|
Post by hi224 on Nov 18, 2018 12:36:51 GMT
very middling movie, but Rami Malek was sensational.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
@Deleted
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2018 11:34:11 GMT
Its middlingness and whitewashing was over-shadowed by its dynamic presentation which is working for many who view it. This was to make it more palatable and it perhaps could have been a more raw and brazen film as Sasha Baron Cohen wanted before he dropped out, or was dropped. I read that Queen felt that he was too well known for his comedy and wasn't perhaps right to do Freddie justice. Malek was still terrific. The film still managed to convey and cover enough layers of Queen as a band, from their humble beginnings, to their superstardom and it didn't exactly shy away from the demons that confronted them, it was just done in an easy going manner. True indeed the few factual inaccuracies are only a pain for the hardcore Queen fans. The far bigger general movie going public is loving it. it is far exceeding expectations for FOX box office wise. On a 52 million budget it will pass 400 million worldwide this coming weekend. to think it will make more money than SOLO a Star Wars movie. Who knew?
|
|
|
Post by politicidal on Nov 19, 2018 15:29:41 GMT
True indeed the few factual inaccuracies are only a pain for the hardcore Queen fans. The far bigger general movie going public is loving it. it is far exceeding expectations for FOX box office wise. On a 52 million budget it will pass 400 million worldwide this coming weekend. to think it will make more money than SOLO a Star Wars movie. Who knew? Of the many people I have known that have seen it, they all have positive things to say about the experience of it. One lady told me today she got tingles when watching it. It is striking all the right chords with viewers. Any inaccuracies by the hardcore fans is just quibbling, and to these fanboy sects, nothing is ever right. All movie biopics take some artistic and creative license. When you encapsulate 2 decades of music into a 2 hour film, then something has got to give, to get the message and experience across. I found BR to be mainstream film-making at the top of its game. It seems like this year's The Greatest Showman then as far as critical reception versus audience reaction.
|
|
|
Post by hi224 on Nov 19, 2018 15:36:53 GMT
Of the many people I have known that have seen it, they all have positive things to say about the experience of it. One lady told me today she got tingles when watching it. It is striking all the right chords with viewers. Any inaccuracies by the hardcore fans is just quibbling, and to these fanboy sects, nothing is ever right. All movie biopics take some artistic and creative license. When you encapsulate 2 decades of music into a 2 hour film, then something has got to give, to get the message and experience across. I found BR to be mainstream film-making at the top of its game. It seems like this year's The Greatest Showman then as far as critical reception versus audience reaction. its certainly not the worst biopic I've seen( the one about Pele was abysmal), but it really felt like there was a great movie in there somewhere begging to bubble to the surface. The Last perhaps 20 minutes are sublime, it really sucks the movie didn't hit those heights more at all.
|
|
|
Post by cooly44 on Dec 3, 2018 22:37:59 GMT
The other members of Queen were eerily like the real guys.
Meanwhile I think they really overdid the overbite. It distorted the actor's face in a way that Freddie Mercury's was not. Freddie was gorgeous.
|
|
|
Post by hi224 on Dec 4, 2018 3:20:49 GMT
The other members of Queen were eerily like the real guys. Meanwhile I think they really overdid the overbite. It distorted the actor's face in a way that Freddie Mercury's was not. Freddie was gorgeous. a bit, but not too distracting to me at all, I was more annoyed by Mike Myers Actually.
|
|
|
Post by cooly44 on Dec 4, 2018 14:15:43 GMT
The other members of Queen were eerily like the real guys. Meanwhile I think they really overdid the overbite. It distorted the actor's face in a way that Freddie Mercury's was not. Freddie was gorgeous. a bit, but not too distracting to me at all, I was more annoyed by Mike Myers Actually. Really? I didn't even know it was him until after I'd seen the movie. He seemed okay.
|
|
|
Post by Jep Gambardella on Dec 4, 2018 20:00:50 GMT
Its middlingness and whitewashing was over-shadowed by its dynamic presentation which is working for many who view it. What "whitewashing"? Do you think they should have chosen an actor with darker skin to play Freddy Mercury, since his parents were Indian? But Freddy Mercury looked white in real life, so that would have been wrong.
|
|
|
Post by cooly44 on Dec 5, 2018 17:25:51 GMT
Its middlingness and whitewashing was over-shadowed by its dynamic presentation which is working for many who view it. What "whitewashing"? Do you think they should have chosen an actor with darker skin to play Freddy Mercury, since his parents were Indian? But Freddy Mercury looked white in real life, so that would have been wrong.
