This year, we will revisit two American icons whose lives are infamous tragedies, Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe in Blonde and Baz Luhrmann’s sublime ode to the King, Elvis Presley. As someone who knows quite about both of their lives, I had low expectations heading into Elvis. Like Marilyn, Elvis’s combination of mannerisms, body language, and uniquely legendary voice are nearly impossible to recreate. There was a magic in him that came from where he was born, how he was raised. With Elvis, as with Marilyn, they were dirty sweet. They could navigate the puritanical 1950s while flirting with the edge of the danger of the sexual freedom that would explode a decade or so later.
To really understand Elvis’ popularity, and Marilyn’s for that matter, you have to understand the 1950s. It was like a dried-out pile of weeds and Elvis was like a lit match. All that pent-up sexuality, all of that repression that was about to burst into a full-blown wildfire in the 1960s was in every one of Elvis’ hip thrusts. The screaming women — what could they do? It was all beyond their control. The arrival of the Beatles in 1964, a decade after Elvis, would finally rip the lid off the repression and would help launch the upcoming counter-culture revolution.
Just tell me how you resist this — I dare you to even try:
THAT combination of traits, those gifts, that face, that voice, that body — it all lives on the street called OH MY FUCKING GOD.
Even today it lives on that street. Even today it sets one’s loins aflame. In his prime, Elvis was like a sugar cone of melty vanilla ice cream on a hot summer day — you don’t even need a spoon, man. The drippier the better.
You can just feel the devil dancing inside the bodies of young women who have been told to behave for too long. Many of them would never abandon their love for the King.
Finding someone who can do THAT wasn’t going to be easy. But somehow Baz Luhrmann found that magic combo in Austin Butler, last seen being chewed up by Brad Pitt’s dog in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Luhrmann has made his best film since Moulin Rouge and should see his FIRST Best Director nomination with this film, which he richly deserves, and should also pick up Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Costumes, Production Design nods. Luhrmann has made it his own. Meaning you have to be okay with his style, which is somewhat subdued here. He works almost as a visual artist, putting clips together like a collage that doesn’t exactly tell a linear story. In this case, though, there are just a few things he had to get exactly right, the casting of Butler is at the top of that list.
There aren’t many clips available showing just what Butler does with this absolutely incredible turn as Elvis – but this one shows a bit of it:
Generation-Z might not entirely get what this particular thing Elvis did was all about. I mean, in an era with free porn, a guy moving his knees and hips around seems rather tame. But it was, quite simply, a taste of wild sexuality the 1950s just didn’t yet know.
Luhrmann clearly knows his Elvis story, every tiny bit of it, and the more you know about it, the more you will enjoy this movie. You know the highs and you know the lows. That makes this a film that is headed nowhere fast and fun. Luhrmann doesn’t stop the story before it gets to the bad part. That Elvis was taken advantage of by Col. Tom Parker is part of the Elvis lore. Played here by Tom Hanks, he serves as both the loathsome dark force in Elvis’s life, and our guide through Elvis’s story. It has always been a sad tragedy that a mess of a man like Parker outlived the young Elvis who died at just 42.
Elvis’s legacy threads through American history and its geography. You can drive through Mississippi and find his tiny shack in Tupelo. You can drive down to Memphis and visit Graceland. He was a Southern boy, but his influence stretched across the globe. Whatever it was that Elvis had was something ultimately fragile. There were too many people who wanted too much of him. By the time he died, his organs had swelled to double their size.
This film makes you want to reach back in history and rescue Elvis from the clutches of those who sponged off him, who helped drive him to the brink with too many drugs and, dare we say, too many peanut butter and banana sandwiches. It’s a story with an unhappy ending.
Luhrmann rescues the legacy of Elvis, who has been accused of cultural appropriation, by showing his deep roots in the Memphis music scene, having grown up in that world. He was singing the music of Black legends, for sure, and becoming famous in white America for it, but in his heart, he always understood their worth in American history and in his own legacy.
