Bohemian Rhapsody

Rating: 9/10 (15 April 2019)

Bohemian Rhapsody
2018
Dir: Bryan Singer
Runtime: 2 hr 15 mins
Synopsis: Singer Freddie Mercury, guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bass guitarist John Deacon take the music world by storm when they form the rock 'n' roll band Queen in 1970. Surrounded by darker influences Mercury decides to leave Queen years later to pursue a solo career. Diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s, the flamboyant frontman reunited with the group for the benefit concert Live Aid - leading the band in one of the greatest performances in rock history.
Very high expectations walking into this one. Can't really compare it to "A Star is Born" although a fantastic music film this was more of a biopic than a story on its own. Always a fan of biopic films, but only in the case that they are done correctly. They usually follow the same formula as well, start with before the main character is famous, slowly build up that character, watch the character peak, and sometimes there will be a climatic finish or you will see the character fall from grace and never return. This pretty much followed the same general rules to a biopic film. Didn't date back too far into the pre fame and ended on a high note as Freddie Mercury's story should be done. The cinematography is always important in music films especially during the concert and live performance scenes, you want the audience to feel like they are there in the crowd as the camera gazed up at the star and the dramatic pan shot used to portray how massive or even small a crowd is. Did great use of montages crossed with concert scenes. What I did notice that a repeated formula was used throughout the film. They would show how one of their hits were created, it would slowly lead into a concert of them performing that same song and then transition into a montage of similar concerts. Sometimes the use of concerts can be under used and sometimes over used which makes it seem like too much drama or too much of a musical, I felt that this had a pretty good balance of both although it would have been fun to see some of the songs performed more in their entirety in concert than just the montages. Great camera shots and the dialogue was fantastic in portraying how fabulous and extravagant Freddie Mercury was. The film itself was wildly long as are most biopics but at one point seeing that I was only an hour in I was super surprised as how slow the film was progressing. There wasn't much dry points with the aspect that almost all of the dialogue served a purpose wether it coming back into play later in the film or it just solidifying a scene properly. The characters are so great. Although I've only seen a small amount of "Mr. Robot" Rami Malik is such an amazing actor. His portrayal of Freddie Mercury was probably going to be one of his greatest performances so far in his career. If you watch the Live Aid original footage and watch the performance in the film he is almost mirroring Mercury's movements and facial expressions. Queen was before my time but the film did a great job at building these characters if you don't know them. Absolutely recommend a theatre watch although it is very lengthy but the concert scenes are worth it. I'd probably buy this film because this will fall in line with other classics like "Ray" or "Walk The Line"
not perfect only because that this is a biopic so it's hard to make it feel original with out being too artificial, and the repeated formula could have been done a little better