True. Freddie was always pale. I was surprised when I learned of his ethnicity (long before the movie, BTW). Some people have complained that it didn't go into his homosexuality enough, whereas it certainly did.
|
|
|
Post by joekiddlouischama on Dec 27, 2018 12:16:55 GMT
True indeed the few factual inaccuracies are only a pain for the hardcore Queen fans. The far bigger general movie going public is loving it. it is far exceeding expectations for FOX box office wise. On a 52 million budget it will pass 400 million worldwide this coming weekend. to think it will make more money than SOLO a Star Wars movie. Who knew? Of the many people I have known that have seen it, they all have positive things to say about the experience of it. One lady told me today she got tingles when watching it. It is striking all the right chords with viewers. Any inaccuracies by the hardcore fans is just quibbling, and to these fanboy sects, nothing is ever right. All movie biopics take some artistic and creative license. When you encapsulate 2 decades of music into a 2 hour film, then something has got to give, to get the message and experience across. I found BR to be mainstream film-making at the top of its game. I do not know enough about Queen and its members to know everything that is accurate and everything that is not, but my issue is that one can sense plenty of oversimplification and eradication of nuance, or distortion of inconvenient detail, in order to fit the band's story into a typical band-biopic narrative. The EMI record producer that the members fire says something like, "Formula is effective. Formula works. We'll stick to the formula." For the most part, those words might as well constitute the film's slogan—which is ironic for a band that used rather extreme camp and operatic or vaudeville influences to toy with what otherwise would have been a fairly formulaic post-sixties hard-rock sound. Especially after viewing the film for a second time, I find several engrossing and engaging scenes, especially involving Mercury and his wife (or former wife). But Bohemian Rhapsody also glosses over quite a few aspects or gives them short shrift, and I deem some of the decisions to be a bit insulting. For instance, after the movie reveals that the band is going to tour America, the film shows a long shot of the wide-open spaces and a windmill, obviously signifying the vast expanses of the American heartland. Does the movie then need to impose in red-white-and-blue letters "Midwest U.S.A." upon the image? Evidently, the filmmakers did not trust that the viewers could figure out that very basic connection on their own. Using graphic-type to indicate all the various global cities that they were touring is also lazy and lacking for creativity. And although a feature film will often take liberties with historical details, there should be good reason for doing so. What, for instance, is the motivation for suggesting that Queen created "We Will Rock You" in 1980 as opposed to 1977? For someone with some basic knowledge of Queen, such as myself, this kind of inaccuracy can be glaring. I do not have an issue with artistic license, but I might have an issue with artistic license that seems to lack artistic motivation. I mean, what if one made a biopic about The Rolling Stones that suggested—simply for the sake of narrative convenience—that "Satisfaction" came out in 1968 instead of 1965? The film covers fifteen years, and I concur that trying to fit fifteen years into two hours requires some compression. But including the credits, the movie actually runs for over 130 minutes, and the better decision, artistically, might have been to just make a film in the 140-150-minute range and draw out more nuances, go into greater depth about such matters as Mercury's apparent shame regarding his heritage (early on, at least), create more naturalism regarding his sexual self-realization, and provide a less formulaic sense of human interaction in certain scenes. Again, some scenes are quite intricate and intimate, but many others suffer from a going-through-the-motions sensibility (including Mercury's first alleged gay encounter). I also wonder why Queen's heterosexual members—apparently everyone aside from Mercury—also tended to write campy songs, or songs that appeared campy. But the film never really addresses that issue. For that matter, why would straight rockers have gone along with the name "Queen" in the first place? Yes, Mercury provides his reasons for choosing the name in Bohemian Rhapsody, but did everyone else just accept it so easily? Before viewing the film, I actually possessed some vague notion that Mercury was not the only gay/bisexual member, but evidently he was the only one. In that