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“Elvis” brings all of the glitz, rhinestones, and jumpsuits you’d expect in an Elvis film, but without the necessary complexity for a movie from 2022 about the “King.”

Maximalist filmmaker Baz Luhrmann , who abhors visual restraint and instead opts for grand theatricality, should be the perfect creator for a Presley biopic, but isn't. Luhrmann tells us this icon’s story from the perspective of the singer’s longtime, crooked manager Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ). After collapsing in his tacky, memorabilia-filled office, a near-death Parker awakens alone in a Las Vegas hospital room. The papers have labeled him a crook, a cheat who took advantage of Elvis ( Austin Butler ), so he must set the record straight. 

From the jump, Luhrmann’s aesthetic language takes hold: An IV-drip turns into the Las Vegas skyline; in a hospital nightgown, Parker walks through a casino until he arrives at a roulette wheel. Carrying a heap of affectations, Hanks plays Parker like the Mouse King in “ The Nutcracker .” For precisely the film’s first half hour, "Elvis" moves like a Christmas fairytale turned nightmare; one fueled not by jealousy but the pernicious clutches of capitalism and racism, and the potent mixture they create. 

It’s difficult to wholly explain why “Elvis” doesn’t work, especially because for long stretches it offers rushes of enthralling entertainment. In the early goings-on, Luhrmann and co-writers Sam Bromell , Craig Pearce , and Jeremy Doner meticulously build around Presley’s influences. They explain how Gospel and Blues equally enraptured him—a well-edited, both visually and sonically, sequence mixes the two genres through a sweaty performance of “That’s Alright Mama”—and they also show how much his time visiting on Beale Street informed his style and sound. A performance of “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton ( Shonka Dukureh ), and the emergence of a flashy B.B. King ( Kelvin Harrison Jr.) furthers the point. Presley loves the superhero Shazam, and dreams about reaching the Rock of Eternity, a stand-in for stardom in this case. He’s also a momma’s boy (thankfully Luhrmann doesn’t belabor the death of Elvis’ brother, a biographical fact lampooned by “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”).  

Though a biopic veteran, Hanks has rarely been a transformative actor. In this case, you can hear his accent slipping back toward Hanks. And the heavy prosthetics do him few favors, robbing him of his facial range—an underrated tool in his repertoire. And Hanks already struggles to play outright villains; shaping the story from his perspective takes the edge off of his potential menace. It’s a tough line for Hanks to walk, to be unsuspecting yet vicious. Hanks creates a friction that doesn’t altogether work, but feels at home in Luhrmann’s heavy reliance on artifice. 

The most fascinating linkage in “Elvis” is the extrapolation of commerce and race. Parker is enamored by Presley because he plays Black music but is white. Elvis turns off the white Christian old, like the moribund country singer Hank Snow ( David Wenham ), and the homophobic men who consider him a “fairy.” Yet he excites the young, like Jimmie Rogers ( Kodi Smit-McPhee , both actors provide fantastic comic relief), and he has sex appeal. A wiggle, if you please. Luhrmann takes that wiggle seriously, showing sexually possessed, screaming women. Butler’s crotch, in precisely fitted pink pants and shot in close-up, vibrates. Harsh zooms, quick whip pans, and a taste for horniness (by both men and women) help make the early moments of this biopic so special. As does its anti-capitalist bent, which depicts how often labor, art, and ownership can be spit out and garbled in the destructive system.    

Unfortunately, “Elvis” soon slips into staid biopic territory. We see the meteoric rise of Presley, the mistakes—whether by greed or naïveté—he makes along the way, and his ultimate descent toward self-parody. His mother ( Helen Thomson ) dies on the most hackneyed of beats. His father ( Richard Roxburgh ) quivers in the shallowest of ways. Priscilla ( Olivia DeJonge ) appears and is handed standard tragic wife material. The pacing slows, and the story just doesn’t offer enough playfulness or interiority to keep up. 

But even so, the latter portions of Luhrmann’s film aren’t without its pleasures: The performance of “Trouble,” whereby Presley defies the Southern racists who fear his Black-infused music (and sensuality) will infiltrate white America, is arresting. Cinematographer Mandy Walker ’s freeze frames imitate black and white photography, like wrapping history in the morning dew. The performance of Elvis’ comeback special, specifically his rendition of “If I Can Dream” soars. During the Vegas sequences, the costumes become ever more elaborate, the make-up ever more garish, acutely demonstrating Presley’s physical decline. And Butler, an unlikely Elvis, tightly grips the reins by providing one show-stopping note after another. There isn’t a hint of fakery in anything Butler does. That sincerity uplifts “Elvis” even as it tumbles.    

But all too often the film slips into a great white hope syndrome, whereby Presley is the sincere white hero unearthing the exotic and sensual Black artists of his era. B.B. King, Big Momma Thornton, and Little Richard (real-life supporters of Presley) exist solely as either bulletin board cheerleaders or alluring beings from a far-off land. While these Black artists are championed—an awareness by Luhrmann of their importance and the long and winding history of Black art moving through white spaces—they barely speak or retain any depth, even while a paternalistic Presley advances their cause. 

The approach neither illuminates nor dignifies these figures. Instead, Luhrmann tries to smooth over the complicated feelings many Black folks of varied generations have toward the purported King. In that smoothing, Presley loses enough danger, enough fascinating complications to render the whole enterprise predictable. Because it’s not enough to merely have awareness, a filmmaker also has a responsibility to question whether they’re the right person to tell a story. Luhrmann isn’t. And that’s a failing that will be difficult for many viewers to ignore.

Luhrmann side-steps other parts of the Elvis mythology, including the age gap between Priscilla and Presley (the pair met in Germany when the former was 14 years old), and when Elvis became a stooge for Richard Nixon . Excluding the latter makes little sense in a movie concerning the commodification of Presley by capitalism and conservatism. Luhrmann wants to show the downfall of a doe-eyed icon by nefarious systems, but never pushes the envelope enough for him to become unlikable, or better yet, intricate and human. 

That flattening easily arises from telling this story from Colonel Parker’s perspective. He doesn’t care about Black people, therefore, they exist as cardboard cutouts. He cares little for Priscilla, therefore, she has little personhood. And Parker certainly isn’t going to tarnish the image or brand of Elvis because it corrodes himself. These undesirable outcomes, facile and pointless, make logical sense considering the framing of the narrative. But what good is making a sanitized Elvis biopic in 2022? And truly, who really needs a further fortification of Presley’s cultural importance when it’s been the dominant strain for over 60 years? It’s another noxious draft in history clumsily written by white hands.

“Elvis” certainly works as a jukebox, and it does deliver exactly what you’d expect from a Luhrmann movie. But it never gets close to Presley; it never deals with the knotty man inside the jumpsuit; it never grapples with the complications in his legacy. It’s overstuffed, bloated, and succumbs to trite biopic decisions. Luhrmann always puts Butler in the best position to succeed until the credits, whereby he cuts to archival footage of Presley singing “Unchained Melody.” In that moment Luhrmann reminds you of the myth-making at play. Which is maybe a good thing, given Luhrmann's misleading, plasticine approach. 

Now playing in theaters.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Film credits.

Elvis (2022)

Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking.

159 minutes

Austin Butler as Elvis Presley

Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker

Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla Presley

Dacre Montgomery as Steve Binder

Kelvin Harrison Jr. as B.B. King

Richard Roxburgh as Vernon Presley

Helen Thomson as Gladys Presley

Yola as Sister Rosetta Tharpe

David Wenham as Hank Snow

Luke Bracey as Jerry Schilling

Alex Radu as George Klein

Alton Mason as Little Richard

Xavier Samuel as Scotty Moore

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Jimmie Rodgers Snow

Natasha Bassett as Dixie Locke

Leon Ford as Tom Diskin

• Baz Luhrmann

Writer (story by)

• Jeremy Doner
• Sam Bromell
• Craig Pearce

Cinematographer

• Mandy Walker
• Jonathan Redmond
• Elliott Wheeler

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‘Elvis’ Review: Shocking the King Back to Life

Austin Butler plays the singer, with Tom Hanks as his devilish manager, in Baz Luhrmann’s operatic, chaotic anti-biopic.

By A.O. Scott

My first and strongest memory of Elvis Presley is of his death. He was only 42 but he already seemed, in 1977, to belong to a much older world. In the 45 years since, his celebrity has become almost entirely necrological. Graceland is a pilgrimage spot and a mausoleum.

Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” — a biopic in the sense that “Heartbreak Hotel” is a Yelp review — works mightily to dispel this funerary gloom. Luhrmann, whose relationship to the past has always been irreverent and anti-nostalgic, wants to shock Elvis back to life, to imagine who he was in his own time and what he might mean in ours.

The soundtrack shakes up the expected playlist with jolts of hip-hop (extended into a suite over the final credits), slivers of techno and slatherings of synthetic film-score schmaltz. (The composer and executive music producer is Elliott Wheeler.) The sonic message — and the film’s strongest argument for its subject’s relevance — is that Presley’s blend of blues, gospel, pop and country continues to mutate and pollinate in the musical present. There’s still a whole lot of shaking going on.

As a movie, though, “Elvis” lurches and wobbles, caught in a trap only partly of its own devising. Its rendering of a quintessentially American tale of race, sex, religion and money teeters between glib revisionism and zombie mythology, unsure if it wants to be a lavish pop fable or a tragic melodrama.

The ghoulish, garish production design, by Catherine Martin (Luhrmann’s wife and longtime creative partner) and Karen Murphy, is full of carnival sleaze and Vegas vulgarity. All that satin and rhinestone, filtered through Mandy Walker’s pulpy, red-dominated cinematography, conjures an atmosphere of lurid, frenzied eroticism. You might mistake this for a vampire movie.

It wouldn’t entirely be a mistake. The central plot casts Elvis (Austin Butler) as the victim of a powerful and devious bloodsucking fiend. That would be Col. Tom Parker, who supplies voice-over narration and is played by Tom Hanks with a mountain of prosthetic goo, a bizarre accent and a yes-it’s-really-me twinkle in his eyes. Parker was Presley’s manager for most of his career, and Hanks portrays him as part small-time grifter, part full-blown Mephistopheles.

“I didn’t kill Elvis,” Parker says, though the movie implies otherwise. “I made Elvis.” In the Colonel’s mind, they were “the showman and the snowman,” equal partners in a supremely lucrative long con.

Luhrmann’s last feature was an exuberant, candy-colored — and, I thought, generally underrated — adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” and the Colonel is in some ways a Gatsbyesque character. He’s a self-invented man, an arriviste on the American scene, a “mister nobody from nowhere” trading in the unstable currencies of wishing and seeming. He isn’t a colonel (Elvis likes to call him “admiral”) and his real name isn’t Tom Parker. The mystery of his origins is invoked to sinister effect but not fully resolved. If we paid too much attention to him, he might take over the movie, something that almost happens anyway.

Luhrmann seems more interested in the huckster than in the artist. But he himself is the kind of huckster who understands the power of art, and is enough of an artist to make use of that power.

As a Presley biography, “Elvis” is not especially illuminating. The basic stuff is all there, as it would be on Wikipedia. Elvis is haunted by the death of his twin brother, Jesse, and devoted to his mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson). Relations with his father, Vernon (Richard Roxburgh), are more complicated. The boy grows up poor in Tupelo, Miss., and Memphis, finds his way into the Sun Records recording studio at the age of 19, and proceeds to set the world on fire. Then there’s the Army, marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), Hollywood, a comeback broadcast in 1968, a long residency in Las Vegas, divorce from Priscilla and the sad, bloated spectacle of his last years.

