Apostle (2018) Review

Time: 129 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Dan Stevens as Thomas Richardson
Michael Sheen as Malcolm Howe
Mark Lewis Jones as Quinn
Paul Higgins as Frank
Lucy Boynton as Andrea Howe
Bill Milner as Jeremy
Kristine Froseth as Ffion
Director: Gareth Evans

London, 1905. Prodigal son Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) has returned home, only to learn that his sister (Elen Rhys) is being held for ransom by a religious cult. Determined to get her back at any cost, Thomas travels to the idyllic island where the cult lives. As Thomas infiltrates the island’s community, he learns that the corruption of mainland society that they claim to reject has infested the cult’s ranks nonetheless – and uncovers a secret more evil than he could have imagined.

I had been meaning to get around to Apostle for some time. I was aware that Dan Stevens and Michael Sheen but most of all that Gareth Evans, director of The Raid movies, would be taking on a horror movie. While I only saw the first Raid, it was such a solid action movie, and it would be interesting to see him doing a horror movie. While it’s not one of the best horror movies to come out in recent years, Apostle is still a really solid one.

The movie around 2 hours and 10 minutes long and it is a bit too long. On top of that the pacing, especially at the earlier parts of the movies, can be a little too slow. The decision to make this a slow burn kind of horror movie is respectable but in that first half there isn’t enough interesting things happening, the attempt of dissection of cults wasn’t deep enough, the characters don’t have enough to them and some plotlines aren’t all that interesting or necessary (especially one involving a romance even though that eventually pays off later in the movie). After a while though, Apostle picks up in the second half, had the entire movie been pretty much what happened the second half of the movie, I would’ve liked the movie a lot more. The finale makes it all worth it, with it being brutal and satisfying for the most part. I feel like the ending was a bit abrupt though, and could’ve been a little longer even though I was fine with the direction it was taking.

The acting all round was pretty good, even if the characterisation isn’t all that deep. Dan Stevens is good as the lead, I haven’t seen Stevens in much but he always seems to act differently in everything that he’s in, and Apostle is no exception. The whole thing about his character trying to find his sister was fine enough, but you don’t overly care about it, you just sort of go along with it. Michael Sheen was the standout of the movie performance-wise, as the lead prophet of the cult. Other performances like from Lucy Boynton were also very good.

As previously mentioned, Gareth Evans had directed The Raid movies, which were filled with some fantastic action scenes. Apostle however is very much not an action movie, there are only a few fight scenes in the movie, though all these fight scenes are great. Apostle primarily is a slow building horror movie, and Evans actually does pretty well with the horror aspect. I wasn’t really scared throughout the movie but there are some freaky imagery. Also this movie can be unflinchingly brutal, way more than you’d initially think it would be. The whole production design is good, you really feel just on this island isolated from the rest of the world.

Apostle is a solid horror movie that has some setbacks that work against. While it starts off being reasonably okay, it’s all worth the watch for the second half and especially with the climax (the movie really isn’t for the faint of heart though). It’s a brutal movie that doesn’t quite deliver as well as it was aiming to be, but it’s nonetheless pretty good. As far as Netflix movies go, this one is actually on the better end of the spectrum.

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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) Review

Time: 134 Minutes
Age Rating: Offensive language, sexual references & drug references
Cast:
Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury/Farrokh Bulsara
Lucy Boynton as Mary Austin
Gwilym Lee as Brian May
Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor
Joseph Mazzello as John Deacon
Aidan Gillen as John Reid
Tom Hollander as Jim Beach
Allen Leech as Paul Prenter
Mike Myers as Ray Foster
Director: Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher

Bohemian Rhapsody is a movie based on the true story of the rock band Queen’s journey from the start of the group to their legendary performance at the Live Aid concert at the Wembley stadium. The movie revolves around the groups lead singer Freddie Mercury’s (Rami Malek) part of the story and his life from being an outcast immigrant in society to a world famous artist and his struggles trough the journey of it.

I was mildly interested in Bohemian Rhapsody as a fan of Queen. I wasn’t sure about Bryan Singer directing (the main reason actually not being his directing skill) but the appeal of seeing Rami Malek play Freddie Mercury and really just the band on the big screen was just irresistible, so despite some mixed reception of the movie, I was holding out hope. I actually ended up liking Bohemian Rhapsody a lot more than I thought I would. It could’ve been better but I was entertained by it and Rami Malek was great as Freddie Mercury.