case, how did the band's overall output become so campy? Was Mercury's influence that strong, or did that 1970s London-oriented milieu influence the others to consciously or subconsciously embrace such vibes musically? Aside from some indications regarding the recording of Mercury's "Bohemian Rhapsody," the film does not delve into the matter. Instead, it simply shows the other members becoming nonplussed or repulsed when Mercury goes all-out-flamer at the start of the eighties. But what about the overall musical melange and the campy songs written by the other members? Part of the problem is that Bohemian Rhapsody seeks to be both a biopic of the band and a biopic of Mercury, without ideally merging the two ambitions. I concur with the original poster about Bohemian Rhapsody being "very middling" yet elevated by its reconstruction of the Live Aid concert in 1985. That long climactic sequence—wonderfully shot (the aerial and tracking shots of the crowd are especially notable), edited, and performed—raises the film to "pretty good" in my opinion, meaning above-average. But for the most part prior to the Live Aid sequence, this biopic is about as standardized as one could imagine. To be sure, even before Live Aid, Bohemian Rhapsody is engrossing and solidly entertaining. But one can also sense that at almost every opportunity, it seeks to shape matters in a standard and safe direction that fits a formula, which is ironic for a biopic about a band that—as I indicated earlier—found a unique voice despite a broadly typical sound. Of course Bohemian Rhapsody covers Mercury's homosexuality or bisexuality in broad strokes, but the more nuanced matters that I have alluded to receive minimal coverage, if any at all. I am surprised that the film's grosses have been this substantial. Obviously, they speak to Queen's enduring popularity, and commercially-speaking, the movie's middle-of-the-road approach obviously worked. Bohemian Rhapsody's essential conventionality does not make for a remarkable movie (aside from the Live Aid sequences), but it certainly plays to a wide audience.
|
|
|
Post by hi224 on Dec 28, 2018 9:19:36 GMT
Of the many people I have known that have seen it, they all have positive things to say about the experience of it. One lady told me today she got tingles when watching it. It is striking all the right chords with viewers. Any inaccuracies by the hardcore fans is just quibbling, and to these fanboy sects, nothing is ever right. All movie biopics take some artistic and creative license. When you encapsulate 2 decades of music into a 2 hour film, then something has got to give, to get the message and experience across. I found BR to be mainstream film-making at the top of its game. I do not know enough about Queen and its members to know everything that is accurate and everything that is not, but my issue is that one can sense plenty of oversimplification and eradication of nuance, or distortion of inconvenient detail, in order to fit the band's story into a typical band-biopic narrative. The EMI record producer that the members fire says something like, "Formula is effective. Formula works. We'll stick to the formula." For the most part, those words might as well constitute the film's slogan—which is ironic for a band that used rather extreme camp and operatic or vaudeville influences to toy with what otherwise would have been a fairly formulaic post-sixties hard rock sound. Especially after viewing the film for a second time, I find several engrossing and engaging scenes, especially involving Mercury and his wife (or former wife). But Bohemian Rhapsody also glosses over quite a few aspects or gives them short shrift, and I deem some of the decisions to be a bit insulting. For instance, after the movie reveals that the band is going to tour America, the film shows a long shot of the wide-open spaces and a windmill, obviously signifying the vast expanses of the American heartland. Does the movie then need to impose in red-white-and-blue letters "Midwest U.S.A." upon the image? Evidently, the filmmakers did not trust that the viewers could figure out that very basic connection on their own. Using graphic-type to indicate all the various global cities that they were touring is also lazy and lacking for creativity. And although a feature film will often take liberties with historical details, there should be good reason for doing so. What, for instance, is the motivation for suggesting that Queen created "We Will Rock You" in 1980 as opposed to 1977? For someone with some basic knowledge of Queen, such as myself, this kind of inaccuracy can be glaring. I do not have an issue with artistic license, but I might have an issue with artistic license that seems to lack