Butler is fine in the few moments of offstage drama that the script allows, but most of the emotional action is telegraphed in Luhrmann’s usual emphatic, breathless style. The actor seems most fully Elvis — as Elvis, the film suggests, was most truly himself — in front of an audience. Those hips don’t lie, and Butler captures the smoldering physicality of Elvis the performer, as well as the playfulness and vulnerability that drove the crowds wild. The voice can’t be imitated, and the movie wisely doesn’t try, remixing actual Elvis recordings rather than trying to replicate them.

At his first big performance, in a dance hall in Texarkana, Ark., where he shares a bill with Hank Snow (David Wenham), Snow’s son, Jimmie (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and other country acts, Elvis steps out in a bright pink suit, heavy eye makeup and glistening pompadour. A guy in the audience shouts a homophobic slur, but after a few bars that guy’s date and every other woman in the room is screaming her lungs out, “having feelings she’s not sure she should enjoy,” as the Colonel puts it. Gladys is terrified, and the scene carries a heavy charge of sexualized danger. Elvis is a modern Orpheus, and these maenads are about to tear him to pieces. In another scene, back in Memphis, Elvis watches Little Richard (Alton Mason) tearing up “Tutti Frutti” (a song he would later cover) and sees a kindred spirit.

The sexual anarchy and gender nonconformity of early rock ’n’ roll is very much in Luhrmann’s aesthetic wheelhouse. Its racial complications less so. “Elvis” puts its hero in the presence of Black musicians including Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola), Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh) and B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who offers career advice. An early montage — repeated so often that it becomes a motif — finds the boy Elvis (Chaydon Jay) simultaneously peeking into a juke joint where Arthur Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) plays “That’s All Right Mama” and catching the spirit at a tent revival.

There’s no doubt that Elvis, like many white Southerners of his class and generation, loved blues and gospel. (He loved country and western, too, a genre the film mostly dismisses.) He also profited from the work of Black musicians and from industry apartheid, and a movie that won’t grapple with the dialectic of love and theft that lies at the heart of American popular music can’t hope to tell the whole story.

In the early days, Elvis’s nemesis is the segregationist Mississippi senator James Eastland (Nicholas Bell), whose fulminations against sex, race-mixing and rock ’n’ roll are intercut with a galvanic performance of “Trouble.” Later, Elvis is devastated by the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was killed “just three miles from Graceland”) and Robert F. Kennedy. These moments, which try to connect Elvis with the politics of his era, are really episodes in his relationship with Colonel Parker, who wants to keep his cash cow away from controversy.

When Elvis defies the Colonel — breaking out in full hip-shaking gyrations when he’s been told “not to wiggle so much as a finger”; turning a network Christmas special into a sweaty, intimate, raucous return to form — the movie wants us to see his conscience at work, as well as his desire for creative independence. But Luhrmann’s sense of history is too muddled and sentimental to give the gestures that kind of weight.

And Elvis himself remains a cipher, a symbol, more myth than flesh and blood. His relationships with Vernon, Priscilla and the entourage known as “the Memphis mafia” receive cursory treatment. His appetites for food, sex and drugs barely get that much.

Who was he? The movie doesn’t provide much of an answer. But younger viewers, whose firsthand experience of the King is even thinner than mine, might come away from “Elvis” with at least an inkling of why they should care. In the end, this isn’t a biopic or a horror movie or a cautionary parable: It’s a musical, and the music is great. Remixed, yes, and full of sounds that purists might find anachronistic. But there was never anything pure about Elvis Presley, except maybe his voice, and hearing it in all its aching, swaggering glory, you understand how it set off an earthquake.

Like a lot of people who write about American popular culture — or who just grew up in the second half of the 20th century — I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Elvis. “Elvis,” for all its flaws and compromises, made me want to listen to him, as if for the first time.

Elvis Rated PG-13. Rock ’n’ roll, sex, drugs. Running time: 2 hours 39 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Elvis Gets Fresh Rotten Tomatoes Rating With High Audience Score

Critics have been praising Baz Luhrmann's Elvis with filmgoers enjoying the biopic even more.

The new Elvis movie has arrived in theaters and it's coming out strong with its reviews, landing a fresh score at Rotten Tomatoes . When compiling the reviews of the review aggregator website's approved critics, Elvis currently sits with a fresh score of 78%. The audience score is quite a bit higher as it sits at 94%, a number that correlates with the recent A- grade bestowed to Elvis at CinemaScore.

"Austin Butler delivers a marvelous performance in this sparkling and extravagant spectacle about the life and career of the beloved King of Rock and Roll," writes Rene Sanchez of Cine Fin Fronteras in his review.

" Elvis is an irresistible sensation of music and style that serves as a flashy flick fit for a king," adds Film Inquiry's Mark McPherson. "The musical performances will obviously be a major draw but the stellar performances make it all the more intoxicating."

Some reviewers do have their qualms even if they largely enjoyed the film as a whole. Our own Julian Roman suggested that the focus was a bit too heavy on Col. Parker with not quite enough Elvis Presley.

"Luhrmann makes a mistake with Tom Hanks driving the story," Roman said. "Parker and Elvis are inexorably linked, but he's overrepresented here. I would have loved more of Elvis behind the facade. Instead, we see Elvis through Parker's eyes from start to finish. It's almost as if Luhrmann was afraid of giving Austin Butler narrative control... Tom Hanks will be divisive to audiences. He steals Austin Butler's thunder. No one wants to see a Col. Tom Parker movie."

The box office profits have been pretty kind to Elvis as well. The movie has performed higher than projections to debut with $30.5 million in domestic theaters. It managed to tie with Top Gun: Maverick to share the top spot at the box office.

Baz Luhrmann directed Elvis using a screenplay co-written with Jeremy Doner, Sam Bromell, and Craig Pearce. Starring Austin Butler as Elvis Presley and Tom Hanks as Col. Tom Parker, the film details the rise of Elvis through the eyes of his manager. Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Kodi Smit-McPhee also star.

Related: Elvis: Why This Biopic in Particular Has Gotten Huge

Elvis Was Highly Praised by the Presley Family

No matter what the reviews at Rotten Tomatoes might say, Baz Luhrmann has already gotten glowing praise from the review that mattered most. Per Deadline, the director previously spoke about how the Presley family, including Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley, and Riley Keough, had all loved the film. As someone who was married to knew the real Elvis perhaps better than anyone, Priscilla's praise of Elvis was the best review Luhrmann could have possibly gotten.

“No review would ever mean the most to us than the woman who was married to Elvis Presley," he said. "[She said], ‘I just wasn’t ready for that. Every breath about Austin, every move, the spirit of the person, the humanity. If my husband were here today he’d look him in the eye and say ‘How dare you? You are me.'”

Luhrmann added, “He was a father, he was a husband, and a grandfather and a person, and they have children. The greatest review I got from them in my life; now there’s something they can look to that is the truth of the humanity of the man.”

Elvis is now playing in movie theaters.

‘Elvis’ Review: Baz Luhrmann’s Biopic, Starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks, Is a Stylishly On-the-Surface Life-of-Elvis Impersonation Until It Takes Off in Vegas

It's a spectacle that keeps us watching but doesn't nail Elvis's inner life until he's caught in a trap.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Elvis Presley , with the exception of the Beatles, is the most mythological figure in the history of popular music. That makes him a singularly tempting figure to build a biopic around. But it also makes telling his story a unique challenge. Everything about Elvis (the rise, the fall, all that came in between) is so deeply etched in our imaginations that when you make a dramatic feature film out of Elvis Presley’s life, you’re not just channeling the mythology — you’re competing with it. The challenge is: What can you bring to the table that’s headier and more awesome than the real thing?

Baz Luhrmann ’s “Elvis” is a fizzy, delirious, impishly energized, compulsively watchable 2-hour-and-39-minute fever dream — a spangly pinwheel of a movie that converts the Elvis saga we all carry around in our heads into a lavishly staged biopic-as-pop-opera. Luhrmann, who made that masterpiece of romantically downbeat razzle-dazzle “Moulin Rouge!” (and in 20 years has never come close to matching it), isn’t interested in directing a conventional biography of Elvis. And who would want him to? Luhrmann shoots the works, leaping from high point to high point, trimming away anything too prosaic (Elvis’s entire decade of churning out bland Hollywood musicals flashes by in an eye-blink). He taps into the Elvis of our reveries, searing us with the king’s showbiz heat and spinning his music — and how it was rooted in the genius of Black musical forms — like a mix-master across time.

Yet “Elvis,” for all its Luhrmannian fireworks, is a strange movie — compelling but not always convincing, at once sweeping and scattershot, with a central figure whose life, for a long stretch, feels like it’s being not so much dramatized as illustrated.

Popular on Variety

Austin Butler , the 30-year-old actor who plays Elvis, has bedroom eyes and cherubic lips and nails the king’s electrostatic moves. He also does a reasonably good impersonation of Elvis’s sultry velvet drawl. Yet his resemblance to Elvis never quite hits you in the solar plexus. Butler looks more like the young John Travolta crossed with Jason Priestly, and I think the reason this nags at one isn’t just because Elvis was (arguably) the most beautiful man of the 20th century. It’s also that Butler, though he knows how to bring the good-ol’-boy sexiness, lacks Elvis’s danger . Elvis had a come-hither demon glare nestled within that twinkle of a smile. We’ve lived for half a century in a world of Elvis impersonators, and Butler, like most of them, has a close-but-not-the-real-thing quality. He doesn’t quite summon Elvis’s inner aura of hound-dog majesty.

Luhrmann has always had the fearlessness of his own flamboyance, and from the first moments of “Elvis,” which take off from an outrageous bejeweled version of the Warner Bros. logo, the film lets us know that it’s going to risk vulgarity to touch the essence of the Elvis saga. There’s a luscious opening fanfare of split-screen imagery, showing us how Elvis loomed at every stage, but mostly as the decadent Vegas showman who flogged his own legend until it was (no pun intended) larger-than-life.

But the way that Butler comes off as more harmless than the real Elvis ties into the key problem with the film’s first half. Luhrmann is out to capture how Elvis, the smoldering kid whose hip-swiveling, leg-jittering gyrations knocked the stuffing out of our sexual propriety, with his thrusts and his eyeliner and his inky black hair falling over his face, was a one-man erotic earthquake who remade the world. Yet Elvis’s transformation of the world was, in fact, so total and triumphant that it may now be close to impossible for a movie to capture how radical it was. With its over-the-top shots of women at Elvis’s early shows erupting into spontaneous screams, or throwing underwear onstage, plus scandalous headlines and finger-wagging moral gatekeepers growing hysterical over how Elvis was busting down racial barriers or promoting “indecency,” “Elvis” keeps telling us that it’s about an insurrectionary figure. The irony is that Luhrmann’s style is too ripely sensual, too post-Elvis, to evoke what the world was like before Elvis.

We see Elvis as a boy sneaking into a Black tent-show revival, fusing with the writhing gospel he encounters there, or hearing Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) sing “That’s All Right Mama” in a slow high blues wail. Then we hear what Elvis did with that music, syncing it to his own speedy spirit. Elvis stole the blues, all right, or at least borrowed them, but the movie shows us how he frosted them with a bouncy layer of country optimism and his own white-boy exhibitionism. The film dunks us in Elvis’s blue-suede bliss and then checks us, after a while, into his heartbreak hotel. In a way, though, I wish that Luhrmann had told Elvis’s story in the insanely baroque, almost hallucinogenic fashion of “Moulin Rouge!” For all the Elvis tunes on the soundtrack, the film doesn’t have enough musical epiphanies — scenes that blow your mind and heart with their rock ‘n’ roll magic.