As with so many things in our American story, anyone can reject them outright if they want. Maybe that makes some people feel better, or more righteous — but you will miss this beautiful man’s presence in your life, which isn’t nothing.
When a potential Oscar contender is hyped at Cannes, we’re still really looking at the echo chamber that film criticism has become. While it’s true that the Oscar voters are now more in line with that hive mind than they’ve ever been, audiences are already showing how much they like the movie:
Film criticism and Oscar punditry should never have slept together. Now they have created an unwanted love child. In this case, I would suggest not reading the reviews but instead just spending a few hours with Baz Lurhmann’s exceptional love letter to the King. If he didn’t love his subject he would have made a bad movie. But his love shines through every frame and is contagious. He has managed to revive Elvis with the right actor given the right freedom to deliver this spectacular performance.
Butler is looking at his first Oscar nod, perhaps his first Golden Globe win.
We have a long way to go yet, but I would be surprised if Elvis isn’t a major player across the board.
honestly? my opinion, honestly? At this point, despite the obvious will to push the film into BP territory, this is more on the “oh, how could they snub it?” territory…
Points to be taken into consideration.
Butler is owed NOTHING. He may be easily get lost in the mix when the heavy horses start release their films. Also, music biopic fatigue.
Luhrrman’s career has been bomb after bomb – unless you consider The Great Gatsby a minor hit, which I don’t – since Moulin Rouge!… so I am unsure DGA or anyone at AMPAS feels he’s owed anything at all. Most think he had two hits (Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!) and that’s all about it, the last one being 21 years ago.
Technicals is the field were it can shine on nominations (Film Editing, as usual with Luhrrman, is where it can be catapulted into BP territory)… but honestly, aren’t we always thinking that Editing in his films is the product of some drug overdose and actually works against the natural flow of the film and story (in Moulin Rouge! is quite evident, specially, and the movie barely survives it, in my opinion… which I am aware, is blasphemy for some).
Also the early release… overall, it’s a film that won’t be felt as anything so special afterwards (another biopic, as flashy as it may be) and nothing as original as its main competition so far (Everything Everywhere All At Once)… I think the Top Gun: Maverick thing as a BP contender is more wishful thinking or well paid marketing to try to make happen the impossible (rather than the unlikely). Are we really thinking that Top Gun: Maverick is some kind of Mad Max: Fury Road achievement? Judging by reviews, it ain’t, even in the slightest.
My 2 cents. If any film released so far in theatres in the USA (non-limited) makes it into the top 10, is EEAAO, and that’s still an open question (even if I would love it to happen)
the amount of impressive movies that are coming and that without counting the foreign and indies coming
Having seen it this past Thursday…man, the whole film was a montage.
I hope Baz is fine with his wife Catherine Martin winning Oscars without him, hahaha.
Denis Villeneuve can pick ’em, can’t he? Austin Butler as Feyd, and now Lea Seydoux as Lady Margot (?) in Dune 2.
I can’t get with you purifying Elvis legacy in such a way that attempts to dismiss criticism as some woke overreach and its not. Elvis is no better than many other black artists who did and was doing what he did long before he came around. At best he borrowed and at worst he stole. Thats just reality. STOP TRYING TO TELL PEOPLE OF COLOR HOW TO FEEL. It’s an awful thing to be doing….Sasha. This doesn’t mean the movie is not good or the performance is not great. It maybe but don’t dismiss the criticism of his legacy.
Shouldn’t be Elvis Presley’s fault that he grew up in a black community and was surrounded & influenced by the black artists all around him. Doubt that he smart enough to steal anything-that, to me, would go to the record company. As the film shows, when Elvis was being ‘white-washed,’ he returned to the only musical roots that he knew…
Great review. Critics seem to like it, I don’t count the Bob’s Movie Reviews. This movie had me so giddy and shook up. I mean that literally. Butler really nailed it in a way I didn’t think was possible. As a Baz Luhrman denier, this is the film where I learn to appreciate his vision. No one esle could have made this film. Baz rescued Elvis from the kitsch. Gen Z can go f themselves.
