Oct 30, 2018 ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Review: Rami Malek Will Rock You Biopic on flamboyant, unforgettable Queen frontman has its share of flaws — but the. “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the song by Queen, lasts nearly six minutes, a very long time for a pop single back in 1975.A baroque blend of gibberish, mysticism and melodrama, the track is a can of.
The FilmBohemian Rhapsody is another Greatest Showman. A film (inexplicably) treated rather sniffily by critics, but which has been embraced by audiences for what it really is: one of the most straightforwardly human, uplifting and heartfelt biopics ever made.
The way it manages to tell the tale of Freddie Mercury’s rise to unlikely superstardom from the humblest of beginnings without becoming cliched, judgmental, reverential or sensationalist is a joy to behold - and is clearly borne of an unabashed and accepting love for its subject that’s as infectious as it is rare.
Rami Malek’s performance as Mercury is nothing short of incredible, making his supposedly ‘surprising’ Golden Globe best actor win actually look like no surprise at all.
The tone is set right away by a Queen-style rendition of the classic 20th Century Fox theme that culminates in a huge guitar shriek that passes at high volume from the front to back of your room, taking your innards with it.
The soundtrack backs that up with consistently great mixes for all of the film’s concerts and recording sessions - especially, of course, the ‘sky puncturing’ Live Aid concert that provides the film with its spine-tingling climax. Here you get a stunning evocation of both the stadium atmosphere and a fantastically dynamic, loud and live-sounding mix of Queen’s set.
You can feel the crowd noise rise from the floor up and out through the top of the Wembley Arena, while the ‘bubble’ of sound also wraps convincingly around behind you.
Depending on where the camera is at any given moment, you either feel like you’re in the middle of the audience, or up on the stage with the band.
Even the non-concert use of Queen’s music is excellently mixed throughout the film - as is the dialogue. I stress this latter point because the often intimate filming style and numerous ‘ensemble’ dialogue sections in a wide variety of environments could easily have resulted in a rather ‘dubbed’ sounding dialogue track. But not a word sounds artificial, over-stressed, or lacking in context.
Lovely though all this detailing is, though, when it comes down to it this film more than almost any other is all about the music. And in that respect, it rocks.
Extra features
The filmmakers must have been tempted to include the full Queen Live Aid set at the end of the film - but (probably for the best) they ultimately didn’t do it. Happily, though, the 4K Blu-ray carries the full length, pretty much shot-perfect recreation of the set as an extra.
The HD Blu-ray carries loads more great extra stuff, too. Kicking off with a mesmerizing 16-minute featurette on how Malek was selected for the role and then ‘became’ Freddie Mercury.
Following this is another good 22-minute documentary, this time tracking the casting and conversion into Queen across different eras of the other actors. This one also covers the film’s borderline obsessive production design and costuming. There's lots of input from Brian May and Roger Taylor, and bags of fun behind the scenes footage.
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'>The Film
Bohemian Rhapsody is another Greatest Showman. A film (inexplicably) treated rather sniffily by critics, but which has been embraced by audiences for what it really is: one of the most straightforwardly human, uplifting and heartfelt biopics ever made.
The way it manages to tell the tale of Freddie Mercury’s rise to unlikely superstardom from the humblest of beginnings without becoming cliched, judgmental, reverential or sensationalist is a joy to behold - and is clearly borne of an unabashed and accepting love for its subject that’s as infectious as it is rare.
Rami Malek’s performance as Mercury is nothing short of incredible, making his supposedly ‘surprising’ Golden Globe best actor win actually look like no surprise at all.
Bohemian Rhapsody's remarkable recreation of Live Aid.
Photo: Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century FoxI guess some might feel that Bohemian Rhapsody glosses over the more ‘controversial’ side of Mercury’s life. But really, who cares? Dwelling there would both have both cut out the film’s heart and likely reduced the scope of its potential audience. And this is a film that really everyone should see.