And what “Elvis” never quite shows us, at least not until its superior second half, is what was going on inside Elvis Presley. For a while, the film plays like a graphic novel on amphetamines, skittering over the Elvis iconography but remaining playfully detached from his soul. Instead, it filters his story through the point-of-view of his Mephistophelean manager Svengali, Col. Tom Parker, who is played by Tom Hanks , under pounds of padding and a hideous comb-over, as a carny-barker showman with a hooked nose and a gleam of evil in his eye.

By framing “Elvis” as if it were Parker’s self-justifying story, the movie structures itself as a tease: Will it really show us that Parker, as he claims in his voice-over narration, has been given a bum rap by history? That he not only made Presley’s career but had his best interests at heart? No, it will not. Yet Luhrmann, in presenting the Dutch-born, never legally emigrated Parker (née Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk) as a master flimflam artist who saw himself as the P.T Barnum of rock ‘n’ roll, revels in a certain fascinating ambivalence. Hanks, with his mustache-twirling accent and avaricious gleam, makes Parker a cousin to Jim Broadbent’s nightclub impresario in “Moulin Rouge!” — a corrupt showman who will do and say anything to keep the show going. Parker latches onto Elvis in 1955, then stage manages his career to within an inch of its life. Elvis, turned into the Colonel’s hard-working show horse, becomes a victim of Stockholm syndrome; no matter how much he sees through the Colonel’s schemes, he can’t bring himself to quit him. Yet he spends the rest of his life rebelling against him.

The movie shows us how Elvis’s career, after its volcano eruption in the mid-’50s, became a series of defeats and escapes. To calm the controversies that Elvis first inspired, the Colonel repackages him as “the new Elvis” (read: a singer of family-friendly ballads), which only makes Elvis miserable. To further defuse the attacks upon him, Parker, in 1958, encourages Elvis to go into the Army as a way to clean up his image. Stationed in Germany, Elvis meets the teenage Priscilla — but it’s one of the film’s telling flaws that the actress who plays her, Olivia DeJonge, registers strongly in an early scene but scarcely has the chance to color in her performance. Given the film’s epic ambition, the script of “Elvis” (by Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner) is a weirdly bare-bones affair. Hanks delivers a performance that’s a luscious piece of hambone duplicity, but why aren’t there more piercingly written scenes between Elvis and the Colonel? Or Elvis and Priscilla? The Colonel should have been a great character, not a succulent trickster cartoon. If these relationships had been enriched, the story might have taken off more.

That Luhrmann compresses most of the 1960s into a two-minute campy montage, which parodies Elvis’s life as if it were one of his movies, is the clearest sign that “Elvis” is no orthodox biopic. The film’s second act leaps ahead to Elvis’s 1968 comeback special — the filming of it, and the backstage politics, which involve Parker promising NBC that they’re going to be getting a Christmas special, a plan we see undermined at every turn by Elvis and the show’s director, Steve Binder (Dacre Montgomery). The comeback special was, of course, a triumph, but the way Luhrmann tries to package it as a drama of sneaky rebellion doesn’t quite come off.

What comes off with startling power is the final third of the movie, which is set in Las Vegas during Elvis’s five-year residence at the International Hotel. For years, it became a cliché to mock Elvis for having embraced the shameless Middle American vulgarity of Vegas: the shows that opened with the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” fanfare from “2001,” the karate moves, the brassy orchestral sound of songs like his reconfigured “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” And, of course, he was on drugs the whole time. What Luhrmann grasps is that the Vegas years, in their white-suited glitz way, were trailblazing and stupendous — and that Col. Parker, in his greedy way, was a showbiz visionary for booking Elvis into that setting. The film captures how Elvis did some of his greatest work as a singer there, apotheosized by the avid ecstasy of “Burning Love.”

Yet as “Elvis” dramatizes, Vegas also became Presley’s prison, because Parker nailed him to a merciless contract, and for the most scurrilous of motivations: The Colonel needed Elvis at the International to pay off his own mountainous gambling debts, even if that meant that the singer, offstage (and, ultimately, onstage), became a slurry, pill-popping ghost of himself. Our identification with Elvis only deepens as we realize that he’s “caught in a trap.” The film’s richest irony is that Butler’s performance as the young Elvis (the one who’s far closer to his own age) is an efficient shadow of the real thing, but his performance as the aging, saddened Elvis, who rediscovered success but lost everything, is splendid. He’s alive onstage more than he was doing “Hound Dog,” and offstage, for the first time in the movie, Elvis becomes a wrenching human being. Luhrmann has made a woefully imperfect but at times arresting drama that builds to something moving and true. By the end, the film’s melody has been unchained.

Reviewed at Warner Bros. Screening Room (Cannes Film Festival, Out of Competition), May 13, 2022. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 159 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release of a Bazmark Production, Jack Group Production production. Producers: Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCormick, Schuyler Weiss. Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Courtenay Valenti, Kevin McCormick.
• Crew: Director: Baz Luhrmann. Screenplay: Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, Jeremy Doner. Camera: Mandy Walker. Editors: Matt Villa, Jonathan Redmond. Music: Elliott Wheeler, Elvis Presley.
• With: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Dacre Montgomery, Luke Bracey, Natasha Bassett, David Wenham, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Xavier Samuel, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Gary Clark Jr.

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How “Elvis” Plays the King

By Anthony Lane

Last year was not great for Elvis Presley. According to Forbes , which tallies up the take-home pay of the dead, he made a mere thirty million dollars in 2021—more than Arnold Palmer, it’s true, but less than Bing Crosby and Dr. Seuss. Elvis can rest easy, though. This year, his income could see a healthy spike, thanks to the latest Baz Luhrmann film, “Elvis,” which features Austin Butler in the title role. Presleyologists will learn nothing here, and purists will find plenty against which to rail. Less knowing viewers, however, may well be sucked in by Luhrmann’s lively telling of the tale. This is not a movie for suspicious minds.

Any fan of musical bio-pics will be familiar with the form: a hop, a skip, and a jump from one highlight to the next. (Some of the highs, needless to say, are lows.) In the case of Elvis, this means that we meet him in his youth—played by the striking Chaydon Jay, the rare intensity of whose gaze really does set the kid apart. Hurrying onward, we get a pit stop of Elvis as a truck driver, with his guitar swung up over his shoulder like a rifle; the cyclonic sight of Elvis onstage, pretty in pink, and whipping a crowd into a Dionysian froth; Elvis on the Steve Allen show, in white tie and tails, singing “Hound Dog” to a gloomy pooch; Elvis escaping to Beale Street, in Memphis, to hang out with B. B. King (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.) and to revel in Little Richard (Alton Mason); Elvis in Army uniform, looking impossibly spiffy and pitching his woo to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), the daughter of a captain; Elvis lamenting the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy; Elvis lounging inside a vowel on the Hollywood sign, and being told that his career is “in the toilet”; Elvis performing in residence at the International Hotel, in Las Vegas, flush with renewed success; and Elvis sitting sadly in a limousine, beside a private jet, and saying to Priscilla, “I’m gonna be forty soon, ’Cilla. Forty .” Has the prospect of age never occurred to him until now? Two years later, he is gone, though the movie spares us the unlovely particulars of his end.

Guiding us through this strange saga, in which the most private moments feel like public property, is Colonel Tom Parker. As has long been established, he was not a proper colonel, or a Parker, or even a Tom. He was a Dutchman, Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk, who went to America and erected a new identity for himself, as breezily as someone putting up a big top. He became Elvis’s manager, magus, m.c., and (many would argue) terminator. Were Kevin Spacey not otherwise engaged, he’d be a natural fit for the part. Instead, it goes to Tom Hanks, with a sharpened nose, a shiny pate, and a cladding of false fat. For dedicated Hanksians like me, these are confusing times; compare the trailer for Disney’s upcoming “Pinocchio,” in which Hanks—Einstein wig, a hedge of mustache, and, I suspect, yet another nose—assumes the role of Geppetto. At present, for whatever reason, this most trusted of actors has chosen to seek cover in camouflage and to specialize in the pulling of strings, whether wicked or benign. As Parker says, in one of many voice-overs, “I didn’t kill him. I made Elvis Presley.” It’s a real boy!

How do you wish yourself upon a star? Simple. Parker takes Elvis on a Ferris wheel, stops at the top of the ride, and, like the Devil, sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world. “Are you ready to fly?” Parker asks. There is nothing subtle about the staging of such scenes, but then Luhrmann, as was evident in “ Moulin Rouge! ” (2001), makes a proud virtue of unsubtlety. Little is left unspoken or half concealed. Young Elvis, for instance, peering through a crack in a shack, spies a couple of dancers, writhing and perspiring to the lusty wail of the blues; he then runs to a nearby tent, sneaks inside, and enters a Black revivalist meeting, which gives him the Pentecostal shakes. The proximity of the two locations is frankly ludicrous, but it allows Luhrmann to hammer home his point: the Presley sound was forged in a double ardor, sacred and profane. You don’t say.

As with every chronicle, there are gaps where you least expect them. Thus, any Elvis addict is steeped in the lore of July, 1954—the late session at Sun Studio, in Memphis, when Elvis, together with Scotty Moore, on lead guitar, and Bill Black, on bass, was about to call it a night, dissatisfied with what they’d done so far. For a lark, they began messing around with an old number called “That’s All Right, Mama,” taking it at a driven but drumless lick. The producer, Sam Phillips, roused to action by what he was hearing, told them to start again. As earthquakes go, it was all the more potent for being so comically casual, and it cries out to be dramatized; imagine what Robert Altman or Jonathan Demme might have done with such a scene. But Luhrmann gives it barely a glance. He prefers spectacular set pieces, stretched out instead of whittled down. Hence the space that he grants to the famous comeback concert of 1968, with Elvis resplendent in black leather, and, later, to a large slab of Vegas-era pomp, with Elvis all aglow in studded white, like a naughty angel on the loose. The curious thing is that both events already exist as visual records. The first was a TV production, the most popular broadcast of the season, and the second was enshrined in a 1970 documentary, “ Elvis: That’s the Way It Is .” Both can be streamed whenever you please. Luhrmann may be kicking up a storm, but the thunder is nothing new.

Grab a bathroom break in the middle of “Elvis” and you could easily miss the speediest part of the film. This is a montage devoted to Elvis’s least purple patch, in which he headed west, at Parker’s urging, to be a movie star. The result included such immortal works as “Girls! Girls! Girls!” (1962) and “Clambake” (1967), and “Elvis” duly supplies its hero with a leading man’s lament. “I’m so tired of playing Elvis Presley,” he says. My guess is that Luhrmann, like other admirers, is so embarrassed by the sight of such doldrums that he wants to get ’em over with and sail on. Is he right?