artistic motivation. I mean, what if one made a biopic about The Rolling Stones that suggested—simply for the sake of narrative convenience—that "Satisfaction" came out in 1967 instead of 1964? The film covers fifteen years, and I concur that trying to fit fifteen years into two hours requires some compression. But including the credits, the movie actually runs for over 130 minutes, and the better decision, artistically, might have been to just make a film in the 140-150-minute range and draw out more nuances, go into greater depth about such matters as Mercury's apparent shame regarding his heritage (early on, at least), create more naturalism regarding his sexual self-realization, and provide a less formulaic sense of human interaction in certain scenes. Again, some scenes are quite intricate and intimate, but many others suffer from a going-through-the-motions sensibility (including Mercury's first alleged gay encounter). I also wonder why Queen's heterosexual members—apparently everyone aside from Mercury—also tended to write campy songs, or songs that appeared campy. But the film never really addresses that issue. For that matter, why would straight rockers have gone along with the name "Queen" in the first place? Yes, Mercury provides his reasons for choosing the name in Bohemian Rhapsody, but did everyone else just accept it so easily? Before viewing the film, I actually possessed some vague notion that Mercury was not the only gay/bisexual member, but evidently he was the only one. In that case, how did the band's overall output become so campy? Was Mercury's influence that strong, or did that 1970s London-oriented milieu influence the others to consciously or subconsciously embrace such vibes musically? Aside from some indications regarding the recording of Mercury's "Bohemian Rhapsody," the film does not delve into the matter. Instead, it simply shows the other members becoming nonplussed or repulsed when Mercury goes all-out-flamer at the start of the eighties. But what about the overall musical melange and the campy songs written by the other members? Part of the problem is that Bohemian Rhapsody seeks to be both a biopic of the band and a biopic of Mercury, without ideally merging the two ambitions. I concur with the original poster about Bohemian Rhapsody being "very middling" yet elevated by its reconstruction of the Live Aid concert in 1985. That long climactic sequence—wonderfully shot (the aerial and tracking shots of the crowd are especially notable), edited, and performed—raises the film to "pretty good" in my opinion, meaning above-average. But for the most part prior to the Live Aid sequence, this biopic is about as standardized as one could imagine. To be sure, even before Live Aid, Bohemian Rhapsody is engrossing and solidly entertaining. But one can also sense that at almost every opportunity, it seeks to shape matters in a standard and safe direction that fits a formula, which is ironic for a biopic about a band that—as I indicated earlier—found a unique voice despite a broadly typical sound. Of course Bohemian Rhapsody covers Mercury's homosexuality or bisexuality in broad strokes, but the more nuanced matters that I have alluded to receive minimal coverage, if any at all. I am surprised that the film's grosses have been this substantial. Obviously, they speak to Queen's enduring popularity, and commercially-speaking, the movie's middle-of-the-road approach obviously worked. Bohemian Rhapsody's essential conventionality does not make for a remarkable movie (aside from the Live Aid sequences), but it certainly plays to a wide audience. Adding on to what you say the film never really gets us inside what shaped Mercury to becoming the rock star we know him as. We needed more on his home life, and what sort of brought about the music which he later wrote, also the movie seemingly implies he acted flamboyant and coy 24/7 but I honestly doubt that was the case, so Mercury never feels really well rounded at all.
|
|
|
Post by kevin on Dec 28, 2018 10:13:11 GMT
Gave it a 6/10 when I first watched it, but it has fallen a bit since I've seen it. It's probably a 5/10 for me right now. It's reasonably entertaining, but it feels like a 'Greatest Hits' collection, just playing popular song after each other, without ever going any further than surface level. They just go from popular song to popular song, not caring if they skip 2 years of the band members' life in which a lot happens. If you're just going for an entertaining movie, you'll probably be pleased. If you're going for anything more than that, you'll probably be at least a bit disappointed. And tbh I didn't find Rami Malek that amazing. He's good, but nowhere near 'Awards level' good for me.
