PICK OF THIS WEEK’S FILMS

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (12A) THE HATE U GIVE (12A)

Who wants to live forever? Freddie Mercury does in Bryan Singer’s crowd-pleasing musical biopic, a greatest hits tribute blessed with a heartbreaking performance from Rami Malek as the charismatic frontman. Bohemian Rhapsody covers the 15 years between guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee) and drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy) welcoming Freddie as lead singer of their band Smile and Queen’s triumphant 20-minute set at Live Aid. Singer’s film is bookended with an adrenaline-pumping recreation of the Wembley Stadium charity concert, where Queen stole the show with a barnstorming medley including Radio Ga Ga and We Are the Champions. It’s a thunderbolts and lightning moment, electrified with slick digital effects and Malek’s gesture-perfect showboating.

Taking its title from the cautionary message inked into rapper Tupac Shakur’s Thug Life tattoo, George Tillman Jr’s emotionally charged drama rages against racial division and police violence in 21st-century America. The Hate U Give is sensitively adapted for the screen by Audrey Wells from the young adult novel by Angie Thomas, which chronicles the anguished rites of passage of a teenager, who finds her voice in the most desperate and tragic circumstances. Amandla Stenberg delivers a gut-wrenching lead performance as a 16-year-old who zigzags uncomfortably between the worlds of white privilege and black fury. Wells’ script confidently walks a tightrope between tear-stained cries from the heart and boisterous humour as it sketches the dynamics between members of a family living in a predominantly black district, which has been in the chokehold of gang warfare and drugs for years. Tillman Jr’s film ripples with indignation and despair but there is an undercurrent of hope that courses through every frame.

HUNTER KILLER (12A)

When mankind stands forlornly on the brink of annihilation, Paisley-born action hero Gerard Butler proudly steps forward to shepherd every man, woman and child back from the abyss. In the underwater thriller Hunter Killer, a rogue Russian admiral prepares to push the button on a third world war and Butler sails to our rescue as a renegade submarine captain, who repeatedly risks a court martial to perform outlandish manoeuvres hundreds of feet beneath the waves. Director Donovan Marsh charts a familiar course through breathless action sequences and threats of mutiny. Butler is steadfast as chaos unfolds around him and Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist makes one of his final appearances before his death from lung cancer as a stoic Russian submarine captain.

HALLOWEEN (18)

The bogeyman does exist and for decades he has taken the towering form of masked maniac Michael Myers in a series of gory