Not entirely. Not if you follow the money. To ignore Elvis as a commercial machine, in his earning power as in his fabled spending, is to clean up the myth of the man, and to parse the box-office returns for 1961, noting that Elvis’s “Blue Hawaii” made more than “Judgment at Nuremberg” (and, indeed, more than “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”), is to inch your way into the America of the time. The Mississippi Midas, who grew up as a mother-loving only child, of lowly stock, had somehow wound up here , crooning to his ukulele; it was a miracle of transfiguration, and who wouldn’t buy into that? Elvis’s movies are, among other things, a showcase of his manners, and that eager courtesy, too, is a selling point. Of the blazing affair that he had with Ann-Margret, when they made “ Viva Las Vegas ” (1964), all that survives in the film are sparks of merriment. He is flattened rather than deepened by the range of his paper-thin roles—cowboy, racecar driver, frogman, pilot, or, in “Tickle Me” (1965), a rodeo rider at an all-female ranch—and he appears to be physically airbrushed by the sheen of the screen. That is why Andy Warhol based a series of silvery prints on a still from “Flaming Star,” a 1960 Western, in which Elvis is posed as a gunslinger. His revolver is aimed toward us, and, if it’s loaded, it’s full of blanks.

All of which, to those who sensed the explosive charge of the earlier Elvis, is a travesty, a tragedy, and a kind of creative death. Greil Marcus, in his majestic essay “ Elvis: Presliad ,” refers to “the all-but-complete assimilation of a revolutionary musical style into the mainstream of American culture, where no one is challenged and no one is threatened.” The question is whether Luhrmann’s “Elvis” feeds that continuing process of absorption or strives to hold out against it. The film certainly looks provocative enough, with the camera refusing to sit still, the credits dripping with bling, and the Ferris wheel dissolving into the spinning label of a 45. Now and then, Luhrmann cheerfully slices up the frame like someone making a banana split. But aesthetic mischief, however hyperactive, is not the same as risk, and, given how the movie shies away from sex and drugs (we see a rattling handful of pills, hardly the pharmaceutical candy store of legend), what hope is there for rock and roll?

Well, there are flickers of danger in Austin Butler’s Elvis, as he advances to the brink of the stage, at a Memphis ballpark, and stokes the hysteria of the throng. (Parker is so alarmed that he summons the cops.) For the most part, though, what Butler brings out is the charm of the character, with his Hawaii-blue eyes, and his compliant lightness of heart. I didn’t quite believe in the tears that he sheds after his mother dies; on the other hand, the ease with which he embarks on rehearsals at the International Hotel, making nice to his thirty-piece band and to his backing singers, the Sweet Inspirations, rings joyfully true. He tickles us, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

In short, on the spectrum of those who have sought to incarnate Elvis, Butler belongs at the tender end—far from Kurt Russell, with his tough hide, in John Carpenter’s “ Elvis ” (1979), or from Nicolas Cage, who teams up with a club of skydiving Elvis look-alikes in “Honeymoon in Vegas” (1992), and whose whole career has been like a set of variations on the theme of Elvis. (For good measure, Cage also married Lisa Marie, Elvis’s daughter, though not for long.) But let’s face it: the first and the best Elvis impersonator was Elvis himself, and everybody who has played him since, on film and elsewhere, has just added another layer to the palimpsest, and thus to the meaning of the man. There is no ur-Elvis hiding below. We dream of being those folks who tuned in to Dewey Phillips’s slot on WHBQ, in July, 1954, and heard the King sing for the first time, and felt the ground shift beneath our feet; but we can never go back. That’s the way it is. ♦

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By Anna Wiener

Elvis (2022) Review

24 Jun 2022

Elvis (2022)

It’s been close to a decade since Baz Luhrmann ’s last movie. Any question that time may have mellowed him is answered within the first few minutes of Elvis ; even by Luhrmann’s usual standards, the first act of this biopic is frantic with filmmaking acrobatics. Rat-a-tat editing. Dream sequences. Animated sequences. Loop-di-loop camera moves. Incongruous modern soundtrack. He immediately puts his foot down and goes racing through the life of Elvis Presley. It’s one hell of a ride, but sometimes it’s moving too fast for his audience to get more than a passing look at his characters.

Luhrmann’s ambitions are laudably grand. He follows Presley’s ( Austin Butler ) life from his teens, when he’s discovered playing alongside tired country music acts, to his final days as a bloated drug addict, so exhausted he can’t even hold his own microphone. That’s not where Luhrmann stops. He also tells the story of Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ), Presley’s manager, who is depicted as a scheming villain who never misses an opportunity for a buck and puts money before Presley’s happiness. And further aims to show how America changed during Presley’s career, from the ’50s to the ’70s, especially for Black people, who Presley both supports and exploits, casually pinching influences from Black artists. Trying to squeeze in so much, even over a 159-minute running time, it’s not surprising that much of it feels rushed.

Luhrmann’s ‘more is not nearly enough’ style is at its most effective when he’s dealing in broad, simple emotions. In Moulin Rouge! or Romeo + Juliet , tales of desperate love at first sight, his explosive rhythms and romantic excess amplify all the primal yearning. It’s when he has to pause to contemplate subtler feelings that his confidence seems to desert him. His Great Gatsby was a dud because he showed little care for anyone’s interior lives. He was just there for the party. Elvis is no dud, but it again exposes Luhrmann’s disinterest in digging below the surface.

Presley’s story is told on a soap-operatic scale, towering highs or miserable lows, and little between. The relationship between Parker and Presley feels underexplored, with the otherwise smart Presley just in dumb thrall to a man clearly manipulating him. In scenes about Presley taking songs from the mouths of Black artists, Luhrmann doesn’t give a single Black character a significant voice, a surely unintended irony.

Austin Butler is sensational as Presley. He convinces at every age, from teen to 42.

Where Luhrmann absolutely excels, making some of the best work of his career, is in showing the addictive but destructive romance between Presley and his live audience. The performance sequences are a triumph. In Presley’s first live show we see how lust spreads through the crowd like a virus, girls screaming back at him in a way he doesn’t quite understand but loves. Both become hooked. As the film, and Presley’s career, go on, the audience grows into an insatiable animal, devouring more and more of Presley’s energy as he itches for another hit of adoration, prepared to surrender everything for it. There’s a manic, sexy, almost dangerous vigour to these scenes, which tell us more about Presley’s inner self than the rest of the film.

Austin Butler is sensational as Presley. It’s a huge ask for an actor to disappear into a man so well known that everyone and his uncle does a bad impression of him. Butler convinces at every age, from teen to 42. He’s not a particularly close visual match for Presley but he’s mastered vocal inflections and imperceptible details in Presley’s moves on stage that mean he captures his presence. More importantly, he gives a sense of a person, with normal insecurities, beneath the public image. Even if Luhrmann shies away from finding out who that normal person is, Butler suggests he’s there. Hanks’ Parker is written cartoonishly and he plays it appropriately. It’s not realistic but it’s entertaining.

Nobody comes to a Luhrmann film hoping for something under the top. His Elvis has all the dazzle and bombast you could ask, but it presents a portrait of an icon — not of a flesh-and-blood man.

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Elvis review: Baz Luhrmann’s sweaty, seductive biopic makes the King cool again

In luhrmann’s fairytale vision, elvis’ manager (tom hanks) is the evil stepmother, while austin butler’s king is the princess locked in a tower, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Baz Luhrmann. Starring: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Olivia DeJonge, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Shonka Dukureh . 12A, 160 minutes.

If we were to pull back the curtain on Elvis Presley, what would we even want to see? A soul stripped of its performance? Something cold and real behind the kitsch? I’m not convinced. America’s pop icons aren’t merely shiny distractions. They’re a culture talking back to itself, constantly interrogating its own ideals and its desires. I don’t think who Elvis was is necessarily more important than what Elvis represents. And, while you won’t find all that much truth in Baz Luhrmann ’s cradle-to-grave dramatisation of his life, the Australian filmmaker has delivered something far more compelling: an American fairytale.

“I am the man who gave the world Elvis Presley,” utters Tom Hanks ’s Colonel Tom Parker, his manager, as the curtain rises (literally) on Luhrmann’s expansive, rhinestone-encrusted epic. “And yet there are some who would make me out to be the villain of this story,” he adds.

Parker, who saw early promise in Elvis’s politically radical blend of country and R’n’B, slyly positioned himself as the sole overseer of the star’s creative enterprise – the man who won him a recording contract with RCA Records, who secured his merchandising deals and TV appearances, and who navigated him through a fairly brief but bountiful acting career. But Parker took far more in return. In 1980, a judge ruled that he had defrauded the Presley estate by millions. Some even blame him for pushing an overworked Elvis to the brink and ultimately contributing to his death.

For Luhrmann, the fairytale parallels couldn’t be more obvious. Parker is the evil stepmother, Elvis (here played by former child star Austin Butler ) is the princess locked in her tower – if that tower is, in fact, the vast and gilded stage of his Las Vegas residency. When Parker, a former carnival worker, first seduces Elvis to become his client, it’s in a literal hall of mirrors. That may sound a little absurd, but Luhrmann’s roots in the Australian opera scene have granted him a winning (though, to some, divisive) ability to deliver baroque stylings with a sincere, romantic sensibility.

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I’ve always believed strongly in the purpose and necessity of Luhrmann’s outlandish visions – that it’s not enough simply to capture the grotesque consumption of The Great Gatsby ’s Jazz Age, but to prove that we, the audience, would be as weak to its charms as Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Nick Carraway. The same is true here, in the ways his subject is both seduced and betrayed by his own fame. And, anyway, Luhrmann’s always shot his films a little like Elvis performs – sweaty and kinetic, as the camera sweeps through the corridors of Graceland and through decades of his life with the fury of a thousand karate kicks.

​​Elvis will, and should, invite serious discussions about the musician’s outstanding legacy, and the film’s weakest spots speak mostly to how unsettled the debate around him still is. There’s certainly a lot to be said for how nervously the film tiptoes around his relationship with Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), who was 14 when they first met. Can a film speak on behalf of a woman who’s still alive and able to share her own story? And where do we settle on the great debate of Elvis’s wider role in music history? Was his success really another chapter in white America’s long history of cultural appropriation, or did that early, rebellious appeal in fact prove to be a surprisingly powerful tool in the fight against segregation?

Luhrmann’s film arguably offers the most plausible, romantic ideal of Elvis, even if it turns him into something of a naïf trapped under Parker’s spell. He is always, in Parker’s narration, referred to as “the boy” and never “the man”. He is the sweet-souled, blue-eyed momma’s boy who just wants to buy his family a Cadillac and play the music of his childhood, which was spent in the Black-majority communities of Mississippi. Even at the height of Elvis’s fame, the film is careful to constantly bring us back to the Black artists who inspired him, either through the musician’s own words (and he was always deferential to his origins, to the very end) or through Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond’s frenetic editing work. When singer-songwriter Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh) launches into her rendition of “Hound Dog”, a voice on the radio commands us to listen – this is the voice of Black America speaking.

By framing Elvis’s story through Parker’s, Luhrmann’s film is cannily able to take a step back from the intimate details of the musician’s life. Instead it views him as a nuclear warhead of sensuality and cool, someone stood at the very crossroads of a fierce culture war. Parker thinks he can turn him into a clean-cut, all-American boy for the white middle classes, compelling him to accept the draft, cut his locks, and go to war. Elvis resists, and his gyrating pelvis (captured in many, glorious, zooms to the crotch) helps fuel the burgeoning sexual independence of young women across the country. “She’s having feelings she wasn’t sure she should enjoy,” Parker notes, as the camera surveys one wide-eyed, lip-biting fan. Costume designer Catherine Martin – Luhrmann’s spouse, credited also as co-production designer and producer – dresses Elvis in an array of soft, dreamy pinks to sublime effect.