|
|
|
Post by joekiddlouischama on Dec 28, 2018 10:17:17 GMT
I do not know enough about Queen and its members to know everything that is accurate and everything that is not, but my issue is that one can sense plenty of oversimplification and eradication of nuance, or distortion of inconvenient detail, in order to fit the band's story into a typical band-biopic narrative. The EMI record producer that the members fire says something like, "Formula is effective. Formula works. We'll stick to the formula." For the most part, those words might as well constitute the film's slogan—which is ironic for a band that used rather extreme camp and operatic or vaudeville influences to toy with what otherwise would have been a fairly formulaic post-sixties hard rock sound. Especially after viewing the film for a second time, I find several engrossing and engaging scenes, especially involving Mercury and his wife (or former wife). But Bohemian Rhapsody also glosses over quite a few aspects or gives them short shrift, and I deem some of the decisions to be a bit insulting. For instance, after the movie reveals that the band is going to tour America, the film shows a long shot of the wide-open spaces and a windmill, obviously signifying the vast expanses of the American heartland. Does the movie then need to impose in red-white-and-blue letters "Midwest U.S.A." upon the image? Evidently, the filmmakers did not trust that the viewers could figure out that very basic connection on their own. Using graphic-type to indicate all the various global cities that they were touring is also lazy and lacking for creativity. And although a feature film will often take liberties with historical details, there should be good reason for doing so. What, for instance, is the motivation for suggesting that Queen created "We Will Rock You" in 1980 as opposed to 1977? For someone with some basic knowledge of Queen, such as myself, this kind of inaccuracy can be glaring. I do not have an issue with artistic license, but I might have an issue with artistic license that seems to lack artistic motivation. I mean, what if one made a biopic about The Rolling Stones that suggested—simply for the sake of narrative convenience—that "Satisfaction" came out in 1967 instead of 1964? The film covers fifteen years, and I concur that trying to fit fifteen years into two hours requires some compression. But including the credits, the movie actually runs for over 130 minutes, and the better decision, artistically, might have been to just make a film in the 140-150-minute range and draw out more nuances, go into greater depth about such matters as Mercury's apparent shame regarding his heritage (early on, at least), create more naturalism regarding his sexual self-realization, and provide a less formulaic sense of human interaction in certain scenes. Again, some scenes are quite intricate and intimate, but many others suffer from a going-through-the-motions sensibility (including Mercury's first alleged gay encounter). I also wonder why Queen's heterosexual members—apparently everyone aside from Mercury—also tended to write campy songs, or songs that appeared campy. But the film never really addresses that issue. For that matter, why would straight rockers have gone along with the name "Queen" in the first place? Yes, Mercury provides his reasons for choosing the name in Bohemian Rhapsody, but did everyone else just accept it so easily? Before viewing the film, I actually possessed some vague notion that Mercury was not the only gay/bisexual member, but evidently he was the only one. In that case, how did the band's overall output become so campy? Was Mercury's influence that strong, or did that 1970s London-oriented milieu influence the others to consciously or subconsciously embrace such vibes musically? Aside from some indications regarding the recording of Mercury's "Bohemian Rhapsody," the film does not delve into the matter. Instead, it simply shows the other members becoming nonplussed or repulsed when Mercury goes all-out-flamer at the start of the eighties. But what about the overall musical melange and the campy songs written by the other members? Part of the problem is that Bohemian Rhapsody seeks to be both a biopic of the band and a biopic of Mercury, without ideally merging the two ambitions. I concur with the original poster about Bohemian Rhapsody being "very middling" yet elevated by its reconstruction of the Live Aid concert in 1985. That long climactic sequence—wonderfully shot (the aerial and tracking shots of the crowd are especially notable), edited, and performed—raises the film to "pretty good" in my opinion, meaning