Sunday, May 7, 2023

Elvis (2022)

IMDb plot summary: The life of American music icon Elvis Presley, from his childhood to becoming a rock and movie star in the 1950s while maintaining a complex relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Starring Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, and Olivia DeJonge.

Elvis is Baz Luhrmann's biopic of Elvis Presley, starring Austin Butler as the titular star. The story mostly focuses on Elvis' relationship with his manager Colonel Parker, played here in campy villainy by Tom Hanks. I had high hopes for this, not so much because I'm such an Elvis fan as because I'm a fan of how Luhrmann uses music in his movies, and I couldn't wait for him to go full-on musical biopic. While it didn't go AS all-in as I was hoping, it was still a very effective use of sound design and editing to convey what exactly it was that made Elvis such a big star. And it took enough liberties with the style and script that it actually made it feel like a movie about a person rather than a symbol, something many biopics never manage to effectively do. That being said, it is a long movie that doesn't always justify its length. I will join the crowd saying that Austin Butler's work in this was really good,  he really brings the character to life, but as far as musicals by Baz Luhrmann go, I'm sticking with Moulin Rouge.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Elvis > The Last Dragon
Elvis < Key Largo
Elvis > Cafe Society
Elvis > Date Night
Elvis < The Secret Garden (1987)
Elvis > A Christmas Carol (1951)
Elvis > Dangerous Liaisons
Elvis < What the Deaf Man Heard
Elvis < Frankenweenie
Elvis < Session 9
Elvis > Kursk
Elvis > Gandhi
Final spot: #1090 out of 3785, or 71%.

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