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To say that Elvis isn’t really so much about the real Elvis might sound like it’s taking the pressure off of Butler’s performance. But that’d be an entirely unfair judgement of what’s being achieved here – an impersonation of one of the most impersonated people on the planet, that’s at times uncanny without ever coming across as parody. Sure, Butler has the looks, the voice, the stance and the wiggle nailed down, but what’s truly impressive is that indescribable, undistillable essence of Elvis-ness – magnetic and gentle and fierce, all at the same time.

It’s almost odd to watch a performance so all-consuming that Hanks – the Tom Hanks – feels like an accessory. He’s all but buried underneath layers of prosthetics and a pantomime Dutch accent, seemingly cast only so that the warm smirk of America’s dad can trip a few people into questioning whether he’s really the villain of all this. Butler makes a compelling argument for the power of Elvis, at a time when the musician’s arguably lost a little of his cultural cachet. So does Luhrmann. So does the soundtrack, which is packed with contemporary artists (Doja Cat’s “Vegas” has sound of the summer written all over it). And while not everyone will be convinced by their efforts – I know that I’m ready for Elvis to be cool again.

‘Elvis’ is released in cinemas on 24 June

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In ‘Elvis,’ Baz Luhrmann brilliantly floods our senses with arresting sights and sounds

The director’s trademark razzle-dazzle surrounds tom hanks as an oily colonel tom parker and austin butler, electrifying as the king..

“Elvis” star Austin Butler plays the singer in every stage of his career, starting with the hip-swiveling rocker who made the girls swoon.

Warner Bros.

The numbers vary from Internet source to Internet source, but the general consensus seems to be there were something like 200 Elvis Presley impersonators in the world at the time of the King’s death in 1977 and the number has grown to at least 35,000 today. And we’re not even including all the actors who have portrayed Elvis on TV and in the movies, from Kurt Russell to Jonathan Rhys Meyers to David Keith to Don Johnson to Harvey Keitel to Michael Shannon to Val Kilmer as the Elvis apparition who advises Christian Slater’s Clarence in “True Romance.”

So one can’t help but ask: With every chapter of the man’s life and times already so deeply etched into the pop culture landscape, do we really need another movie about the man and the myth and the legend that was Elvis Presley?

In the case of “Elvis,” the answer is a resounding YES, thanks to the gloriously excessive, razzle-dazzle direction of Baz Luhrmann (“Romeo + Juliet,” “Moulin Rouge!”), a smoldering star turn performance from Austin Butler as the title character and a sure-to-be-polarizing but fantastically eccentric spin on Colonel Tom Parker, courtesy of a nearly unrecognizable Tom Hanks. This is 2 hours and 39 minutes of screen-popping, candy-colored, highly stylized, fever-dream showmanship that serves as a Greatest Hits compilation touching on the many, many permutations of Elvis, from malleable country bumpkin to sex symbol icon to B-movie star to seemingly irrelevant near has-been to the Comeback King to Las Vegas icon to his death at the age of 42, and it’s such a sprawling, amazing rollercoaster ride that it’s difficult to process the fact Presley has been dead longer than he was with us.

If you thought the magnificently flamboyant Luhrmann was well-suited to put the flashiest of spins on “The Great Gatsby,” you can imagine what he does with the made-for-overkill mythology of Elvis — and from the moment we see a bejeweled version of the Warner Bros. Pictures logo, we know Luhrmann is going to flood our senses with a nonstop medley of arresting sights and sounds, never taking his foot off the directorial gas pedal. (Who wants to see a version of Elvis unplugged, am I right?)

“Elvis” is told through the skewed, self-serving, huckster’s perspective of Colonel Tom Parker, who was not a colonel and was born Andreas Cornelis van Kujik in the Netherlands (hence the strange Dutch/Southern hybrid accent), an admittedly great showman and promoter who latched onto Presley early on and rode his show pony into the ground, allegedly bilking Presley of millions and maneuvering him into making all sorts of deals that benefitted Parker first and Presley a distant second. Parker keeps trying to convince us he’s not the villain in the story, as he we see him always lurking backstage, always making side deals to line his pockets or cover his gambling debts, always in the middle of everything while looking out for himself first, always spinning things with his almost cartoonishly evil cadence.

Tom Hanks is nearly unrecognizable as Elvis’ wheeler-dealer of a manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Luhrmann employs a sparkling array of visual and aural tactics, from period-piece graphics to sepia-toned flashbacks, from nostalgic color schemes to swooping camera movements to split screens and cool and creative match-cut transitions. We know Elvis didn’t write his own material and we know he appropriated the sounds of gospel and blues from Black artists, and perhaps more than any previous Presley biopic, “Elvis” continually acknowledges that, with the likes of BB King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Little Richard (Alton Mason), Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) and Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola Quartey) getting their moments.

Still, the film’s fate rests on the shoulders of Austin Butler, who flashed serious movie-star potential as the evil fool Tex Watson in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and is mesmerizingly strong here. Butler doesn’t do an Elvis impersonation, but he does a stunningly good job of capturing the hip-swiveling, pink-suited Elvis who makes girls swoon and scream in a comedically effective early sequence; the ’60s Elvis who starred in a series of forgettable and dopey movies; the brilliant performer who made one of the most memorable pop-star comebacks of all time in a 1968 TV special, and the lost and borderline self-parodying Karate King who sweated and toiled on the Vegas stage and only occasionally touched greatness. Butler is an electric performer who shines in the spotlight when Elvis is onstage, but he also infuses Presley with an empathetic humanity and vulnerability. We know the man was hardly a saint, but we understand his sins.

Hanks’ characterization of Colonel Tom Parker is a big swing for someone who has held the unofficial title of America’s Most Likable Movie Star for more than 30 years. Some might argue he’s miscast, but I found the performance to be suitably oily, for despite Parker’s protestations, he IS the villain of the story. Even as Parker constantly reminds us that he “made” Elvis Presley (and there’s an element of truth to that), we see that time and again, he also contributed to the destruction of the man.

Still, for all its tragic elements and the heartbreak of an ending we know is coming, “Elvis” is a brilliant celebration of an artist who left a lasting and huge footprint on our culture.

• Elvis movie review: we can't help falling in love with Austin Butler's King

Baz Luhrmann's flawed portrait of Elvis Presley is still hugely enjoyable.

What to Watch Verdict

For all its flaws, Luhrmann’s portrait of The King is a must-see.

Butler’s charismatic performance

Compelling and magnetic

Big screen nostalgia

The soundtrack (a hypnotic mix of old and new)

Not all its risks pay off

Hanks’ hammy Colonel Parker

With his fortieth birthday on the horizon, Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) is tormented by the thought that he’ll amount to nothing. We all know he needn’t have worried, that decades after his death his influence on popular culture is as strong as ever. Which makes him the perfect subject for a musical biopic. However, in Elvis , director Baz Luhrmann has loftier ambitions than simply telling the life story of the biggest musical icon of the 20th century. As you would expect.

A showman's film about two other showmen, his version of the rock ‘n’ roll legend — the country upbringing, musical influences, rise to fame, military service, marriage to Priscilla and his much-publicized decline — is told through the eyes of the film's other central character, Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). 

This means that as well as watching the landmarks in Elvis’ life punctuated by a catalog of his greatest hits — and there are many — we’re also taken inside the relationship between the two men, one where the control was almost always in Parker's hands. We’re shown that his superstar client was little more than a money-making machine feeding his gambling addiction. In today’s parlance, it’s nothing short of toxic.

Luhrmann’s choice of narrator is perplexing. Given Parker’s compulsion to control his charge and everything in his world, at first sight, it’s surprising he allows us to see the moments when Presley rebels and tries to break free. But he’s manipulating us, in the same way as he does The King, showing that his client simply can’t do anything without him. Except we see something different. Choosing somebody as unpleasant as Parker to tell the story is risky and it doesn’t always pay off. His sometimes whispered commentary attributes the singer’s descent into drugs to an addiction to the love he received from his fans — in other words, it’s all our fault and Parker had nothing to do with it. 

Riskiest of all is the casting of Hanks, playing very much against his Mr Nice Guy type. Buried underneath a mass of prosthetics and with an accent that attempts to echo Parker’s Dutch origins but ends up sounding downright creepy, it’s an over-the-top performance that, despite the extravagancies of the production, feels out of place. Lurking in the shadows and peering round corners like a malevolent goblin, he strikes a note of artifice at odds with the rest of the film.

In contrast, Austin Butler is outstanding as Elvis in a performance guaranteed to make him a 24-carat star. (For those who didn't already know and love him from his work on The Carrie Diaries or The Shannara Chronicles .) He captures (most of) the charisma of The King, his love of family and of gospel and blues music and his close connection with the black music scene of his Southern childhood. Butler takes us inside a complex, hugely talented man who you readily accept, weaknesses included. The film appears to be not so much for fans of The King, but for a new generation, the one that doesn’t remember him and perhaps has never heard of him. For them, it’s a great introductory course — the songs are all there and the hero is attractive — but Elvis devotees will turn up in droves to see this as well and immerse themselves in the large slices of big-screen nostalgia.

This is not just a biopic, pure and simple because Luhrmann's other ambition was to use Presley’s story to paint a picture of some of the most turbulent years in American history. Yet that turns out to be very much in second place, taking a selective view of the major events in his lifetime and using them to show his impact on audiences at the time. The rise of teen culture and the associated moral panic that created, segregation and political assassinations are given the most prominence, but there is so much missing and Luhrmann’s aim in this instance is off-kilter.

Luhrmann’s flamboyant, visual style hasn’t left him, however. And, even if there are times when he over-uses split screens to the point of irritation, the overall effect is vibrant, full of strong images and overflowing with energy. The flaws are there for all to see — the first half feels bloated, while there’s a rush towards the finish line in the latter sequences — yet, despite all that, your eyes never leave the screen or drift towards your watch. Elvis is magnetically compelling. Just like The King himself.

Elvis is released theatrically on Friday, June 24. For news on all the big movies out this year see our guide to new movies in 2022 .

More Elvis movie content

• Meet the Elvis cast — who’s who in Baz Lurhmann’s Elvis movie biopic
• Why did Harry Styles miss out on the role of Elvis?
• The Elvis movie trailer has dropped and here’s what we learned.

Freda can't remember a time when she didn't love films, so it's no surprise that her natural habitat is a darkened room in front of a big screen. She started writing about all things movies about eight years ago and, as well as being a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic, is a regular voice on local radio on her favorite subject. 

While she finds time to watch TV as well — her tastes range from Bake Off to Ozark — films always come first. Favourite film? The Third Man . Top ten? That's a big and complicated question .....!

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Elvis review – Baz Luhrmann’s squeaky-clean King is shaking no one up

Incurious yet frantic, Luhrmann’s spangly epic is off-key – and Austin Butler flounders in those blue suede shoes

B az Luhrmann has given us another pointless explosion of super-spangly sparkles in celluloid form – exactly the same sparkles he sprinkled over the Moulin Rouge and Jay Gatsby in previous films. And just as Alan Partridge said his favourite Beatles album was The Best of the Beatles, so Luhrmann has given us a film built around what he imagines is the best of Elvis Presley.

It’s not a movie so much as a 159-minute trailer for a film called Elvis – a relentless, frantically flashy montage, epic and yet negligible at the same time, with no variation of pace. At the end of it all, you might find yourself pondering the eternal questions: what does Luhrmann think of Elvis’s music? Does he, for example, prefer some Elvis songs to others? Has he listened to any of Elvis’s songs all the way through? Or does he shut down Spotify after 20 seconds once he reckons he’s got the gist?