above-average. But for the most part prior to the Live Aid sequence, this biopic is about as standardized as one could imagine. To be sure, even before Live Aid, Bohemian Rhapsody is engrossing and solidly entertaining. But one can also sense that at almost every opportunity, it seeks to shape matters in a standard and safe direction that fits a formula, which is ironic for a biopic about a band that—as I indicated earlier—found a unique voice despite a broadly typical sound. Of course Bohemian Rhapsody covers Mercury's homosexuality or bisexuality in broad strokes, but the more nuanced matters that I have alluded to receive minimal coverage, if any at all. I am surprised that the film's grosses have been this substantial. Obviously, they speak to Queen's enduring popularity, and commercially-speaking, the movie's middle-of-the-road approach obviously worked. Bohemian Rhapsody's essential conventionality does not make for a remarkable movie (aside from the Live Aid sequences), but it certainly plays to a wide audience. Adding on to what you say the film never really gets us inside what shaped Mercury to becoming the rock star we know him as. We needed more on his home life, and what sort of brought about the music which he later wrote, also the movie seemingly implies he acted flamboyant and coy 24/7 but I honestly doubt that was the case, so Mercury never feels really well rounded at all. Yes, Bohemian Rhapsody's coverage of the formative aspects of both Mercury and the band is quite superficial—it is not organic in that regard at all, and thus the later developments lack optimal grounding. Conversely, Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood, 2014), for example, spends much more time on how The Four Seasons formed, how the group developed its sound and style, and the uneasy nature of the relationships. Thus as the group splinters—prematurely—one has at least an ambiguous sense of how and why the dissolution occurs. Bohemian Rhapsody is adequate in these regards, but no better—it lacks that depth and naturalism.
|
|
|
Post by hi224 on Dec 28, 2018 16:12:48 GMT
Adding on to what you say the film never really gets us inside what shaped Mercury to becoming the rock star we know him as. We needed more on his home life, and what sort of brought about the music which he later wrote, also the movie seemingly implies he acted flamboyant and coy 24/7 but I honestly doubt that was the case, so Mercury never feels really well rounded at all. Yes, Bohemian Rhapsody's coverage of the formative aspects of both Mercury and the band is quite superficial—it is not organic in that regard at all, and thus the later developments lack optimal grounding. Conversely, Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood, 2014), for example, spends much more time on how The Four Seasons formed, how the group developed its sound and style, and the uneasy nature of the relationships. Thus as the group splinters—prematurely—one has at least an ambiguous sense of how and why the dissolution occurs. Bohemian Rhapsody is adequate in these regards, but no better—it lacks that depth and naturalism. i found Jersey Boys honestly just as shallow in such a regard.
|
|
|
Post by joekiddlouischama on Dec 29, 2018 8:31:38 GMT
Yes, Bohemian Rhapsody's coverage of the formative aspects of both Mercury and the band is quite superficial—it is not organic in that regard at all, and thus the later developments lack optimal grounding. Conversely, Jersey Boys (Clint Eastwood, 2014), for example, spends much more time on how The Four Seasons formed, how the group developed its sound and style, and the uneasy nature of the relationships. Thus as the group splinters—prematurely—one has at least an ambiguous sense of how and why the dissolution occurs. Bohemian Rhapsody is adequate in these regards, but no better—it lacks that depth and naturalism. i found Jersey Boys honestly just as shallow in such a regard. Jersey Boys received a mixed reception (I deemed it "very good") and could not entirely transcend the conventions of the band biopic, but it spent more time covering the group's origins. Conversely, that coverage in Bohemian Rhapsody is essentially tokenistic.
|
|
|
Post by hi224 on Dec 31, 2018 1:58:43 GMT
i found Jersey Boys honestly just as shallow in such a regard. Jersey Boys received a mixed reception (I deemed it "very good") and could not entirely transcend the conventions of the band biopic, but it spent more time covering the group's origins. Conversely, that coverage in Bohemian Rhapsody is essentially tokenistic. What's you're favorite rockn'roll movie? I have to say Velvet Goldmine or Almost Famous as well.
