BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (2018) is a mixed-bag biographical film about Freddie Mercury, lead singer for Queen. It’s probably a pleasure for its fans, though delivering nothing particularly juicy and treating Mercury’s excesses with a light touch. For everyone else (like me, I like Queen but don’t love-love Queen), I can’t imagine it being more than “okay,” probably the worst response its creators, particularly Brian May, envisioned. Overall, though, it’s entertaining, and as a by-the-numbers biopic, I’m glad it wasn’t heavy-handed about Mercury’s personal life, that it never tried to force me as the viewer to feel anything. I like the band and its music, so for me, when the movie focused on that, it really shined.

The film broad-brushes a lot of history, starting with Mercury, an immigrant to the UK from India and being of Persian descent (which was something I enjoyed learning), chafes under his conservative father while going out to see bands at night. While checking out one band he likes, he finds out their lead singer just left, auditions on the spot, and bingo, he’s in. From there, they roar into stardom, making it all look remarkably easy, though it’s here where the movie and the portrayed Freddie (Rami Malek giving it 100%) really shine. The guy had serious balls, and everything he and the band did–from its music to on-stage performances–was over the top, in your face, and often revolutionary.

Meanwhile, Freddie comes to terms with being gay, flirts with debauchery out of loneliness, ends up snubbing his band mates only to find out he needs them to do his best work, and learns he has AIDS. This all leads the band to its legendary performance at Live Aid, where they stole the show.

The film is loving to Freddie, and very gentle, and in fact everything is treated with kid gloves. The film may be largely accurate about the essence of who Freddie was. But as with many other biopics, it doesn’t necessarily make a compelling story. I found myself looking forward to the next scene where the band comes up with the idea for a song, such as a bass riff for “Another One Bites the Dust” interrupting an in-studio argument, or the performances themselves. The Live Aid scene is a great recreation of an amazing moment in rock history, though it is punctuated with laughably saccharine “I’m loving and truly amazed by you” reaction shots by family, friends, and band mates.

So overall, I wasn’t wowed, but I was surely entertained. I give BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY a B major.

Netflix’s OUTLAW KING is a thin but strong historical film about Robert the Bruce and his fight for an independent Scotland after the death of rebel William Wallace. It has a lot of great elements and one of the most realistic scenes of medieval combat I’ve caught on screen, but they all come together in broad brush strokes and without a moral center. Overall, I enjoyed it but couldn’t help thinking it could have been much more if they’d had more screen time, maybe done it as a miniseries.

The film begins with King Edward (Stephen Dillane, one of my favorite actors) receiving fealty from the Scottish lords in his tent after eight years of war that ended with William Wallace’s defeat. It all started when the Scottish king died without an heir, resulting in civil war and the nobles asking Edward to mediate the succession and Edward saying, “I think I’ll just take the crown myself.” After William Wallace is executed, Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine) becomes inspired to resume the war, winning the crown and Scottish independence.

The acting is top-notch, led by Chris Pine, who seems determined to play his more serious roles in a very understated way as if to downplay his looks and charisma. There’s an engaging love story in a marriage Edward arranges between Robert and his goddaughter, Elizabeth (the excellent Florence Pugh), which stems from consent and equality. As to the story itself, it’s fairly accurate historically, and that’s where things get tricky.

With BRAVEHEART, hardly any of it is historical, and what we’re given is caricaturish and over the top, but it has a very strong moral center, and we know the protagonist and his motivations very well, and we root for him. With OUTLAW KING, Robert is morally really no better than Edward, and the war seems to be about whether the Scots should pay taxes and military service to a Scottish rather than an English king. This is refreshing after hearing Mel Gibson’s Wallace yelling about freedom in the Middle Ages, but Gibson did give us a real and strong foundation on which to root for the hero aside from mere point of view. In OUTLAW KING, the war starts because the people are simply open to one in the wake of Wallace’s death, and Robert’s first attempt to unite the country behind him as king ends with him murdering a rival on hallowed ground. This is good stuff as I love the accuracy, but it would have have been nice to see Robert’s motivation go beyond naked ambition, and Pine is so understated that the only real glimpse we get into his character is through his relationship with Elizabeth, which ends up largely wasted when war erupts.

The movie ends with a battle as well done as the Battle of the Bastards in GAME OF THRONES, which is pretty amazing to watch, but the denouement falls flat. At this point, I was still feeling like I was missing something, that I’d liked what I’d seen but wanted more. If the film had been longer, or maybe even a miniseries, we could have seen more of what Robert wanted to do for his people as king, why he wanted to be king, his relationship with his very strong wife, and so on. For me, that would elevated the film from good to something truly special.

So overall, I liked OUTLAW KING a lot and considered it a rare gem for sticking with historical accuracy, but I wish the director had done more to flesh out the historical characters as people we could relate to and really root for.

After being joyfully surprised by HELL OR HIGH WATER, I caught another Taylor Sheridan film, WIND RIVER, a neo-Western murder mystery, and was even more impressed.

Winter in Wyoming at the Wind River Indian Reservation: While tracking mountain lions, U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent Cory Lambert (the stolid Jeremy Renner) finds the frozen body of a teenage girl who died of exposure. As she was running in the middle of nowhere barefoot and without winter clothes, and there is evidence she was raped, murder is suspected, leading to the arrival of FBI Agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen, who was great in MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE). Working with the local Tribal Police chief (the always great Graham Greene), they set out to solve the murder.

As with HELL OR HIGH WATER, setting is very important to WIND RIVER. The brutal winter conditions in rural Wyoming are at the fore here, affecting everything from the gir’s death to why it happened to how it’s solved, with Cory’s tracking and hunting skills being instrumental to cracking the case and delivering justice in the brutal climax. And as with Sheridan’s other films, the script is fantastic, creating likeable and realistic characters braving adversity for their cause in what can only be described as gritty neo-Westerns.

In short, I loved it and give it an A, and Taylor Sheridan is now on my must-watch list for films that deliver excellent drama while respecting the viewer’s intelligence.