These issues arise because of the weirdly incurious approach here to Presley’s music and his life, featuring a competent but not especially inspired performance from Austin Butler as the pelvis-swivelling, American-youth-deranging King himself. The film really wastes its one potential trump card: a human toad performance from Tom Hanks as his creepy and parasitic manager Colonel Tom Parker, who exploited him ruthlessly and refused to let him tour abroad, finally turning him into a bloated rhinestone parody in an unending cash-cow Vegas residency while the rest of the world moved on. (The soundtrack absolutely hammers the “caught in a trap” line from Suspicious Minds in case we miss the point.)

But Luhrmann is clearly unwilling or unable to explore the dysfunctional Jekyll-and-Hyde relationship between the Colonel and Elvis in case any sort of dark or sad mood predominates. Colonel Tom is a kind of repeating cameo in Elvis’s life and Luhrmann is even less interested in Parker’s inner self than in Elvis’s – the Colonel’s own wretched post-Elvis life and death are shrugged off in the closing credit titles.

We get the basics of Presley’s career: the early days of hardship, the profound influence of black music, the blues and gospel; his days on the hayseed country circuit before signing for Parker, the huge Elvismania success, the shrewd decision to calm moral-majority fears by doing two years military service in Germany, marriage to Priscilla, the bubblegum movies, the televised 1968 Comeback Special and the long Vegas goodbye.

There are some tiny unpredictable touches – such as a hint that Elvis secretly inflamed young gay men in the States as well as straight women. But otherwise it sticks to a defanged version of the script. There is, for example, not really any such thing as Fat Elvis here. He stays sweaty but reasonably svelte until almost the very end, when we see a decorous hint of flab. But we don’t see the yucky burger binges or the adult diapers. Luhrmann is at all times concerned to rescue Elvis from irony and failure and suffering.

And how about that legendary encounter with the one US president that Elvis really did admire – Richard Nixon – when the King was cordially received in 1970 at the White House because he demanded presidential action on the country’s infatuation with degenerate lefties like the Beatles? Nothing. That isn’t shown.

This version of Elvis, with retrofitted liberal sensitivities, is always breaking off what he’s doing to look stunned at the TV reporting the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy, and to be soulfully devastated at the loss of these American icons. Well … maybe. But the film erases his actual Republican sympathies. Also erased, as it happens, is Ann-Margret, his Viva Las Vegas co-star, with whom he had a poignant, illicit relationship for about a year.

Why do the film at all? The rationale would appear to be – and might in earlier versions of the script have been – the poisonous bromance or toxic father-son relationship between Parker and Presley. But how about a film about the Colonel, with Elvis taking a secondary role? That would have been genuinely new and Hanks would have sold it superbly. As it is, this is just another exercise in Elvis impersonation, its upper lip twitching to no purpose.

• Peter Bradshaw's film of the week
• Cannes 2022
• Cannes film festival
• Elvis Presley
• Baz Luhrmann
• Period and historical films

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Screen Rant

Elvis review: what luhrmann's biopic lacks in depth it makes up for in style.

The film is beautiful & has an electric energy, especially during Elvis’ performances, but it can't maintain the same enthusiasm it started with.

Baz Luhrmann takes a different approach to a biopic about Elvis Presley, honing in on the myth surrounding the iconic singer, but with all the style, glamour, and theatricality of his previous films. But unlike other Elvis stories, this one centers more on the singer’s shady manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who wants nothing but to tell the audience his truth about Elvis and the role he had in his life. The director, who co-wrote Elvis alongside Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner, embellishes Elvis’ life and career, but sidesteps a deeper examination of his humanity. The film is beautiful to look at and has a wonderful, electric energy, most especially during Elvis’ performances. But while Elvis sees a memorable turn from Austin Butler in the titular role, the film cannot maintain the same buzzing enthusiasm it started with.

The film begins with an older Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks under a lot of prosthetics), who awakens from his hospital bed to set the record straight about himself and his involvement with Elvis' (Butler) career. Parker was Elvis' manager for two decades, but he's frustrated by the rumors that say he killed the man known as "the King." And so the story rewinds to 1955: Elvis had a song playing on the local radio station and the Colonel, then a carnival barker, was taken by the young singer's energy and ability to drive the audience into a tizzy. He recruits Elvis to tour with him before quitting the carnival, dedicating his full attention to the musician who's got everyone talking. Elvis spans the singer's career, brushing past aspects of his personal life, including his home life — where he is a doting son to mother Gladys ( Helen Thomson ) and his marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) — to focus on the songs, crucial turning points, and the manager who used him for his own gain.

Related:  Every Actor Who Has Played Elvis Presley In Movies

Elvis has all the makings of a typical Luhrmann film; it has dazzling stylistic flourishes, its sound and visuals coalescing to make for something enthralling and exquisite at times, and the costumes, set designs, and overall production value are top notch. The director often turns the focus to Butler’s eyes, legs and hips as he twists and thrusts, driving the young women in the crowds to hysterics as they reach for him. Luhrmann doesn’t see Elvis himself as worthy of dissection, more concerned with the idea of the singer and his impact on the world and music. The framing of the sleazy, despicable Tom Parker as the narrator of the story immediately sets up Elvis as a victim of capitalism and the music industry using and abusing him. Luhrmann paints an awful picture, one that hangs primarily on the back of the Colonel. As a commentary regarding the music industry’s treatment of musicians, Elvis is not scathing enough, but that’s not exactly what it’s going for.

Elvis doesn’t avoid visiting the late singer’s musical influences, highlighting the ways in which Blues and Gospel impacted him and his style/song choices. To that end, Elvis’ time on Beale Street is also a big part of the film, with the singer shown hanging out with B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and others. Luhrmann seems to understand Elvis’ musical influences and doesn’t shy away from the fact that he often re-recorded songs originally produced by Black artists, but, like with the rest of the film, nothing much is made of this information. The film largely sticks with a magnanimous take on Elvis’ personal history and music, blurring the line between the man and the legend, choosing to perceive him the way audiences always have without any further exploration.

These aspects bring the film down where it could have soared and its long runtime, which is certainly felt, doesn't help as the film meanders a bit through the second half. Those looking for a deeper read on Elvis as a man outside of his career might walk away disappointed. But when Elvis is firing on all cylinders, it really delivers the spectacle and entertainment value most audiences are probably expecting from a film such as this one. It’s dramatic in over-the-top fashion and it’s clear the writers have feelings about Elvis’ exploitation via Colonel Tom Parker, whose gambling issues and increasing greed make him an easy villain, especially when everything he tells the audience is not what they see play out in the story.

Austin Butler takes his role as Elvis very seriously. From his mannerisms to his gyrating on stage, Butler nails the performance overall, though it could have been more emotionally effective had the film expanded on Elvis' interiority. Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker is not for everyone and the actor's portrayal is occasionally, if unintentionally, comedic, like a mustache-twirling villain ready to pounce and take advantage of a situation at any given moment. It's also hard to gauge what Hanks is trying to aim for because the heavy prosthetics and makeup make it difficult to read him.

The film showcases its scenes through different perspectives — Tom Parker’s, Elvis’, and the audience (the ones watching from behind a screen and those screaming at the edge of the stage in the film). Cleverly edited scenes and montages cover much of Elvis’ life, including his acting gigs throughout the 1960s, while prolonged focus on other things such as his 1968 Christmas special and Las Vegas residency make up the rest. Elvis seems perfectly content being a glitzy, bejeweled extravaganza, even when the film’s nearly three-hour runtime leaves its energy — which never fully recovers after the first half — waning by the end.

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The 46 Best Movies on Netflix Right Now (April 2024)

Spring is finally in the air, but that doesn't mean you can't still stay in and have a great movie night. As new plants start to grow, so does Netflix's movie selection, from romances like Love & Basketball and Set It Up to recent Oscar contenders like Rustin and Nyad . Whether you're looking for something deep and thought-provoking or light for the whole family, there are a plethora of incredible films on Netflix. With over 40 amazing movies on this list alone, it can be difficult to choose, but our carefully written recommendations will help you find just what you're looking for.

Rest assured, this list has been carefully considered and curated by seasoned Collider editors with decades of combined experience — not to mention a passion and enthusiasm for the medium. Only the crème de la crème has made the cut. Read on to discover the best movies to watch on Netflix right now.

For even more recommendations, check out our list of the best shows on Netflix , best comedies on Netflix , and best dramas on Netflix .

Disclaimer: These titles are available on US Netflix.

Editor's note: This article was updated April 2024 to include Four Daughters.

'Four Daughters' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 85% | imdb: 7.3/10, four daughters.

Release Date July 5, 2023

Director Kaouther Ben Hania

Runtime 107 minutes

Genres Documentary

Read Our Review Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania , Four Daughters is an Arabic-language documentary film that explores the true story of a Tunisian woman whose two eldest daughters were radicalized by Islamic extremists. After the disappearance of her daughters, the filmmaker invites professional actresses to take their place, blending reality and fiction to give the audience an intimate view of the family’s life. The movie was a co-production between France, Tunisia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. Four Daughters premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the prestigious Palme d'Or Award. The film received near-universal acclaim and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 96th Academy Awards. Critics have lauded Kouther Ben Hania’s form-breaking approach to the film, and that masterful storytelling is what makes this documentary all the more engaging. Four Daughters makes the lives of its subjects come alive in heartbreaking detail in a way that few other documentaries have done before.

Watch on Netflix

'American Graffiti' (1973)

Rotten tomatoes: 95% | imdb: 7.4/10, american graffiti.

Release Date August 1, 1973

Director George Lucas

Cast Candy Clark, Paul Le Mat, Ron Howard, Charles Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Richard Dreyfuss

Runtime 110

Genres Drama, Comedy, Documentary

George Lucas ’s directorial debut, American Graffiti is a coming-of-age comedy-drama starring Richard Dreyfuss , Ron Howard , and Paul Le Mat . The film follows the adventures of a group of teens in 1960s Modesto, California, on the last day of summer as they grapple with their futures. The film is comprised of a series of vignettes that come together to tell a concurrent story of cruising culture, rock-and-roll, greasers, and mysterious blondes. Far removed from Lucas’ later creations, American Graffiti is a nostalgic and bittersweet film that speaks to a more thoughtful sensibility. Critically acclaimed, the movie is visually striking and features some great performances, including an appearance by a pre- Star Wars Harrison Ford . The movie is a nostalgic return to the sixties, full of heart and humor — and it helps that it also has one of the greatest rock soundtracks of all time.

'The Matrix' (1999)

Rotten tomatoes: 83% | imdb: 8.7/10.

Release Date March 31, 1999

Director Lilly Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

Cast Gloria Foster, Hugo Weaving, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Keanu Reeves

Runtime 136 minutes

Genres Sci-Fi, Action

Written and directed by the Wachowskis , The Matrix is a science fiction film that stars Keanu Reeves as a hacker who discovers that the world he lives in is an illusion crafted by malevolent Artificial Intelligence. The movie also stars Laurence Fishburne , Carrie-Anne Moss , and Hugo Weaving and spawned a franchise that includes three sequels and an animated anthology. The Matrix is an ambitious movie that presents the very best in technical filmmaking, winning the Oscars for Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing. The performances are solid, the action is spectacular, and the plot is intricately crafted. The film’s narrative style feels quite surreal, drawing the audience into its ever-expanding world in a way that feels like a blend of Hong Kong action movies, cyberpunk anime, and 1990s techno-futurism. It’s dystopian, slick, and easily one of the best films ever made in its genre.

