Oscar-worthy performance

Rating: 9/10 (5 November 2018)

This review contains spoilers.
Let's get the bad out of the way right up front:

The CG of the crowd during the Live-Aid performance at the end of the movie was jarring-it's not good compositing and almost threw me out of the suspension of disbelief of the film.

The troubles Brian May and the other band members had throughout their years playing are glossed over.

There are some factual inaccuracies (according to IMDB trivia, the band was not disbanded in the months before Live Aid, for instance, and didn't have to "get back in tune," so to speak).

It was mostly directed by Brian Singer (I believe this is his best film), who has had allegations against him in this era of troubling Weinstein sexual harassment and assault occurrences. So the film succeeds on artistic merit, but one has to separate the artist from the art in this case. Singer was also apparently fired two weeks before filming wrapped due to absences and a different director was brought in to bring the movie home and oversee post production.

With that being said, I've never been a huge fan of Queen, but Bohemian Rhapsody got me interested! My wife wanted to see this and I've been a fan of Rami Malek's since Mr. Robot's pilot episode, so I was happy to go along. Holy hot damn does he deliver on every front-emotionally, physically (he worked with a performance coach to get Mercury's performance nuances down pat), verbally, everything about Malek's performance is on point. I was blown away at how he lost himself in the role. Blown away. Although it's a standard rise, fall, rise biopic, there were undercurrents of taboos addressed that strongly resonated in this hyper-political age (pop-culture stardom vs. traditional Pakistani heritage, for example, or the 70s and 80s stigma of being gay in a religious household).
Theatrically, the songs, music, momentum, feel of Queen through the 70s and 80s was captured wonderfully through great cinematography and set/wardrobe design and I loved seeing the styles change without calling them out specifically.
Finally, I hope Malek wins an Oscar for this role.
Solid 8.5 or 8.6 out of 10, so I rounded up to a 9.