As I suspected, three films from the first half of the year are not going to make it into Best Picture:
Top Gun: No
EEAO: No
Elvis: the most likely, but could easily be brought down by a chorus chanting “cultural appropriation”.
Note: I haven’t seen Top Gun or Elvis yet, but that’s my read thus far.
I think you’re going too fast on EEAAO, discarding it. It will depend on A24 campaigning and the film is clearly loved (way more than TG:M and Elvis), plus has the underdog card to play, and emotional/passion narratives all around… and it is the film that stands out on all counts from the rest. EEAAO has many precedents already of BP nomination for a film that would be completely the opposite of what AMPAS would go for… from Silence of the Lambs (winner), to Moulin Rouge!, Babe, District 9, Mad Max: Fury Road, etc. Considering that there’s buzz for not only one but several performers, the film editing is showy and the Original Screenplay is actually what the branch loves to nominate and award (TRUE ORIGINAL AND RISKY) from time to time, then it is just pending on A24 not overkilling and the critic awards starting the ball in motion…
Personally, I don’t discard just yet, that it could even sweep Picture/Director/Actress/Supp. Actor/Original Screenplay/ Film Editing… it’s worthy on all of these.
i hope so i just hope critics hype also other movies Sarah Polley movie for example has a social revelance theme and is like those actors turned directors known in industry her movie is a small personal passion projectit could pull a lost in translation the father or manshester by the sea type of win in screenplay same as the olivia wilde movie and noah baumbach movie they are highly innonative and takes risks too
A five-man Oscar Best Actor race without Butler in the mix is inconceivable. He’s a new, or at least a currently fresh, kind of star. Like Dean, Brando and Elvis, he’s pulling from somewhere we can’t quite get our hands on. He’s tightly disciplined, and Luhrmann meticulously directs him so the camera can feast on him. Yet with all that in place, he’s also off the chain, unpredictable moment by moment, uncategorizable by the movie’s end.
Will Butler be among the five nominees? Are there seeds in watermelon?
My review of Elvis is here:
https://moviestruck.substack.com/p/elvis-2022
I am going to regret this, but after Cannes reviews I think Elvis is not going to be anywhere even close to the above the line nominations… technicals? Sure, why not. But maybe just a side chance for Actor.
it might get actor it’s less stacked than actress i think only fraser and jackman and dicaprio are locks if bardo is strong cacho could pull a yaltiza from roma ( it’s a basically Innaritu “personal story”) and then there is a fifth place maybe he could sneak in
Did you use the word “lock” in June about three performances no one has seen yet?
well, I used “lock” with whoever would play the main villain in “Misery” for the film adaptation when I read the book and… 😉
Fraser’s character in “The Whale” seems like total Oscar-candy to me.. and he’s an apt actor, so I totally see him nominated and probably winning, if critics embrace the film. And he’s got chances for a double nom as well, let’s not forget about it.
Eventually, I just don’t see the point of the word “lock” being used ever as there is no genuine gain in using it. In a case such as yours, while it’s an impressive thing to call the win (especially with material that doesn’t seem Oscar friendly immediately), Bates winning the Oscar is not actually proof of the calling of the lock being exact, as there is no proof of her winning by notable margins or all versions of the race, nor is there any proof that if another actor would have played the part (or the movie varying in some other ways), that they would have even won at all. It’s only proof of the claim of Bates winning being true. Thus, no matter what happens, you can’t prove that the claim of a “lock” win/nomination being true but if the win/nomination doesn’t happen, it’s an incredibly direct proof of the “lock” claim being incorrect.