'Molly's Game' (2017)

Rotten tomatoes: 81% | imdb: 7.4/10, molly's game.

Release Date December 25, 2017

Director Aaron Sorkin

Cast Kevin Costner, Jessica Chastain, Michael Cera, Idris Elba, Bill Camp, Jeremy Strong, Chris O'Dowd

Runtime 141

Genres Biography, Drama, Crime

Based on the true story of Molly Bloom , Molly’s Game was written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and stars Jessica Chastain in the lead role. An Olympic-level skier whose career was ended by an accident, the film follows Molly as she seeks a different kind of gold by running a high-stakes underground poker ring. The movie also stars Idris Elba , Kevin Costner , Jeremy Strong , and more. Sorkin’s directorial debut, the film received critical acclaim, largely thanks to Sorkin's Oscar-nominated script and the phenomenal performances by Chastain and Elba. The role of Molly Bloom earned Chastain her fifth Golden Globe nomination, further cementing her reputation as an acting powerhouse. It’s one of the defining performances of her career, and that alone should make the movie worth watching. Tightly written and expertly paced, Molly’s Game is a complete entertainer from beginning to end and a brilliant showcase of Sorkin’s abilities as a writer and filmmaker.

'Minari' (2020)

Rotten tomatoes: 98% | imdb: 7.4/10.

Release Date 2020-00-00

Director Lee Isaac Chung

Cast Noel Kate Cho, Steven Yeun, Alan Kim, Will Patton

Runtime 115

Genres Drama

Lee Isaac Chung ’s 2020 drama film Minari is a semi-autobiographical story based on Chung's childhood. The movie is set in the 80s and follows a South Korean immigrant family that moves from California to rural Arkansas. Chung wrote and directed the film, which stars Steven Yeun , Han Ye-ri , Alan Kim , Noel Kate Cho , and Youn Yuh-jung , who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

Minari premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the US Dramatic Audience Award. The film received critical praise for its direction and screenplay, as well as for the performances of its talented cast. Minari expresses its intimate multi-generational story through a beautifully shot narrative, and it’s widely regarded as one of the best films of the 2020s so far.

'Love & Basketball' (2000)

Rotten tomatoes: 85% | imdb: 7.2/10, love & basketball (2000).

Release Date April 21, 2000

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood

Cast Dennis Haysbert, Alfre Woodard, Sanaa Lathan, Omar Epps

Runtime 2 hr 7 min

Genres Drama, Romance, Sports

Serving as the feature film directorial debut for Gina Prince-Bythewood ( The Woman King ), Love & Basketball is a cult classic sports romance, also written by Prince-Bythewood. The film co-stars Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps as Monica and Quincy, a pair of passionate athletes determined to achieve their dreams of playing basketball professionally. Supported by Alfre Woodard , Dennis Haysbert , and Kyla Pratt as young Monica, Love & Basketball follows the couple through the year as they pursue not only their respective basketball careers but their ardent relationship as well.

Love and Basketball provides an emotional look at the cost of perseverance and the ambition needed to keep dreams alive. An inspirational movie about working hard and loving fiercely, Love & Basketball continues to touch hearts over 20 years after debuting. - Yael Tygiel

'Uncut Gems' (2019)

Rotten tomatoes: 91% | imdb: 7.4/10.

Release Date August 30, 2019

Director Joshua Safdie, Ben Safdie

Cast Jonathan Aranbayev, Julia Fox, Kevin Garnett, Adam Sandler, The Weeknd, Idina Menzel

Runtime 130

Genres Drama, Comedy, Crime, Documentary

A film that features the best Adam Sandler performance to date, Uncut Gems is a stressful journey into gambling that is as comedic as it is chaotic. Sandler is Howard 'Howie' Ratner, a New York City jeweler who is facing a lot of debts and decides to make one last bet to make it all back. Sound easy? It very much isn’t. Howie will have to somehow talk his way out of more than one dangerous situation and keep his family together while also having an affair.

If it wasn’t clear, this is not the best of guys we’re dealing with, though it is watching him self-sabotage that it all becomes both frightening and fascinating. You may shout at the screen a couple of times in frustration, though there is nothing quite like it. By the time it arrives at its explosive conclusion, you’ll be short of breath as you can finally exhale from the wild ride you’ve been on. - Chase Hutchinson

'Elvis' (2022)

Rotten tomatoes: 77% | imdb: 7.3/10.

Release Date June 24, 2022

Director Baz Luhrmann

Cast Helen Thomson, Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge

Runtime 159 minutes

Genres Biography, Drama, Musical

Read Our Review

Elvis , the biopic about the iconic singer, was one of the big films of 2023. Written, directed, and produced by film auteur Baz Luhrmann , who was behind the 2013 hit The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio . Elvis stars Austin Butler ( Dune Part 2 ) as the rock n’ roll singer who took the world by storm in the 1950s while maintaining a complicated relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker . The film was a box office hit, grossing $288 million worldwide, and was praised by critics for its stunning visuals and its ability to capture Elvis’s larger-than-life presence while also managing to bring in new fans.

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Butler, Best Costume Design, and the always coveted Best Picture. Elvis also stars Tom Hanks ( Cast Away ), Olivia DeJonge ( The Visit ) , Richard Roxburgh ( Van Helsing ), and Kelvin Jarrinson Jr. ( It Comes At Night ).

'American Symphony' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 94% | imdb: 6.9/10, american symphony.

Release Date November 29, 2023

Rating PG-13

Runtime 104 minutes

Genres Biography, Documentary, Music

Even if you just watch the trailer for American Symphony, you will be in tears. The documentary tells the story of Grammy winner Jon Batiste and his wife, Suleika Jaouad , as they live a life of drastic contrast. While Batiste continues to take over the music world, Jaouad goes through an intense battle with cancer. Jaouad begins chemotherapy on the same day Batiste is nominated for 11 Grammy Awards – an obviously unplanned detail that sums up the entire message of the film: that a wonderful thing and terrible thing can happen at the same time. Over the course of the documentary, Batiste is writing a composition that he plans to play for one night only at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival to great reviews, with Variety Magazine calling it “one of the best love stories seen on film.” Currently, American Symphony is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “It Never Went Away” by Batiste and Dan Wilson . - Emily Cappello

'Rustin' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 85% | imdb: 6.6/10.

Release Date November 17, 2023

Director George C. Wolfe

Cast Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman, Chris Rock, Aml Ameen

Runtime 106 minutes

Genres Biography, Drama, History

Currently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Leading Actor for its star, Colman Domingo , Rustin tells the story of Bayard Rustin (Domingo), a civil rights activist heavily inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. Rustin sets out to organize the March on Washington against huge obstacles like racism and homophobia. Those familiar with the March on Washington, which occurred in 1963, know how paramount it was in the fight to end racial discrimination and that it concluded with Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The film follows these incredible historic events while highlighting Rustin’s passion and enthusiasm for civil rights.

The film also stars Aml Ameen ( The Maze Runner ) as Dr. King, Glynn Turman ( Super 8 ) as A. Philip Randolph , Chris Rock ( The Longest Yard ) as Roy Wilkins , and Audra McDonald ( A Raisin In The Sun ) as Ella Baker . Rustin was previously nominated for two Golden Globe Awards for Best Original Song by Lenny Kravitz and Best Performance by Domingo. - Emily Cappello

'Nyad' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 86% | imdb: 7.1/10.

Release Date November 3, 2023

Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin

Cast Anna Harriette Pittman, Rhys Ifans, Annette Bening, Jodie Foster

Runtime 121 minutes

Genres Biography, Drama, sport

Oscar winners Annette Bening and Jodie Foster dominate in the biographical sports drama Nyad . Directed by documentarians Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin , Nyad is their feature directorial debut, which benefits from their experience capturing authenticity. As expected from most sports dramas and biopics, Nyad shares a story of perseverance, the triumphs of determination, and a message of hope, showcased by the undeniable on-screen power of Bening and Foster.

The actors’ dedication to truth in storytelling, as well as their chemistry, shine alongside the smart script written by Julia Cox . Nyad engages the audience with its solid foundation while entertaining through grounded drama based on reality instead of relying on cheap cliches. - Yael Tygiel

'Society of the Snow' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 90% | imdb: 7.9/10, society of the snow.

Release Date December 23, 2023

Director J.A. Bayona

Cast Matas Recalt, Simon Hempe, Esteban Bigliardi, Enzo Vogrincic

Runtime 144 minutes

Genres Biography, Drama, Thriller, History, Adventure

In 1972, a Uruguayan flight crashed while carrying a rugby team on their way to Chile, and the survivors of the wreck had to work together to survive in the treacherously cold weather of the Andes. This real-life event is the subject of J.A. Bayona 's film Society of the Snow , which tackles the incredible story of the survivors and their attempts to survive for two months in the mountains. Director Bayona got the idea for the film upon discovering the book The Society of the Snow , which was written by Pablo Vierci , and used the same name for his film. The cast, largely composed of newcomers in the acting world, is completely composed of Uruguayan and Argentinian performers.

The film was nominated for two Oscars, including Best International Feature Film, a Golden Globe for Best Non-English Language Film, and a Critic's Choice Award for the same category. With a budget of 60 million euros, The Society of Snow is the most expensive Spanish film ever made. With music by Michael Giacchino , the film is acclaimed for its emotional undertone and important message. - Emily Cappello

'May December' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 90% | imdb: 6.9/10, may december.

Release Date December 1, 2023

Director Todd Haynes

Cast Andrea Frankle, Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton

Runtime 117 minutes

While watching May December , I found myself laughing out loud almost as much as I was cringing. I also found myself looking online afterward to see if my reaction was “normal.” This kaleidoscope viewing experience shows the brilliance of May December and how its subject matter — a thirty-six-year-old woman entering into a relationship with a seventh grader and having his three children — will dramatically change depending on the person telling the story. The plot follows actress Elizabeth ( Natalie Portman ) as she shadows Gracie ( Julianne Moore ), the controversial woman (and sex offender) who inspired Elizabeth’s latest film role. Or, depending on your point of view, it’s about Gracie’s experience as Elizabeth enters and disrupts the parts of her she’s been able to keep hidden. Or it’s about Gracie’s much, much younger husband, Joe ( Charles Melton ), as he discovers what Elizabeth’s presence means about his own life.

Written and directed by Todd Haynes , the film was inspired by the real-life relationship between teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and her sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau. The two had children together and eventually married upon Letourneau’s release from prison, as Gracie and Joe did in May December . While it seems impossible that, given these themes, the film would have any laugh-out-loud moments, Haynes has crafted the story in such a way that it’s aware of its own absurdity. And, perhaps, we would find humor in the smallest moments, like Gracie dramatically revealing they “need more hot dogs” just to forget the insanity of the situation we’ve found ourselves in as an audience. - Emily Cappello

'Maestro' (2023)

Rotten tomatoes: 79% | imdb: 6.7/10.