Release details
Studio: 20th Century Fox
What you get: Region A/B/C Blu-ray; All-region 4K Blu-ray; Region-locked Movies Anywhere code
Extra Features: Full-length version of the Live Aid recreation; Featurette on Rami Malek becoming Freddie Mercury; featurette on recreating Queen via the actors, production design and costuming; featurette on recreating the Live Aid concert; trio of trailers
Best soundtrack option: Dolby Atmos
Video options: HDR10, HDR10+
Key kit used for this test: Oppo UDP-205 4K Blu-ray player, Samsung QN65Q9FN TV, Panasonic UB900 4K Blu-ray player
Picture Quality
Bohemian Rhapsody is the first film I’ve reviewed that uses the HDR10+ format. HDR10+, if you’re not familiar with it, adds scene by scene metadata to the standard HDR10 data stream that HDR10+-capable TVs can use to improve the way they render the HDR images. In this respect, at least, it’s similar to Dolby Vision.
I intend to do a separate article looking in depth at HDR10+ soon, so I won’t go into lots of HDR10 vs HDR10+ detail here. There’s no doubt, though, that HDR10+ is certainly a welcome addition to this disc.
Throughout the film the image looks more dynamic, with slightly more profound black levels and much more pronounced brightness peaks. During Chapter 20, for instance, the lighting in Mercury’s room as he listens to a news report on AIDS looks more dynamic and precise. The shots in the hospital afterwards - particularly the one with the two circular windows in a door at the end of a corridor - enjoy an uplift in peak brightness too.
Remi Malek is incredible as Freddie Mercury.
Photo: Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century FoxBest of all, the practice session where Mercury reveals his illness to his band mates enjoys far more peak brightness in the large windows and their reflections on the piano as well as, especially, in the way the sunlight catches the band’s clothing and faces.
I wouldn’t say there’s a particularly strong increase in the transfer’s average brightness (something you get with the HDR10+ transfer of Bad Times At The El Royale 4K Blu-ray). But once you've watched Bohemian Rhapsody in HDR10+, it definitely feels flat when you go back to watching it in vanilla HDR10.
The use of HDR in Bohemian Rhapsody, to be clear, is not the most aggressive I’ve seen on a 4K Blu-ray. Even with HDR10+ to help it out. But it plays a pleasant enough part in enhancing the 4K Blu-ray picture, and is particularly useful in giving a more natural, ‘daylight’ look to the climactic Live Aid performance.
Colors are similarly gently but effectively enhanced in the 4K transfer. Where the warm, over-saturated look of much of the film looks rather forced and unnatural on the HD Blu-ray, it becomes much more balanced and natural on the 4K Blu-ray. Environments and sets look more realistic and nuanced too, and skin tones are more natural and subtly toned.
True love.
Photo: Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century FoxThis skin toning is so subtle, in fact, that it can prove a challenge for less able 4K Blu-ray decks, such as the one inside the Xbox One X and S. It looks excellent on a reference Oppo 205, though - so any issues you might see can’t be blamed on the transfer.
Bohemian Rhapsody was shot on a mix of cameras, stock and different resolutions, as part of director of photography Newton Thomas Sigel’s desire to visually track the band’s progression by making the picture look crisper and less over-saturated as the film goes on. The 4K Blu-ray tracks this gradual change in look beautifully, delivering subtle grain and slightly dated look in the early stages through to a beautifully clean, direct look by the time you get to Live Aid.
Throughout the film you can clearly see skin and clothing details not readily apparent on the HD Blu-ray, and the extra sharpness joins forces with the 4K Blu-ray format’s enhanced light range and wider color to give a greater sense of scale and immediacy to pretty much every setting in the film - but especially, again, the Live Aid concert.
Sound Quality
As you’d hope of any film built around a band renowned for ‘operatic rock’, Bohemian Rhapsody boasts a massive Dolby Atmos soundtrack. (The HD Blu-ray, by comparison, only gets a less aggressive, less satisfying DTS HD Master Audio 7.1 mix.)
It's like being at a real Queen concert.
Photo: Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century FoxThe tone is set right away by a Queen-style rendition of the classic 20th Century Fox theme that culminates in a huge guitar shriek that passes at high volume from the front to back of your room, taking your innards with it.
The soundtrack backs that up with consistently great mixes for all of the film’s concerts and recording sessions - especially, of course, the ‘sky puncturing’ Live Aid concert that provides the film with its spine-tingling climax. Here you get a stunning evocation of both the stadium atmosphere and a fantastically dynamic, loud and live-sounding mix of Queen’s set.
