach tour company on Jersey, where the film is set. She is desperately unhappy with both her job and her life in general. She still lives at home with her parents where she is under the thumb of her overbearing mother (Geraldine James), who has a low opinion of Moll compared with her other two children, her brother Harrison (Oliver Maltman) for whom Moll is expected to provide unlimited babysitting services and her sister Polly (Shannon Tarbet).

It is Polly who has the audacity to announce, at Moll’s own birthday party, that she is pregnant with twins. Heartily pissed off at being upstaged by her sister, Moll storms out of the party and ends up at the local night club. At the club she meets a young lad, who later attempts to force himself on her. She is rescued by Pascal (Johnny Flynn) who appears with a shotgun slung across his shoulder and frightens her suitor off. Pascal is a handyman come vagabond and seeing him as a bit of an outcast like herself, she is clearly quite taken with him.

Here Moll is, balancing the attentions of two strangers, while the whole island is being terrorised by a serial killer who has raped and killed several young girls. The latest victim being on the same night as her party. 

Unperturbed, and probably feeling he is the only person who seems to understand her, she starts a passionate relationship with him. She invites him to her home where she flaunts him in front of her family. Being the complete antithesis of her upper-middle class family, they are all horrified, her mother in particular and Pascal revels in the role of disapproved lover.

She continues their relationship even when told of his criminal record by Clifford (Trystan Gravelle), a young police officer who has his own eye on Moll. Inevitably Pascal is soon the chief suspect for the murders but Moll provides him with a false alibi, saying that they had danced all night at the club together.

To complicate things further, Moll has secrets of her own. When she was at school she stabbed another girl who was bullying her and this is partly the reason for her mother keeping her on a short leash, scared that if provoked she could do it again.

Everything comes to a head when the Moll and Pascal meet up at a beach side restaurant and the film delivers a clever final scene that beings the film to a hugely ambiguous conclusion. Leaving the audience to decide exactly what just happened and where their sympathies should lie.

This is a very smart film which constantly overturns your expectations of where it’s heading and of what type of film it is. Backed by excellent performances from Buckley and Flynn, it is utterly brilliant and possibly the best thing I've seen this year so far.

Mary Magdalene

‘Mary Magdalene’ is yet another retelling of the Jesus Christ story but this time using a new interpretation of the New Testament which does a demolition job on the wildly held assumption that Mary Magdalene was a mere prostitute. As an RE lesson, pretty much all the usual story is present and roughly correct. You know, the raising of Lazarus, Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, Judas’s betrayal and the Crucifixion. This time though Mary Magdalene seems to be Jesus’s right hand man, I mean woman, rather than Peter.

Mary M (Rooney Mara) rejects the expected norms of an arranged marriage and a future of prodigious childbearing for the want of something better to do with her life. Good girl. Her family are rather appalled at this ground breaking madness and promptly attempt to exorcise the demon within her. However it’s not a demon that has taken her but the unkempt bunch of blokes who turned up unannounced in her village. This ragamuffin group turn out to the disciples lead by a rather scruffy chap called Jesus (Joachim Phoenix). A man who seems to be keeping his alleged charisma well hidden. Nonetheless she elopes with this dozen or so blokes which perhaps understandably doesn’t go down that well with her father and brothers. They attempts to take her back but the disciples refuse to let her go. Which I didn’t think was very Christian of them.

So this retelling puts Mary M front and centre and seems to suggest that she knew what Jesus was on about better than the lads did. She becomes somewhat a teacher’s pet and starts following Jesus around like a lost sheep. Which, to be fair, is pretty much what everybody else does. The cameraman included which is why the film often drags so much. There are only so many lingering stares between the two of them you can take. Apparently Phoenix and Mara are an actual couple in real life, I just hope they have more chemistry at home and perhaps speak a bit louder to each other because at times here the dialogue is scarcely audible.

There are a few other, possibly contentious and confusing, plot changes. Judas (Tahar Rahim) doesn’t seem to betray Jesus but sort of just makes a mistake and no money changes hands. While Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) forgets to disown Jesus, not once let alone three times. 

It’s all a bit of a mess really but lets face it, no one really knows what went on out there in the desert in 33AD, but if it really was as dull as this then I doubt this bible thing would have gained as much traction as it has.

Unsane

Unsane is a thriller come horror that was apparently all shot on an iPhone.

Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) is a young woman attempting to rebuild her life, having moved to a new city to escape a stalker. However, she is struggling with that rebuilding job, finding herself unable to form relationships and seemingly constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

She then inadvertently tips herself over the edge when at a counselling session she confesses that she sometimes has suicidal thoughts. The therapist promptly asks her to sign a document agree ing to more sessions but then, before the ink is dry, a man in a white coat leads her away to a locked room.

Unfortunately protesting that she’s been locked up by mistake just makes it look like she’s in denial. Then when she’s assaulted by another patient and fights back, it just reinforces the impression that she needs to be locked up and drugged up. Then when she gets side effects from the drugs, this is just another reason to keep her in.

With help from fellow inmate Nate Hoffman (Jay Pharoah), she manages to get word to her mother (Amy Irving) but she just comes up against the immoveable bureaucracy of the hospital. This all appears to be a dig at the American healthcare system, where hospitals can be paid handsomely through a patient’s private medical insurance.

Sawyer is convinced that one of the staff (Joshua Leonard) is her old stalker and who is therefore still stalking her. But do we believe her? Is Sawyer really sane or is she actually ill? The question of whether or not Sawyer is a reliable witness to her own sanity is the hook here.

Sadly the film then starts to go insane itself as it attempts to shovel something\anything into the large plot holes that have appeared. We can buy the incarceration idea for a while but by now basic logic says somebody would have got her out. The film therefore has to keep inventing twists why this isn’t the case and this just undermines the good story they had put together so far.

Luckily Foy’s performance keeps things watchable and the film is good but probably could have been a lot better. Nice idea, shame about the execution.

You Were Never Really Here

From the novella by Jonathan Ames, comes You Were Never Really Here. A nice family film...

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a war veteran, traumatised  by his past, addicted to pain killers and a hired killer who specialises in retrieving trafficked girls. He has a reputation for brutality but also for getting results, with his hammer. An implement of which he has not so found childhood memories.

He spends his free time between jobs caring for his elderly mother (Judith Roberts) and having flashbacks to his past, as a Gulf War soldier and as the victim of an abusive father.

He is offered a large wad of cash to rescue Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the 13-year-old daughter of a New York senator called Albert Votto (Alex Manette), who is missing from home. He locates Nina in an ‘upmarket’ brothel from where he rescues her, killing several security guards and customers on the way. 

Then before he can get Nina back to Votto, he sees on the news that Votto has apparently killed himself. Corrupt police officers then storm his motel room and take Nina off him. They come for him too but he escapes.

He then finds that both his boss and his handler have been murdered in an attempt to track him down. Once they know where he lives they head there, kill his mother and then lie in wait for him. Joe outsmarts them, kills one of them and finds out from the other than the man behind all this is Governor Williams (Alessandro Nivola) who wants his favourite sex slave back and has the power to do it.

Joe gives his mother a water burial and also attempts to drown himself, but a vision of Nina convinces him to save the girl fromWilliams instead.

This is a film where you really need to concentrate, or revise beforehand, as the director leaves you to find your own way but it’s a really excellent film with a great performance from Joaquin Phoenix as the man who is never really there. Although some folk might need a blindfold as it’s a violent film but ‘tastefully’ done with most of the bloodshed off-camera.

Recommended served with a few beers.

Red Sparrow

Tonight we go see Red Sparrow, a spy thriller which has attracted a lot criticism. This allegedly perverse ‘15’ certificate film has been accused of being both violently and sexually perverse with woman beaten and raped seemingly at will by powerful men.

I must admit that I have been a little surprised by this reaction but then I think I was possibly too busy being annoyed at how they'd made a complete hash out of a decent book which was written by former CIA operative Jason Matthews.

Perhaps I need to re-watch it to see what I missed but I do remember they’d left out the hair brush scene (thankfully). That would have caused even more of a stir.

The story goes like this. Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) was a ballerina at the Bolshoi whose promising dancing career was ended by injury. Sadly her dancing also funded the care for her ailing mother.

Not to worry, her uncle Ivan (Matthias Schoenaerts), who works in Russian intelligence, offers her work to help her get by. It is just a small favour he requires, for her to be the honey in a trap that is to be sprung on a Russian politician. She does the favour and does a rather good job, although it probably goes a little bit further than she would have hoped. Then just as the politician is having his way with her, he is murdered.

Unfortunately she’s now in a bit of a pickle because she’s seen too much. She is told she can either die or start working for Russian intelligence herself. Tough choice that.

So her uncle sends her off to Sparrow School where Matron (Charlotte Rampling) teaches the recruits to use the skills of sexual seduction to get what they want from the enemy.

