'Bohemian Rhapsody'

The first time I saw firsthand how much rock ’n’ roll can scare people in authority was when I was in junior-high school, and Queen’s “We Will Rock You / We Are the Champions” became a staple of every school pep rally. We would act out the stomp-stomp-clap in the bleachers, and the school counselors would become terrified that we would bring the whole gym down around us.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a little of that sense of danger, that reckless abandon in service to the beat, anywhere during the 135 minutes of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a depressingly by-the-numbers biographical drama of Queen and its too-big-for-words lead singer, Freddie Mercury.

There is a bright side, though, and it’s Rami Malek’s transformative portrayal of Mercury. Not only does Malek re-create the strutting peacock stage moves, but he captures the yearning artist that managed and hid behind that persona.

The film — directed by Bryan Singer (“X-Men”) until the studio fired him for his on-set behavior and brought in Dexter Fletcher to mop up the mess — starts with Freddie, birth name Farrokh Bulsara, rebelling against his tradition-bound Parsi Indian parents to fulfill his musical dreams. When he sees his favorite band, Smile, has lost its lead singer, he tells guitarist Bryan May (Gwylim Lee) and drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) that he’d like to audition.

Soon, Mercury, May, Taylor and bassist John Deacon (Joe Mazzello — yes, the kid from “Jurassic Park”) are drawing audiences, selling albums and consternating record executives with their demands to make something bigger and better than before. That turns out to be “A Night at the Opera,” which produced the band’s extravagant six-minute masterpiece “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The song draws the wrath of EMI’s head honcho Ray Foster, who loudly declares that no teen will ever bang his head in the car to that song — a line no doubt written solely because Mike Myers, who plays Foster and famously revived “Bohemian Rhapsody” to head-banging delight in “Wayne’s World,” could utter it.

The script — by Anthony McCarten (who also penned the recent biopics “Darkest Hour” and “The Theory of Everything”), who shares story credit with Peter Morgan (“The Queen,” “Frost/Nixon”) — sets up other Queen hits with similar head-smacking inevitability. One moment, Mercury and Taylor are nearly coming to blows, only to be saved by Deacon’s cool bass riff, which of course sets up the single “Another One Bites the Dust.” 

The movie treads lightly around Mercury’s private life, centering largely on his devotion to girlfriend Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton) in the 1970s. They shared a house, and were for a time engaged, but that ended when with Mercury’s growing realization that he was gay — which is handled so gingerly you might almost think the movie skipped over it.

When the movie puts Mercury on the stage, there’s a bit of magic. This is particularly apparent in the finale, a note-perfect re-creation of Queen’s spellbinding 1985 set at the Live Aid benefit concert at Wembley Stadium. In those moments, “Bohemian Rhapsody” finds the spark that its dry recitation of the band’s history is lacking.

——

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 2, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, suggestive material, drug content and language. Running time: 135 minutes.

'Beautiful Boy'

One of my pet peeves in movies is the utter repetition of drug-addiction stories, the lather-rinse-repeat screenwriting rhythm of relapse, recovery and deeper relapse. If I never again see an actor going through the motions of tying off and shooting up, I’ll be a happy man.

(This is not to dismiss real people going through the real pain of drug addiction. This is a complaint about the unimaginative cinematic depiction of those people and that pain.)

A talented cast, highlighted by rising star Timothée Chalamet, goes through this familiar process in “Beautiful Boy,” a well-executed but still predictable trudge through the family pain of addiction.

The movie draws from two memoirs, by magazine reporter David Sheff (played by Steve Carell) and his son Nic (played by Chalamet), about Nick’s long battle with drugs and how it affected David and the rest of the family.

At times, Nic seems to be getting his act together, enrolling in community college, showing signs of life. But eventually, Nic gets high — meth is his drug of choice in the beginning of the film, but heroin makes an appearance soon enough — it all falls apart again, like an endless game of Chutes and Ladders.

Meanwhile, David tries to apply tough love, as well as his journalistic talents, to try and figure this out. He interviews a doctor (Timothy Hutton) about what addiction does to the brain and the body. He goes with Nic to rehab clinics and treatment centers. He even tries snorting a little, just so he can understand the experience.