Also, I’m already hearing comments from individual people who have read the play The Whale that unless handled with extreme care (which is not often what Aronofsky does), Fraser’s character can very easily become incredibly offensive.
sometimes, you can’t really ignore what’s unstoppable… we can deceive ourselves as much as we want, but we all knew months and months in advance, that Schindler’s List, Titanic or Return of the King were completely unstoppable
i hope sadie sink gets nominated and the screenplay is totally what the branch likes to nominate
i read the adaptations of the son and the whale
the son was made by an european playwriter and jackman is overdue and the whale has a comeback narrative from fraser
yeah i shouldn’t have used lock lol
I didn’t see all the Cannes reviews, but ”Elvis” got a 12-minute standing ovation there. And even the not-so-good reviews for ”Elvis” usually include plenty of praise for Butler.
we better not talk about Cannes “standing ovations”…
If Top Gun: Maverick manages to barely top Elvis (which I’ll see before next weekend) at the N. American domestic weekend box office, then all the more reason for it to be given priority Best Picture consideration before Elvis, wouldn’t you say?
UPDATE: Congrats to Elvis for winning the weekend. Top Gun: Maverick still deserves at least an equal amount of Best Picture consideration.
Nope, I wouldn’t say that. First, for the record, Deadline.com is reporting that ”Elvis” was No. 1 and won the weekend battle with its opening of $31.5 million, beating the fifth weekend of ”Top Gun: Maverick” with $29 millon. But even if those positions were reversed, I don’t think box office grosses are necessarily indicative of better Oscar odds. If that were true, the new ”Doctor Strange,” ”Jurassic World Dominion” and ”The Batman” would be Best Picture contenders, too. By the way, the original ”Top Gun” (1986), a pretty big blockbuster in its day, got only 4 Oscar nominations: Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Editing, and it won for Best Song: ”Take My Breath Away.”
I was referring more to Top Gun: Maverick’s repeat viewings and commercial legs. Those types of films, arguably an endanger species, at least deserve to be Best Picture “filler” before the annual prestige, Wikipedia article-style biopic (Elvis sight unseen).
Also, the first Top Gun only reached its “’80s iconic” status when it become the first major film to become a VHS staple in homes within a year of its theatrical run.
Well, you can never overestimate the lead actor’s chance to do well. One place they don’t seem to do well is the Best Director race. Somehow they win acting races, I guess the directors didn’t help them.
I am no mood to do the research, but I bet it’s been quite awhile since a film got a Best Director nomination with a Metacritic score as low as 63, It’s early, but I think this is disqualifying.
I am not going to predict the rest, in part because Bohemian Rhapsody was a heaping pile of lies and homo-hating and still managed to sneak into some races it shouldn’t have. Probably because people bought into the gay/AIDS angle even though that whole storyline was inaccurate to say the least.
But what sinks this film, I think is that of the 49 reviews on Metacritic, only one review got a 100. The Black Phone did better, 1 review of 100 in 33 reviews for a total score of 65.
To compare, Top Gun Maverick got 9 or 63 and Everything Everywhere got 11 of 54 reviews to be 100. The latter two films have enthusiasm behind it. Elvis, on the hand, is just appreciated, not loved. Heck, even this year’s CODA (Cha Cha Real Smooth) got 3 100’s out of 42 reviews for a total score of 69.
I could be wrong, obviously. But I could also be right. I mean CODA only got 1 100 review although it’s overall score was 74. We’ll see.
SIde Note – Looks like TOP GUN is amazing in the Box Office department, back up to #1 after two weeks away from the top. (Another reason I don’t think Elvis is ultimately competitive)
wait only joker had a director nod with a lower Metacritic and that was a big office hit
yeah, I figured there was one in the mix, but that it would be rare.
I thought the first half of the movie was a mess ! Butler was good as Black Leather Elvis and Fat Elvis ! I liked Tom Hanks as Satan crossed with Sydney Greenstreet ! People should check out John Carpenter’s Elvis with Kurt Russel’s Emmy nominated performance and Pat Hingle as the Colonel and Shelley Winters as his mother !
My cinemas sound was off which I suspect took a lot away from the experience for me. Love Hanks, but he felt wildly miscast here. Lots to like. I’ll watch again.
One part of the picture I couldn’t or didn’t understand> There’s a scene where Elvis is talking to Priscilla and he says “you’re 40 and I’m 50”. That must have been a mistake because he died at the age of 42.