A large part of the criticisms are about the accuracies and portrayals and so I’ll just address that part first. As much as I like Queen, I’ll admit I don’t know a ton about them, so people who have much more knowledge about the band will probably pick up on some more inaccuracies than me. I did find there are some moments that did seem ‘movie-like’, like moments that probably never happened in real life and was just done for the movie as a wink to the audience. There isn’t a ton of those but they really do stick out when they happen. Also, there’s a bit where they come up with the song “We Will Rock You” and even I knew that they created it a number of years before when that scene takes place in the timeline. However one of the biggest ones I’ve heard after watching the movie was that Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis happens years later on than when the movie shows it. The main reason seems to be that the movie wanted to address the AIDS aspect but also wanted to end at the Live Aid, so they tried to rearrange events so that they could have both. With everything considered, I’m taking the accuracies somewhat loosely, most of it is probably accurate, but some of it isn’t. I know that originally there was going to be a Freddie Mercury film with Sacha Baron Cohen, which was going to be very much in depth with him and really go all the way, but while that sounds interesting, Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t that movie. This movie was more like a tribute and celebration of the band and Mercury, and in that it really works. Besides, just because we recently had a Freddie Mercury/Queen movie doesn’t mean that in the future we won’t get that sort of uncensored movie focusing on him/them.

Now for the actual movie. Bohemian Rhapsody doesn’t delve too much into Queen (its mostly focussed on Mercury) but it does try to cover a lot of what happened with them from 1970 to 1984, and so in that it does cover a lot of things briefly. It does feel like they selected a few things that they wanted to cover and were like “Wouldn’t it be nice to see them come up with Another One Bites the Dust and show how it happened?”. With that said, I liked seeing how certain things came to be, even if only scratched the surface of Queen and is well known (because as I said, I don’t know too much about Queen, despite being a fan). However, I think that the film is strongest whenever it shows the different sides to Freddie Mercury. One thing that some biopics tend to fall into is that they sanitise everything about the people their based on, but they don’t really do that here. They show Freddie for the musical genius he is but they also show his shortcomings and flaws, as well as the conflicts and problems that he has. Bohemian Rhapsody was about 2 hours and 10 minutes long but it never felt too long, it always had my attention from start to finish and I was never bored.

Rami Malek is fantastic as Freddie Mercury. When someone is portraying such an iconic person, they can often just slip into doing an imitation but Malek never falls into that. He really just becomes Freddie Mercury on screen and over time you just forget that its Rami and just see Freddie. Obviously the singing isn’t actually Malek’s but they did a great job at making him look like he’s doing it. He has the same onstage and offstage energy, the voice, everything of Freddie Mercury, really great performance. The rest of the cast is good as well. The rest of Queen, Gwilym Lee as Brian May, Ben Hardy as Roger Taylor and Joseph Mazzello as John Deacon were great, the 4 of them were really convincing in their roles and played off each other well. Other actors like Aidan Gillen, Lucy Boynton, Tom Hollander, Allen Leech and even Mike Myers were good, and served their roles well.

Now this movie is actually directed by two people, Bryan Singer initially and then later he was replaced by Dexter Fletcher. I didn’t notice any differences in the direction but it is flashy and entertaining. When it comes to the band performances, it’s flashy and entertaining to watch but you can see that they are restraining things, cutting things a little short, you’re almost just seeing them in montages and all that. Part of it is really because the movie is building up to The Live Aid performance in the last act, and that payoff is really great to see. We get to see a few songs from the crowd and from the stage, that whole sequence is really one of the highlights of the movie. With all that, Bohemian Rhapsody is really best seeing in a theatre on a big screen and speakers. It really was an experience watching Queen perform the songs and hearing them.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a little by the numbers and nothing special when it comes to music biopics but I had a good time with it, I had fun with it. Even for what it was going for, it could’ve been better, its not quite the Queen biopic that we wanted but I still liked it and there are some good parts to it. At the very least its worth checking out for Rami Malek’s fantastic performance as Freddie Mercury.