Mostly, David gets angry — at Nic, at his ex-wife Vicki (Amy Ryan), and at the fates who have dealt his family this blow. He talks things over with his current wife, Karen (Maura Tierney), and works to protect their two young children.

Belgian director Felix van Groeningen (“The Broken Circle Breakdown”) makes his English-language debut here, and he has a gift for capturing family intimacy at its most intense. There are some set pieces here, like when Nic reunites with a high-school classmate (Kaitlyn Dever) and draws her into his spiraling drug habit, that are heartbreakingly intense.

But van Groeningen and co-writer Luke Davies (“Lion”) fall prey to the same story patterns as so many addiction stories, which are as hard to escape, it seems, as the grip of addiction itself. As good as the cast is, particularly Chalamet in his fearless depiction of Nic’s rollercoaster existence, “Beautiful Boy” remains a chore to watch.

——

‘Beautiful Boy’

★★1/2

Opened October 12 in select cities; opens Friday, November 2, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy). Rated R for drug content throughout, language, and brief sexual material. Running time: 120 minutes.

Sundance Short Film Tour 2018

Short-film compilations are always a hit-or-miss proposition, and the 2018 edition of the touring show of short films from the Sundance Film Festival shows that the hits can sometimes be harder to find.

There are still some gems among the seven films — including three winners of jury prizes in Park City last January.

Let’s take them in the order they appear on the program:

• “Maude” is a good laugh at California parenting, about a domestic comedy about a babysitter (Anna Margaret Hollyman, who wrote and directed) who discovers her client is a now-rich former classmate.

• “Baby Brother” is director Kamau Bilal’s verité documentary about his kid brother, Ismaeel, who as an adult has moved back in with their parents. It’s not as revealing as it would like to be, but an interesting character study.

• “The Burden” is an oddity, a surreal animated musical from Swedish filmmaker Niki Lindroth von Bahr that depicts monkey telemarketers, mouse fast-food workers, sardine hotel guests and other denizens of a lonely industrial-park area.

• “Hair Wolf” is a satirical gem by writer-director Mariama Diallo that uses horror-movie tropes to lampoon trendy white women trying to suck the life out of black hair culture. Bonus points for the zombie-like demand for “braaaiiids.”

• “Jeom” is a heartfelt animated tale from Korean director Kangmin Kim, about the shared legacy of a father and son: A birthmark on their butts.

• “Fauve” is a disturbing drama from Quebec, which starts with two boys playing around the industrial wreckage of a strip mine, playing a game that soon turns life-threatening. It’s bleak, but fascinating.

• Lastly, “Matria,” which was this year’s Grand Jury Prize winner, a slice of life from Spain, in which writer-director Álvaro Gago shows a factory worker (played by first-time actor Francisca Iglesias Bouzón) trying to carve out a moment of bliss in a soul-crushing schedule of work and domestic chores.

As with any shorts compilation, the advantage is that the good ones will leave you wanting more, and the not-so-good ones will be over sooner. “Hair Wolf” and “Matria” are worth the ticket price by themselves, but if anyone would like to try to explain “The Burden,” the comments thread is wide open.

——

Sundance Short Film Tour 2018

★★★

Opened July 5 in select cities and is touring the country; opens Friday, November 2, at the Tower Theatre (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for thematic elements and some language. Some shorts are in Spanish, Korean and French, with subtitles. Running time: 91 minutes.

'All About Nina'

Within a few minutes of meeting Nina Geld, the main character of writer-director Eva Vives’ raw and confrontational comedy “All About Nina,” a viewer will be faced with a choice: Give up on this apparent self-destructive woman, or give her a chance to see where she might end up.

Despite the strong temptation to throw in the towel, though, the second option ultimately pays off — but not without some pain along the way.

Nina, played with ferocious spirit and self-deprecating wit by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is a New York stand-up comic who talks a lot in her act about her sex life. She’s more confident onstage than off, where she drinks often and partakes in a string of one-night stands. Her longest-lasting relationship is with Joe (Chace Crawford), a cop who shows up to slap Nina in the face and demand sex, and afterward go home to his wife and kids.