Once graduated, Dominika is sent to Budapest to meet her target, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), who works for the CIA and knows the identity of a Russian mole known as Marble. However, Nash quickly sees through her and the long and short of it is that he persuades her to become a double agent.

I was a fan of the book even though it was at times convoluted and hard to follow, so a simplification was required for it to work as a film and that doesn't happen. In fact what we have here is an even more convoluted plot.

The other problem is where is the seduction? There’s a total lack of chemistry between the two agents. For someone supposedly trained in seduction, Dominika doesn’t pull any tricks out of the locker for him. In the book they have a conflicted relationship due to the nature of their jobs but a relationship nonetheless, here they eventually have a quick bonk. It's not quite the same and where was the swimming race? That was one of my favourite bits.

Instead the script seems to demand that all the Russians must be portrayed as ice men and ice maidens. So Lawrence goes through the entire film wearing only one expression, one of indifference, while Edgerton goes about attempting to be the all American hero.

In fact Lawrence seems hugely miscast in this but then so too are the likes of Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, Joely Richardson and Ciaran Hinds. Were there no genuine Russian actors available the weekend that they did the casting?

There is also no back story to the Russian mole which was pivotal to the original story, instead the film just seems overloaded with violence. It’s all deeply disappointing.

This would have made a wonderful independent flick or even a mini series but Hollywood completely wrecked this one.

A Fantastic Woman

I was sort of dragged to tonight's film, A Fantastic Woman. On the surface of it a subtitled Chilean flick about a wronged transgender person didn’t really rock my boat. However, I was wrong. My boat was somewhat agitated and it also showed that my partner doesn’t always pick bad films.

Marina (Daniela Vega) is a young transgender woman living in Santiago where she works as a waitress and as a singer in a night club. She is in a relationship with a much older divorced man called Orlando (Francisco Reyes). 

After a romantic night out, which ends with Marina staying over at Orlando’s flat, Orlando falls ill. Marina attempts to take him to hospital but he ends up falling down the stairs of the apartment building. This not only results in his death but, because he sustains significant bruising in the fall, the police get involved.

The police make her go through an intimate medical examination in case Orlando was abusing her and that was why she ‘threw' him down the stairs. All the while they insist on referring to her by her birth gender and calling her Daniel.

She gets an even frostier reception from Orlando’s already bitter ex-wife Sonia (Aline Küppenheim) and his grown up son (Nicolás Saavedra). They just about tolerated her existence before but are now completely open with their dislike of her. 

Marina finds out very quickly that she has no rights as Orlando’s girlfriend, that she must vacate his flat, give up his dog and won’t be welcome at his funeral. Some of the extended family go as far as to threaten her.

It is an enthralling film in which Vega is excellent as Marina and yet I can’t help thinking that had she not been transgender but instead just his young live-in female lover then things wouldn’t have been much different. His ex-wife and son would still have loathed her, the funeral would still have been off limits and the police would still have been suspicious about their relationship. However none of this needs to distract from what was still a very good film.

I, Tonya

I, Tonya is a mockumentary type film based on the true story of US figure skater Tonya Harding.

In 1994 Harding was convicted for her part in the attack on her bitter rival Nancy Kerrigan. She, at the very least, attempted to cover up the attack which was carried out by her ex-husband Jeff and some hired thugs. This film however paints Harding as the victim, rather than Kerrigan who barely gets a mention, let alone any sympathy.

In its defence the film doesn’t pretend to be accurate, it is the account of those involved on Harding’s side. The film instead shows Harding (Margot Robbie) as a victim of life, fighting her way to the top of the figure skating world against the odds and despite the 'help' of her chain-smoking mother, LaVona (Allison Janney) who believes in the motivational power of abuse. 

 

She gets slapped around all the time, first by her mother and then by husband (Sebastian Stan). However Harding’s aggressively style and technical brilliance get results on the rink but although her approach is tolerated it is not loved. She feels she is constantly discriminated against by the judges because she came from the wrong side of the tracks and couldn’t afford a smart dress to skate in.

With her likely to be outshone by Kerrigan at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Jeff and his drinking buddy Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser) make plans to intimidate her rival.

Though the men ultimately get prison time for what they did, Tonya’s life ban from skating to her was possibly worse.

It’s a decent film but in a slightly tiresome style. Margot Robbie is excellent in a role that I don’t think really suits her and perhaps because of that it is Allison Janney who is getting all the plaudits.