Release Date December 20, 2023

Director Bradley Cooper

Cast Alexa Swinton, Michael Urie, Gideon Glick, Sarah Silverman, Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Miriam Shor, Maya Hawke, Matt Bomer

Runtime 129 minutes

Genres Biography, Drama, Music

One of the most talked-about films of 2023, Maestro tells the story of American composer Leonard Bernstein ( Bradley Cooper ), his rise to fame, and how that fame affected his relationship with long-time love Felicia Montealegre ( Carey Mulligan ). Directed and co-written by Cooper alongside screenwriter Josh Singer , the film was produced by cinema heavy hitters Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg . The film won the American Film Institute (AFI)’ s “Movie of the Year” and was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, including “Best Motion Picture, Drama,” “Best Director,” and “Best Performance by a Male Actor” for Cooper and “Best Performer by Female Actor” for Mulligan. It co-stars Matt Bomer ( In Time ), Vincent Amato ( Unbroken ), and comedian Sarah Silverman .

Leonard Bernstein began his career as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and rose to fame when he filled in for the main conductor, who had fallen ill. Maestro follows Bernstein as he meets and marries Felicia Montealegre, who struggles with her new husband’s infidelity. While Bernstein goes on to compose some of the most famous music in American history, including West Side Story , he struggles with alcohol and other substances, causing more issues in his marriage. - Emily Cappello

'Set It Up' (2018)

Rotten tomatoes: 92% | imdb: 6.5/10.

Two corporate executive assistants hatch a plan to match-make their two bosses.

Release Date June 15, 2018

Director Claire Scanlon

Cast Lucy Liu, Zoey Deutch, Taye Diggs, Glen Powell

Runtime 105 minutes

Genres Romance, Comedy

Read Our Review Anyone who knows me knows I’m a rom-com junkie — obsessed to the point of running a podcast on it, actually. So it’s no surprise that Set It Up , Netflix’s 2018 original film starring Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell , is easily my favorite movie the streamer has on offer, even five years after its premiere. While they’ve made plenty of other rom-coms since the film was released, the story of two down-on-their-luck executive assistants who attempt to set their bosses up with each other for a little free time is easily still their best.

While it’s not the first time Powell and Deutch starred together — that award goes to Richard Linklater ’s Everybody Wants Some!! — and both have gone onto much bigger projects, it’s a sweet and heartwarming film that’s easy to get into, even if the comedy’s a bit cringe-worthy. It’s rare to find rom-coms made after 2005 whose leads have such immediate, entertaining, and believable chemistry and even rarer to find a cast filled with heavyweights who are just as much fun — can you believe this film also boasts the likes of Lucy Liu , Taye Diggs , and Pete Davidson ? Not to mention it’s an easy hour and forty-five minutes, perfect for watching (and rewatching, as I do) whenever you want a little fun in your life. — Maggie Boccella, News Editor

'It Follows' (2015)

Rotten tomatoes: 95% | imdb: 6.8/10.

Release Date March 15, 2015

Director David Robert Mitchell

Cast Loren Bass, Carollette Phillips, Bailey Spry, Lili Sepe, Keir Gilchrist, Maika Monroe

Runtime 100 minutes

Genres Thriller, Horror

Read Our Review In a world filled with remakes and reboots, It Follows defied the norm by finding an original way to tell a mysterious horror story. The story follows Jay ( Maika Monroe ), a teenager who has sex with a guy named Hugh ( Jake Weary ), whom she doesn’t know very well. Afterward, Hugh tells her that she’s inherited a curse that he's now free of. Jay starts to be followed by a phantom who wishes her dead, and the only way Jay can get rid of the curse is if she sleeps with someone else, passing it along to them.

It Follows premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, where it was then a part of a limited theatrical release before moving to a nationwide release in 2015. Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell ( Under the Silver Lake ), audiences raved about the movie not just for its originality but also for their different interpretations of the meaning behind the plot. Throughout its time in theaters, the film continually received great reviews for its terrifying scares and for its deeper meaning. As of October 2023, a sequel is in the works entitled They Follow . - Emily Cappello

'Burning' (2018)

Rotten tomatoes: 95% | imdb: 7.5/10.

Release Date May 17, 2018

Director Chang-dong Lee

Cast Seong-kun Mun, Seung-ho Choi, Soo-Kyung Kim, Jong-seo Jeon, Ah In Yoo, Steven Yeun

Runtime 148 minutes

Genres Drama, Mystery

Based on the short story “Barn Burning” by Haruki Murakami , Burning is a South Korean-Japanese thriller written and directed by Lee Chang-dong in his first film after an eight-year hiatus. The film focuses on Lee Jong-su ( Yoo Ah-in ) after he runs into an old classmate named Shin Hae-mi ( Jeon Jong-seo ), who asks him to feed her cat while she’s away. Jong-su obliges, but upon Hae-mi’s return with a mysterious man named Ben ( Steven Yeun ), things take an odd turn. When Ben admits his illegal and dangerous hobby to Jong-su, Jong-su becomes worried for Hae-mi’s safety. It's a story that knows how to heighten the tension little by little and, by the end, has viewers' hearts racing.

Burning premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, where it won the International Critics’ Prize and was then released in South Korea and later in the United States. Perhaps more impressive, the film was voted as the best Korean film of all time on Korean Screen. Burning appeared on many critics’ “Top 10” lists for 2018, with critics at The A.V. Club and The Los Angeles Times rating it number one. The film also made some “Best Films of the Decade” Lists, proving the power of the writing, directing, and the three lead actors’ performances. - Emily Cappello

'Mobile Suit Gundam I' (1981)

Imdb: 7.9/10, mobile suit gundam i.

Release Date January 1, 1981

Runtime 2 hr 17 min

Genres Animation, Action, Adventure

In outer space, an interplanetary war is raging. This is the story of Mobile Suit Gundam I , a Japanese animated action and adventure movie based on an animated series of the same name. While the battle rages on in the Solar System, there is hope in the form of a mobile battle suit named the “Gundam,” but there’s one problem: the only person able to pilot the massive machinery is a boy named Amuro Ray ( Toru Furuya ). Now, Amuro must fight alongside other kids to save themselves and their families as the war rages on. The film also stars Hirotaka Suzuoki , Toshio Furukawa , Kiyonobu Suzuki , and Shôzô îzuka .

The film, directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Ryoji Fujiwara , premiered in Japan in 1981 and acted as a compilation of episodes 1-13 of the popular Animated series Mobile Suit Gundam . Later dubbed in English and released on VHS tape in the United States in 1999, both the film and its original show material were suddenly popular worldwide, finding a completely new fanbase with English-speaking audiences. - Emily Cappello

'Miss Juneteenth' (2020)

Rotten tomatoes: 99% | imdb: 6.6/10, miss juneteenth.

Release Date June 19, 2020

Cast Kendrick Sampson, Nichole Beharie

Runtime 1 hr 43 min

Miss Juneteenth follows the story of single mother Turquoise ( Nicole Beharie , who won a Gotham award for Best Actress for the role) as she enters her fifteen-year-old daughter Kai ( Alexis Chikaeze ) into the Miss Juneteenth Pageant. Kai is rebellious and doesn’t follow the path her mother has laid out for her willingly, but she ends up making Turquoise proud nonetheless.

When Miss Juneteenth premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, it received critical praise and a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize in the “Dramatic” category. The film continued its victory lap with wins at the SXSW Film Festival, where it won the Louis Black/Lone Star Award, as well as numerous other honors from different festivals across the US. The film had a prominent release date to video-on-demand: June 19, 2020: the 155th anniversary of the holiday Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The film tackles the significance of the holiday while also bringing in other themes within the characters’ lives. In January 2021, it was announced that Miss Juneteenth would be adapted into a television series with NBCUniversal, but it is still listed as “in development.” - Emily Cappello

'Paddington' (2014)

Rotten tomatoes: 97% | imdb: 7.3/10.

Release Date November 24, 2014

Director Paul King

Cast Theresa Watson, Geoffrey Palmer, Lottie Steer, Madeleine Worrall, Tim Downie, Imelda Staunton

Genres Family, Animation, Comedy, Adventure

The filmmakers of 2014’s Paddington had big, fuzzy shoes to fill. Based on the beloved children’s books by Michael Bond that premiered in 1958, Paddington Bear was already known worldwide when he hit the big screen, putting a lot of pressure on the film’s creators to get him right. The story follows a computer-animated Paddington, voiced by Ben Whishaw , as he travels from Peru to London to find a home under the advice of his uncle (the late, great Michael Gambon ) and aunt ( Imelda Staunton , another Harry Potter alum). There, Paddington meets the Brown family, played by Hugh Bonneville ( Notting Hill ), Sally Hawkins ( The Shape of Water ), Madeleine Harris ( Man Down ), and Samuel Joslin ( The Impossible ), who take Paddington home with them. All is going swell until Paddington catches the interest of a taxidermist.

The film was widely critically praised, earning $282 million at the box office and generating a sequel that is regarded by some to be one of the best films ever made. The film is fun and light and also has a surprising amount of depth for what might be viewed as a “kid’s movie.” It contains an all-star cast, with additional stars like Julie Walters ( Billy Elliot ), Nicole Kidman ( The Hours ), and Matt Lucas ( Bridesmaids ), and an excellent score by Nick Urata . The film won awards from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and a British Screenwriters’ Award for Best Screenplay by Paul King. It was also nominated for two BAFTA Awards. No matter your age, Paddington is sure to put a smile on your face. - Emily Cappello

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Netflix viewers left in disbelief after rediscovering dark psychological thriller with huge plot twist

A 2022 film with a huge plot twist has netflix viewers in disbelief.

Callum Jones

I think we can all recall some pretty incredible and unexpected plot twists over the years in some of our favorite shows.

It's what it keeps viewers talking for years to come, but with the frequency TV and film is released nowadays, many get lost to the abyss.

One film that is getting its renaissance on social media is a certainly falls into this category stars Mel Gibson and features an unbelievable plot twist.

An official synopsis for the dark thriller reads: "A provocative and edgy radio host must play a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a mysterious caller who's kidnapped his family and is threatening to blow up the whole station."

Gibson stars in the film as Elvis, the radio host who you can call to talk to about 'all your issues and problems'.

When a caller named Gary dials in, things for Elvis take a dramatic turn, but how will things end up?

In case you haven't seen it and the synopsis doesn't give it away, the film in question is called On The Line .

The film has been the hot topic of conversation on Facebook's 'Netflix Bangers' - a place where a lot of folks go to see what everyone on the streamer is watching.

"I need to watch a movie with a plot twist that’ll have me in disbelief for days," one person wrote on the Facebook group.

"On The Line with Mel Gibson really surprised me with the twist at the end. Watched it on Netflix yesterday," one person immediately commented.

Other Facebook users commented how they were left in disbelief at the thriller.

While the plot twist may be pretty incredible, On the Line did not particularly review very well, and some social media users agreed.

One commented: "that twist was SO dumb tho."

The film sits at a lowly 20 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes , with only a handful of positive reviews.

One of them comes from Tim Cogshell at FilmWeek (KPCC - NPR Los Angeles), who penned: "This is a really good Mel Gibson film."

However, those type of reviews were very much few and far between.

The Decider's Jesse Hassenger wrote: "A vengeful caller sending a frazzled shock-jock on an overnight odyssey isn’t a bad idea. But On the Line is the kind of movie that thinks it can win the game with a Hail Mary pass in the last ten minutes"

While Terry Staunton, from the Radio Times, said: "The acting is across-the-board woeful, with Gibson all-but sleepwalking through his role, and the preposterous denouement serves only to compound viewers' suspicions that the whole affair has been a waste of their time."

I guess you can't please everyone.

If you want to give it a whirl, On the Line is streaming on Netflix now.

Topics:  Netflix , Film and TV

@ CallumJ2709

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