Nina decides she’s had enough of this crap, so she packs up for Los Angeles, in hopes of landing an audition with the all-powerful head (Beau Bridges) of a comedy TV channel. Nina’s agent, Carrie (Angelique Cabral), sets Nina up with living arrangements with a New Age author, Lake (Kate Del Castillo). Nina gets a dose of California crazy — like meeting Lake’s guru, Smoky (Todd Louiso) — while getting her act in shape for her audition.

One night, after a performance, Nina gets chatted up by Rafe (played by Common), who’s unlike any guy she’s ever encountered. He’s sweet, he’s charming, he’s funny, he’s honest — and he is insistent that he doesn’t want to have sex with Nina on the first date. This is new for Nina, and intriguing, and seems like the start of a promising romance. But in the back of Nina’s mind is the anxiety that she, based on past experience, will screw this up somehow.

Vives, who co-wrote the 2002 indie gem “Raising Victor Vargas” and makes her feature directing debut here, brings an intensity and unvarnished honesty many movies are afraid to touch. You know early on, when Nina bounces back from an awful encounter with Joe by practicing her stand-up routing wearing only her panties, that this is a movie that is going for the jugular. (In an interview, Winstead said she performed a joke Vives wrote about Louis C.K.’s harassment of women, long before his behavior was made public — but it was cut once C.K.’s habits made The New York Times.)

Winstead’s scenes with Common are sweet, like watching two people really discovering each other and whether they are in love. The tone in these scenes is a sharp contrast to the rest of Nina’s life, and her stand-up routines, which move from scathingly self-deprecating to nakedly confessional.

Winstead —who has been so consistently talented in such films as “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Smashed” and “10 Cloverfield Lane” — is scary good here. She shifts with quicksilver speed from Nina’s no-bull onstage persona to her offstage self-loathing, and exposes the unhealed wound that is at the root of Nina’s damaged psyche. Like Nina, Winstead’s performance is both honestly funny and drop-dead serious.

——

‘All About Nina’

★★★

Opened September 28 in select cities; opens Friday, October 26, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for strong sexual content and language throughout, some nudity and brief drug use. Running time: 101 minutes.

'Johnny English Strikes Again'

Rowan Atkinson’s bumbling spy character Johnny English has always existed in a weird middle ground between the acerbic wit of his Edmund Blackadder and the childlike charms of his Mr. Bean — and in his third outing, “Johnny English Strikes Again,” that territory feels played out.

There are laughs to be had here and there, particularly in the opening that shows Johnny in his current surroundings: As a geography teacher in an English boarding school, giving lessons in camouflage, bear traps, martini mixing and the other skills of the spy trade from which he has retired.

Then comes word that MI7 has been the victim of a cyber attack, with its files hacked and every current undercover agent exposed. The only choice for MI7 is to bring ex-agents out of retirement, which means English is back in the game.

It’s not so easy, as English must get acclimated to a new MI7, one with fewer gadget-laden weapons and more hybrid cars. But with his trusty sidekick Bough (Ben Miller) and his reliable Aston-Martin, English is on his way to the French Riviera to follow a lead involving a yacht. That’s where English meets mysterious Ophelia (played by “Quantum of Solace” Bond girl Olga Kurylenko).

Meanwhile, the none-too-bright Prime Minister, played by Emma Thompson, is nervous that these cyber attacks will derail her upcoming G-12 summit. She’s so worried that she’s willing to strike a hasty deal with Jason Volta (Jake Lacy), a charismatic tech billionaire who’s somewhere between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Director David Kerr, a TV veteran making his feature-film debut, and screenwriter William Davies set Atkinson up for some elaborate set pieces. But more often than not, even with Atkinson’s rubber-faced moves, there’s something amiss and the laughs just aren’t there.

The biggest misfire is Thompson, seemingly spoofing the real Prime Minister, Theresa May, as a dithering and slightly man-hungry leader. Thompson — who worked with Atkinson on her 1989 break-out role in “The Tall Guy” — has one good rant to deliver, and she nails it, but it falls short of salvaging the slow-moving mess.

——

‘Johnny English Strikes Again’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 26, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some action violence, rude humor, language and brief nudity. Running time: 88 minutes.