You can feel the crowd noise rise from the floor up and out through the top of the Wembley Arena, while the ‘bubble’ of sound also wraps convincingly around behind you.
Depending on where the camera is at any given moment, you either feel like you’re in the middle of the audience, or up on the stage with the band.
Even the non-concert use of Queen’s music is excellently mixed throughout the film - as is the dialogue. I stress this latter point because the often intimate filming style and numerous ‘ensemble’ dialogue sections in a wide variety of environments could easily have resulted in a rather ‘dubbed’ sounding dialogue track. But not a word sounds artificial, over-stressed, or lacking in context.
Recording a masterpiece.
Photo: Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century FoxThe mix also cares about the small stuff. The rear and height channels are frequently and imaginatively engaged during quieter moments to create an effective sense of interior spaces or a lovely sense of a world beyond the screen with exteriors such as those at the pub on the Thames or outside the rural recording 'barn'.
Lovely though all this detailing is, though, when it comes down to it this film more than almost any other is all about the music. And in that respect, it rocks.
Extra features
The filmmakers must have been tempted to include the full Queen Live Aid set at the end of the film - but (probably for the best) they ultimately didn’t do it. Happily, though, the 4K Blu-ray carries the full length, pretty much shot-perfect recreation of the set as an extra.
The HD Blu-ray carries loads more great extra stuff, too. Kicking off with a mesmerizing 16-minute featurette on how Malek was selected for the role and then ‘became’ Freddie Mercury.
Following this is another good 22-minute documentary, this time tracking the casting and conversion into Queen across different eras of the other actors. This one also covers the film’s borderline obsessive production design and costuming. There's lots of input from Brian May and Roger Taylor, and bags of fun behind the scenes footage.
The Bohemian Rhapsody 4K Blu-ray cover art.
Photo: Bohemian Rhapsody, 20th Century FoxRecreating Live Aid again goes brilliantly in-depth (for 20 minutes) on how the filmmakers went about the colossal job of refilming Queen’s famous performance - complete with rebuilding the entire stage on a runway near London and getting together a crowd of extras made up to look like they’re in the 1980s. The way they digitally fill Wembley with singing and dancing ‘people’ is particularly fascinating.
Wrapping up a really enjoyable set of extras is a trio of trailers. The only odd but, I guess, understandable thing about the extras is the scrupulous way they manage to completely avoid any mention of or appearance by sacked (but still credited) director, Bryan Singer.
Verdict
Don’t be put off by the strangely sniffy critics. Bohemian Rhapsody is a fantastically entertaining, beautifully put together and surprisingly moving and uplifting biopic built round a phenomenal lead performance. It’s a mighty fine 4K Blu-ray release too, especially on the audio front.
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Bohemian Rhapsody, which won four Academy Awards awards Sunday night, chronicles the rise of the band Queen, and appropriately focuses on lead singer Freddie Mercury. But this isn't a cradle-to-grave biography. It covers 15 years of Queen's rise and comeback and it's as much a concert as it is a biopic -- especially while showcasing the band's performance at Live Aid, a global charity concert in 1985 that raised money to fight hunger in Ethiopia.
Even before Bohemian Rhapsody begins, the 20th Century Fox logo appears on screen and the familiar trumpet fanfare morphs into an electric guitar with Queen-like flourishes. It's kind of like the logo is telling you to get ready to rock, there will be head-banging. When is the last time a non-comic-book-movie logo got cheers before a film?
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At the screening I attended at San Francisco's famed Castro Theater, people were mouthing lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody -- like you do -- and clapping their hands along to 'Radio GaGa.' There are so many Queen songs featured in the film it's worth seeing it just to hear the music over theater speakers. I can't remember another music biopic with as much music as this.
The other reason to see Bohemian Rhapsody is Rami Malek's bravura performance as Freddie Mercury, which won him a Golden Globe and Academy Award. It's hard to imagine anyone being able to play the truly unique Mercury, with his high cheekbones, endless jawline and, of course, those teeth.