|
|
|
Post by joekiddlouischama on Jan 1, 2019 7:33:32 GMT
Jersey Boys received a mixed reception (I deemed it "very good") and could not entirely transcend the conventions of the band biopic, but it spent more time covering the group's origins. Conversely, that coverage in Bohemian Rhapsody is essentially tokenistic. What's you're favorite rockn'roll movie? I have to say Velvet Goldmine or Almost Famous as well. I will have to see those. I had never even heard of Velvet Goldmine, but reading the synopsis, it seems quite intriguing. In terms of a fictional feature film, I have only viewed This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984) once, but I found it clever and hilarious.
|
|
|
Post by Vits on Jan 1, 2019 12:46:37 GMT
If you want your music biopic to be named after a song, you don't have to choose the most famous one. The title helps give a movie its identity. Yes, it can have a sort of identity with words everyone can recognize and associate to the singer/band, but it's more meaningful when the words help explain who the singer/band is/are. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY isn't a good choice. I know it couldn't be WE WILL ROCK YOU because that's already the title of a stage musical which tells a fictional story with Queen's songs (it'll probably never be adapted into film since the existance of this movie (which has almost the same song repertoire) might make it feel redundant), but what about WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, DON'T STOP ME NOW or to a lesser extent I WANT TO BREAK FREE? There's even a song with the band's name in the title! Making a music biopic gives the director the opportunity to make a series of music-video-like scenes with resources that weren't available when the real singer/band was making actual music videos. Not a lot of this movie's musical sequences show visual creativity and, among those that do, very few are personalized to the specific song. By that I mean that any song could've been played during the sequence. Another thing about music biopics is that they tend to show the same situations. How many times have we seen band members arguing because one has become a diva and/or isn't sober during work? It bothers me more here, because: A) script writers Anthony McCarten and Peter Morgan make up a break-up and a reunion just to have more of this same drama; B) there were opportunities to focus on aspects that made Queen distinct, but some things are only shown briefly (like using different objects during an album recording) and others aren't shown at all (life how, in real life, Freddie Mercury designed a logo for the band, despite it not being vital for the music itself); C) there's a scene where the band members are told that their music should stick to the proven formula and they're against it. Speaking of hypocrisies, while Rami Malek's vocals are mixed with old recordings, what we mainly hear is the real Freddie singing, and yet, there's a scene of the band members being against lip-syncing. At the beginning, FREDDIE sings in front of BRIAN MAY and ROGER TAYLOR so he can join the band. He (awesomely) leaves knowing that they're impressed... even though he didn't say his name or give them any contact information. Despite all my complaints, the humour is witty and the plot managed to be compelling from beginning to end. Rami does a complete transformation. Not just with the way he conveys emotions but also the physicality. It felt like his head was placed into the real Freddie's body. Ben Hardy's performance is less showy but also great, and Lucy Boynton and Gwilym Lee's are very good. 7/10 ------------------------------------- You can read comments of other movies in my blog.
|
|
|
Post by Fox in the Snow on Jan 2, 2019 23:53:47 GMT
Jersey Boys received a mixed reception (I deemed it "very good") and could not entirely transcend the conventions of the band biopic, but it spent more time covering the group's origins. Conversely, that coverage in Bohemian Rhapsody is essentially tokenistic. What's you're favorite rockn'roll movie? I have to say Velvet Goldmine or Almost Famous as well. Guess it's easier to make a music biopic about a fictional band. I really liked Velvet Goldmine (particularly it's use of pre-existing music) but found Almost Famous a little dull.
|
|
|
Post by joekiddlouischama on Jan 9, 2019 8:50:27 GMT
What "whitewashing"? Do you think they should have chosen an actor with darker skin to play Freddy Mercury, since his parents were Indian? But Freddy Mercury looked white in real life, so that would have been wrong.
True. Freddie was always pale. I was surprised when I learned of his ethnicity (long before the movie, BTW).Some people have complained that it didn't go into his homosexuality enough, whereas it certainly did. Although his parents are not pale in the movie, Zoroastrians (the religious community of his parents) are often relatively light-skinned, more so than most other Indians.
|
|