'The Happy Prince'

The downbeat biographical drama “The Happy Prince” is clearly a labor of love for Rupert Everett — who directed, wrote the screenplay and portrays his hero, the writer and wit Oscar Wilde. Alas, it’s such a disjointed and depressing tale that others may not feel the love as much.

The film covers the last five years of Wilde’s life, when he had lost many things he held dear — including his wife Constance (Emily Watson), his fortune, his reputation and his home country. 

The bad times started in 1895, when he sued the Marquis of Queensbury for libel, for calling him a “sodomite.” Wilde was in a torrid romance with Queensbury’s son, Alfred Bosie Douglas (Colin Morgan), at the time. Queensbury turned the legal case around, and Wilde was convicted for gross indecency — and put in prison for two years for his homosexuality.

After his prison sentence, Wilde abandoned England for France, where he lived in exile. He also lived in poverty, having lost access to his royalties and cut off from his allowance by Constance. Wilde’s friends, notably the author Reginald Turner (Colin Firth) and his manager Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas), rally to his side. But they are mystified when Wilde invites the selfish, bratty Bosie, back into his life — a life that Bosie’s thoughtlessness has nearly ruined.

Everett, aided by a ton of prosthetic make-up, labors mightily to capture Wilde as the dissipated, absinthe-guzzling mess that he has become in his final years. He may have succeeded too well, because the performance is so flawless that he shows Wilde as profoundly sad and pathetic — and not someone a viewer would want to sit with for 104 minutes.

And while Everett’s grasp on Wilde’s emotional state is firm, he doesn’t give us much to unravel the feelings of those around him. None in his orbit — Thomas’ Robbie, Firth’s Reggie or Watson’s Constance — are allowed to be more than reflections of the great man, and when that man is revealed to be not so great, their roles are diminished that much more. “The Happy Prince” turns out to be an unhappy experience for all concerned. 

——

‘The Happy Prince’

★★

Opened October 10 in select cities; opens Friday, October 26, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, language and brief drug use. Running time: 104 minutes.

'The Hate U Give'

For me to appreciate the race-relations drama “The Hate U Give” is also to acknowledge that I, a 50ish white man, am not the person for whom it was made.

This searing story of an African-American teen, caught between perceptions of her lower-income black neighborhood and her rich white private school, is a righteously angry portrayal of living and dying in the shadow of constant threats from suspicious police and intimidating criminals. It’s the sort of movie that will make some (white) viewers gasp in surprise, while people of color in the theater will see an all-too-familiar reality onscreen and in the shocked reactions.

This split will be evident in the opening scene, when Maverick Carter (Russell Hornsby), a former gang member turned straight, gives his small children “the talk.” In this community, “the talk” isn’t about the birds and the bees, but about how to behave when a police officer pulls them over. Stay calm, don’t speak confrontationally, and above all else keep hands on the dashboard where the officer can see them.

Starr Carter (played by Amandla Stenberg), the teen daughter of Mac and Lisa (Regina Hall), knows the lesson well, because she traverses between black and white daily. Starr and her family lives in a lower-income, predominantly African-American neighborhood. Starr makes a daily commute to a private high school that is mostly white, and there her clothes and personality change, to “Starr, version 2.”

The Starr she allows herself to be in school never talks in street lingo, smiles and nods when her white classmates try to talk like hip-hop stars, never giving people a chance to latch onto anything that makes her sound like she’s from the poor side of the city. She hangs out with her friend Hailey (Sabrina Carpenter) and has a white boyfriend, Chris (“Riverdale” star K.J. Apa).

One night, back in her neighborhood, she runs into an old crush, Khalil (Algee Smith), at a party. When someone get into a beef and shots are fired, everyone scrambles to get out, and Starr accepts a ride from Khalil. They talk about music, and about Khalil’s shady employment for the neighborhood’s crime lord, King (Anthony Mackie).

Then a cop pulls them over, and forces Khalil to get out of the car. In a moment of misjudgment, Khalil picks up his hairbrush. The (white) cop mistakes the brush for a gun and shoots Khalil, who bleeds to death next to the spot Starr has been forced to sit by the now-panicked policeman.