Looking like Mercury is one thing, but being able to perform like him is quite another. Enter Malek, who plays Elliot Alderson on Mr. Robot. He doesn't look exactly like Mercury, but embodies him head to toe. His performance carries the film, and is filled with heart even in some of Mercury's darker moments.
On stage, Malek is outlandish, flirty and mesmerizing as he swaggers and preens with the real Mercury's confidence. His angular stance and press of vocals beam out of his spandex-covered frame like a bright light to the heavens. And that's just as Mercury on stage.
Malek is adept at portraying both the rock star and the person. In the scenes between Mercury and Mary Austin, his closest friend and partner (played by Lucy Boynton), you see a vulnerable side to Mercury, driven by a search for identity as much as ambition. (Hey, iconic rock stars are just like us.)
Without Mary, as the film shows, Mercury might not have fully explored his talent or come to terms with his sexuality. Boynton brings a contemporary perspective to Mary that allows her to be a supportive muse, partner and friend who has enough emotional strength to show Mercury who he really is, even as he breaks her heart with his philandering.
But the other part of Freddie Mercury is as lead singer of Queen. Legendary guitarist Brian May is wonderfully played by Gwilym Lee under a mop of curls, Ben Hardy plays drummer Roger Taylor and Joe Mazzello plays bass guitarist John Deacon.
Some of my favorite scenes are when the four of them are recording a song. You see as much of the foursome's creativity as you do their bickering. One of the better sequences is the band recording 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in a studio on a farm. There's a moment when Mercury writes the lyrics that's part act of creation and part divine inspiration. It's just him alone at a piano in a farmhouse with his raw emotions and natural talent on full display.
The story has obvious parallels to other music biopics, maybe because so many famous musicians' lives follow the same path: start out as a nobody; find love and success; struggle with stardom, sexual adventures, drugs; lose yourself to fame; grow apart from those close to you; and make a comeback. Also, as is the case here, there's the tragic ending.
Mercury died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1991. It was a 'where were you when' moment only heightened by the fact that at that time, awareness and understanding of HIV/AIDS was still in its infancy. Just the day before his death, the very private performer shared publicly that he had the disease.
The sense of Mercury's tragic end creeps up on you from the first frame of the film, a silent close-up on his eyes. It's not clear what the context is here, but there's enough ambiguity that makes you fear the worst. The knowledge of Mercury's illness and death is a like another character in the film whose presence is barely seen but often left me feeling dread is around the corner.
But as that short silent beginning ends, 'Somebody to Love' kicks in and we glimpse Mercury walking past all his cats feasting from fancy bowls to leave his mansion for that famous Live Aid concert. Mercury is in his full-on Castro clone look with short, slicked hair and large, bushy mustache.
Despite languishing in development limbo for years, with various attached stars and directors (and not without controversy), the film that came out of such a messy creative process is phenomenal. It doesn't deserve to be overshadowed by off screen in-fighting, and director Dexter Fletcher (credited as executive producer) deserves praise for his work in the final weeks of filming.
The film is gorgeously shot by cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, a frequent collaborator with Bryan Singer, credited as the film's director. Sigel captures the band performing as authentically as he does the tiny mundane moments between shows. I love the way he frames Malek on and off.
As for the wardrobe, throughout the film I heard various audience members/numerous viewers say, 'Oh, I want that shirt' or 'I need those shoes.' Malek's clothes as Mercury are necessarily, gloriously over the top. The film's a master class in rock star costume design.
Mike Myers is nearly unrecognizable as EMI executive Ray Foster. His presence in the film is wonderfully cheeky especially since Wayne's World was one of the reasons Bohemian Rhapsody had a resurgence.
Bohemian Rhapsody, much like the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton did for NWA, will introduce Queen to a new audience while easily elevating the band's rock god status even higher. Even under all that hype, the film is about four outsiders who made a bunch of fantastic music.
As Mercury says: 'We're four misfits who don't belong together playing for the other misfits.'
First published, Nov. 3, 2018.
Update, Feb. 25 at 10:05 a.m.: Adds the film's four Oscar wins.
Update, Feb. 25 at 10:05 a.m.: Adds the film's four Oscar wins.
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