Did anyone else see that part of the movie?
I think he said WHEN you’re 40, I’ll be 50.
Oh!!! Thanks.
Just saw it and I agree. Butler is phenomenal. Definitely a nod for him, director, production design, costumes. Maybe screenplay and editing?
I just left the movie and its one of the best biopics ever. I appreciate how Baz “modernized” it with a little rap and the imagery, intercutting comics. I would also agree that costumes should be nom’d.
I was immediately dazzled by the cinematography and sharp editing.
If Bohemian Rhapsody can win for their subpar, sloppy editing job, Elvis runs circles around that picture!
As a huge Elvis fan despite him being well before my time (I’m 36), my expectations for this film were fairly high. I do feel the decision to tell Elvis’ story from the perspective of Col. Parker was an odd and unnecessary decision. And I was also a bit frustrated that even with a lengthy runtime we didn’t really dive into Elvis’ story beyond the surface. That said, the parts that the movie does get right, especially the musical performances, soar and I settled on feeling the film is a beautiful celebration of Elvis that didn’t shy away from the tragic parts of his story. And t it left me wanting more – more about Elvis’ upbringing in a black community (I loved the childhood scene intercut with his first performance) and his inseparableness from black culture, more on how Sam Phillips founded him, more about everything. I could watch a whole move built around the creation of the 1968 comeback special.
Austin Butler though is the real story. He was unbelievable. He does not look like Elvis in the face, but he truly becomes him. The commitment Butler put into the role is palpable and his performance, again especially the musical performances, is mesmerizing. Adrenaline inducing. He captures Elvis – his voice, charisma, movement, joy, sadness, loneliness – in a way I have not seen in a biopic that I can recall. Really hoping the Academy remembers this performance – just outstanding.
I would’ve preferred if perhaps the first half of the film could’ve been told by his mother, then, maybe the second half by his silent dad Vernon, after Glady’s death. Better yet, maybe Elvis’ guardian angel, his deceased twin brother could’ve narrated from the heavens. The less I see of Tom Hanks, the better. Perhaps Elvis’s parents could’ve given their view on the sneaky Colonel Parker.
I couldn’t agree more. We needed more points of view, much less from the Colonel and more people sizing up the parasitical charlatan. He fooled a lot of people, but I’d love to have heard them explain, even after the fact, as happens in some biopics, how he pulled the wool over their eyes. I understand Baz feeling obligated to re-create the era. But he didn’t have to let only the points of view at the time, in the moment, control the script. And I’d like to have heard Elvis talk more about himself, what was happening to him and the Colonel’s hold on him.
My cinemas sound was off which I suspect took a lot away from the experience for me. Love Hanks, but he felt wildly miscast here. Lots to like. I’ll watch again.
Sasha, I’m so happy you loved ”Elvis”! It’s a perfect match of moviemaker and subject. Thank god, Baz Luhrmann tackled it, and gave it the electricity, visuals and showmanship it deserved. I absolutely agree that ”Elvis” is his best movie since ”Moulin Rouge!” But when you say that ”Elvis” should bring Luhrmann ”his next Best Direction nomination,” here’s the astonishing thing: The Academy has never nominated him for Best Director. With ”Moulin Rouge!,” Luhrmann was nominated for Best Director by the DGA, the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes. He tied with Ron Howard (”A Beautiful Mind”) for Best Director at the Broadcast Film Critics. And though ”Moulin Rouge!” got 8 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, the directors branch snubbed him.
I hope folks revisit ”Elvis” and realize Luhrmann created more than a Presley biopic. As he puts it, it’s a ”three-act, pop-cultural opera” that explores America from the 1950s to the 1970s through the prism of sex, race and rock ‘n’ roll. For older audiences, ”Elvis” might be a nostalgia trip, but for younger audiences, it’ll be a sexy introduction to a legend whose legacy still rocks this nation. Austin Butler’s tour de force is a new gold standard, and I hope it leads him to a golden statuette.