As the media firestorm over another officer-involved shooting rages in the city, Starr is faced with a dilemma. She’s under pressure to testify to a grand jury against the officer. Meanwhile, King has been not-so-subtly making it clear that he doesn’t want Starr to talk about Khalil at all.

In adapting Angie Thomas’ young-adult novel, screenwriter Audrey Wells (who died earlier this month) and director George Tillman Jr. give every side their moment. Starr hears from a crusading Black Lives Matter lawyer (Issa Rae) about the importance of speaking out against the police. From her policeman uncle Carlos (Common), Starr learns about the million things going through a cop’s mind during a traffic stop. And, at school, she sees in stark relief how racism is sometimes lurking just below a veneer of politeness.

Through it all, Stenberg’s performance as Starr holds the movie together as the factions around her threaten to splinter her world, and with it the fiction Starr has tried to maintain that she can navigate two different worlds. Stenberg (last seen in “The Darkest Minds”) shows the confusion Starr feels trying to satisfy everyone, and the courage when she realizes she must stay true to herself.

With Stenberg’s Starr defiantly at the center, “The Hate U Give” becomes not only one of the most moving stories of coming-of-age in a divided America. It also becomes one of the most necessary movies on race and respect in years, a clear-eyed and strong-voiced call to everyone — even folks outside the demographic like me — that these issues of police-instigated violence and urban unrest will only get worse until we address them.

——

‘The Hate U Give’

★★★★

Opens Friday, Oct. 19, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, some violent content, drug material and language. Running time: 133 minutes.

'Halloween'

I’m not sure I can pinpoint the exact moment I went from liking David Gordon Green’s update on “Halloween” to loving it, but I think it was the moment it flipped from being a mere homage to John Carpenter’s slasher-movie classic to being a sturdy suspense thriller in its own right.

Certainly Green (“Stronger,” “Pineapple Express”), co-writing with his frequent collaborator Danny McBride, load up the early scenes of the movie with all the touchstones of Carpenter’s original. They include the ‘70s-era credit font, Carpenter’s eerie synthesizer theme, the mention of the late Donald Pleasance’s doom-saying Dr. Loomis, and especially the gray rubber mask that turned killer Michael Myers into an iconic horror figure. 

The mask is introduced to the permanently institutionalized Michael by Aaron (Jefferson Hall), who co-hosts a true-crime podcast with Dana (Rhian Rees), whose examination of the Michael Myers case is proverbially poking a stick into a bear cage. Aaron and Dana also try to interview Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the psychologically damaged survivor of Michael’s 1978 attack. Laurie has turned her home into a high-security fortress in case Michael ever returns.

“I’ve prayed that someday Michael would escape,” Laurie tells Sheriff’s Officer Hawkins (Will Patton), who also was in Haddonfield on that fateful Halloween in 1978. When Hawkins asks why, Laurie replies, “So I can kill him.”

Laurie’s paranoia has left its mark on her family, notably her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who has endured lots of therapy to counteract hyper-secure upbringing. Karen and her husband Ray (Toby Huss) have a daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), a high-school senior who’s the same age Laurie was 40 years ago.

This Halloween night, Allyson is attending a high-school dance with her boyfriend Cameron (Dylan Arnold). At the same time, the prison bus transporting Michael crashes, and Michael is on the loose — pursued by his shrink, Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), Dr. Loomis’ protege, who has made studying Michael’s evil his life’s obsession.

It takes a little time for Green to get us where we want to be: Watching Michael murdering teen-agers and striking terror in the heart of a small town. Once he gets into that groove, though, Green stages some nail-biting moments of suspense, while also throwing out some sly nods to the franchise. (It should be noted that Green’s love for Carpenter’s original means that he doesn’t recognize as canon many of the sequels, as well as the Rob Zombie-directed reboot.)

Curtis hasn’t had a role this meaty in decades, and she makes it memorable. Her Laurie Strode is haunted by the past, but grimly determined not to let that past repeat itself. Curtis is nicely matched by Greer, who’s always nothing short of wonderful, and Matichak to form a trio of take-no-prisoners women. Their three generations of scream-queen perfection is what ultimately gives this “Halloween” a fighting spirit of its own.

——

‘Halloween’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, Oct. 19, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for horror violence and bloody images, language, brief drug use and nudity. Running time: 106 minutes.