Dexter Fletcher’s (Sunshine on Leith, Eddie the Eagle) Rocketman will be compared to 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody. So, I will get that comparison out of the way early. And it’s pretty easy. There is no real comparison. Bohemian Rhapsody was a sound accomplishment in acting, directing, sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography, and more. It created a new audience of music lovers of the band Queen. It reacquainted fans of the band with the music and, for many, reminded them of why they loved the music, the band, and the man (Freddy Mercury) who provided the vocals for all of their songs.
Category Archives: Based on a True Story
Borg Vs. McEnroe (2018)
The 1980 Wimbledon Men’s Championship Match was among the greatest tennis matches ever. It featured the number one player in the world (Sweden’s Bjorn Borg) seeking his fifth street title in the most famous tournament in the sport against the upstart American John McEnroe, who had quickly climbed to be the number two player in the world. Young director Janus Metz captures the history of both men and their rivalry up to this point in their careers while centering on this all-important match.
The Doors (1991)
Consistent with many of the most successful biopics about the greatest of American songwriters/bands (i.e., Walk the Line, Ray, Love & Mercy, La Bamba, What’s Love Got to Do With It, 8 Mile, Great Balls of Fire, Straight Outta Compton, Bohemian Rhapsody) in the last 30 years comes Oliver Stone’s (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July) distant, unsteady, and unapologetic story of Jim Morrison and his band in the 1991 movie The Doors. Liked more by audiences than critics, the Val Kilmer (Top Gun, Heat) led movie takes us through the formation of the band in the early 1960s to Morrison’s mysterious 1971 death in a Paris bathtub at the age of 27. One of the founding members of the infamous 27 Club, Morrison was an energizing performer whose limit-pushing love of drugs and alcohol led to his early death.
The Front Runner (2018)
An upstart politician is seen with a woman who is not his wife. A scandal ensues. Would-be presidential candidate resigns amidst the controversy. Just because a story happens doesn’t mean you must make a movie about it. At best, Jason Reitman’s (Up in the Air, Young Adult) Gary Hart biopic should have been a straight-to-cable drop. But really, a 60-minute documentary on The History Channel or something would have sufficed. That’s not to say The Front Runner was a bad movie. Because it wasn’t, but it wasn’t a movie we needed. Reitman, a fantastic yet underrated director fresh off the incredibly impressive Tully with also such films as Juno and Thank You For Smoking among his credits, had no business involving himself with a movie that, no matter what he did, wasn’t going to register with the critics or with the audiences because:
- Even though it is a 30-year story at the time of its release, it is one everyone knows.
- It’s a story that we, as a society, tried to make into some huge deal, whereas 30 years later, we realize that a politician cheating on his wife is something that hardly bats an eye.
- It’s a story that raises some issues related to morality and tries to be a little preachy in a day and age when none of us are interested in hearing and seeing preachy, especially from a story that is trying to be relevant in today’s society but does feel 30 years old.
Operation Finale (2018)
Operation Finale, a film that chronicles the 1961 top-secret raid to capture the notorious Adolf Eichmann, the highest-ranking living Nazi official from World War II, is probably the best movie of 2018 that you’ll never hear about. Under-publicized and just a little north of neutral on Rotten Tomatoes’ aggregate film rating site, Operation Finale was released during a period (late August) when quieter movies don’t do so well at the box office. Plus, this movie doesn’t have an A-list headliner. While it is true that Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina, A Most Violent Year), who, in 2018, is one of our finest working actors, is not quite a household name. At least not yet. Sure, he plays the recognizable Poe Dameron in the latest Star Wars trilogy (episodes VII, VIII, IX), but a respectable actor must be more than that. And Isaac is in the actor circles but isn’t well-known enough to the public. And while he stars opposite a widely respectable actor in Ben Kingsley (House of Sand and Fog, Gandhi), his elder counterpart’s best years are far behind him. At 74, who knows how much longer his career will continue? If this is Kingsley’s final role, it’s a good one.
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