No Caine, No Gain

In my recollection, there has never been an Academy Award Best Picture nominee as contentious as this year’s Bohemian Rhapsody. With issues arising from the onset (supposed disputes during production leading to the film’s director, Bryan Singer, being replaced – Dexter Fletcher took over about two thirds of the way through, though Singer still holds the credit of director), it has since received mixed reviews from critics (with a measly 62% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes – extremely low for a Best Picture nominee), yet has been a huge box office success (already having earned over 800 million dollars, most fans have loved it, though there are a vocal group of naysayers). . . the most recent twist – the movie surprisingly took home Best Motion Picture - Drama at the Golden Globes, placing it in a rather intriguing position leading into the upcoming Oscars. A last note, a scene from the film with rather excessive editing has been spreading around the internet (look it up to get an idea of some peoples’ thoughts). The tale of the iconic rock band Queen, the narrative begins all the way back in 1970, wrapping at the band’s Live Aid performance in 1985. The biopic delves into all of the areas one would expect. . . the formation of the group, consisting of singer Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek), guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee), bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello), and drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), their unique and unified way of making music, their dealings with their manager, John Reid (Aiden Gillen), lawyer, Jim Beach (Tom Hollander), record executive (Mike Myers – a nice casting touch, considering the classic Bohemian Rhapsody scene found in Wayne’s World), as well as groupies, their meteoric rise, subsequent trials and tribulations, and of course, the love that grows and fades, as well as the hate and disdain that builds up over the years (after all, what do you expect when rock star egos are involved?).

There is something special while watching an excellent drama and realizing, perhaps before, or maybe only after the credits role, that a director known almost exclusively for comedy has deftly made the genre switch. Think Jerry Zucker (from Airplane! and writing/producing The Naked Gun franchise to Ghost), Jay Roach (the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents franchises to Trumbo), or Adam McKay (Anchorman and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby to The Big Short and this year’s Vice). . . and the newest member to enter this club: Peter Farrelly – making the jump from Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary to 2018's Academy Award Best Picture nominee, Green Book. A tale near and dear to its writer, Nick Vallelonga (it is also co-written by Brian Hayes Currie and Peter Farrelly), Nick is the son of the film’s main character, Tony ‘Lip’ Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen). Set in the early 1960s, Tony is an Italian American New Yorker, working as a ‘public relations’ expert for The Copacabana (i.e. a rough and tumble bouncer) – a pudgy bull-shitter who acts first and asks questions later.

Thought I’d challenge myself a bit today – so while I review DC’s 2018 feature Aquaman, co-written and directed by James Wan, I’m going to try to tuck in numerous H2O related tunes that will aptly describe the mood and feelings of the characters or situation. Opening with the mythos behind the birth of the superhero, through random happenstance, a lighthouse keeper, Thomas Curry (Temuera Morrison), rescues a Queen, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), who has washed ashore from the deep blue sea – a cosmic chance or fate bringing two wholly different individuals together. . . love at first sight.

Ah, classic Hollywood – no, not one of those gems of yesteryear, rather, I’m talking about their love of remakes. . . specifically, A Star Is Born – this being the fourth time it has been remade (following the 1937 original starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, you have the 1954 version with Judy Garland and James Mason, then the 1976 rock musical version featuring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and lastly, at least until this year, was the 2013 Bollywood effort led by Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur). All sarcastic joking aside, despite this 2018 story having been reworked more times than the excuses students have tried to come up with when showing up to school without their homework, it is one of the main Academy Award hopefuls this awards season. Co-written and directed by Bradley Cooper (his first directorial effort, his co-scribes are Eric Roth – Forrest Gump, and Will Fetters), Cooper himself plays the role of Jackson Maine, a country rocker with an affinity for pill-popping, and, if you notch that up a few more levels, you’ll find his addiction to alcohol.

Let’s face it. . . so much of a film is its characters – the way they are written, their likeability (or lack thereof), and, just as vitally, who is cast in those roles. If we can’t root for the heroes, hiss at the villains, be wary of those in the grey milieu, or find ourselves somewhere in that flawed antihero, then we cannot truly be emotionally invested in the narrative – no matter how majestic the whizzes and bangs are. So, like a large portion of my generation, I fell under the spell of the richly woven personas found in the Harry Potter novels. . . and later, the films. Soon, literature meshed with the visual world, and when people referenced someone like Severus Snape or Sirius Black, it was nearly impossible not to think of the late great Alan Rickman and the stellar Gary Oldman, respectively – the entire franchise a masterclass in casting.

Could First Man finally be the film that brings Ryan Gosling that elusive Oscar? With two nods (for La La Land and Half Nelson), and countless other memorable roles that could have earned him more chances (think Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine, Drive, and The Ides of March), Gosling has re-teamed, in short order I might add, with his La La Land writer/director, Damien Chazelle, for another perfect vehicle (one might call it a rocket) to showcase his acting chops – a fascinating Neil Armstrong biopic. Chazelle’s first directorial effort not to revolve around music (also, the screenplay does not come from him, rather Josh Singer), instead, he shoots for the moon. Gosling plays Armstrong, a man who has his own personal troubles. Married to Janet (Claire Foy), they have two children. . . one of which has cancer.