Elvis (2022)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Costume, Best Hair and Makeup, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound  The obligatory biopic!  Like recent years, this is about a famous musician but it is less Rocketman and more Nightmare Alley: The Musical.

Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) is a carnival grifter, a snowman, as he calls it.  He is constantly looking for the next big con, an act that thrills and titillates.  He finds it in Elvis Presley (Austin Butler), a young singer with a unique act:  he can sing Black people's music while being white.  Elvis grew up dirt-poor in the Black section of town, dreaming of becoming a comic book superhero.  He was influenced by gospel, rhythm & blues, and country western music and had released one record that was getting airplay.  Parker saw a boy filled with fear and knew he could mold him into a star.  But as the money and the fame grew, Elvis became bolder, wanting to expand across the globe, which threatened to expose Parker's deepest secret.

I think this is the first truly depressing Baz Luhrmann film.  Like, Moulin Rouge was a tragedy in the classical sense but Elvis is a downer.  And I'm going to be frank here, it's the first Baz Luhrmann where the music kind of sucks.  Which makes no sense!  It's ELVIS, for God's sake.  How do you fuck that up?And I get what he was doing, showing modern artists who have sampled Elvis's songs and reinvented them for a modern age, but it didn't match the tone of the film at all for me.  It ruined the immersiveness.  

Austin Butler.  Did he look like Elvis?  A little.  Enough.  In certain angles.  He certainly did his best.  Did he sound like Elvis?  Holy shit, yes, he did.  I have no idea what Austin Butler sounds like in real life, this was the first thing I've ever seen him in but I have heard Elvis in interviews, historical footage, and music (duh) my entire life and Butler nailed it.  Is it enough to get him Best Actor?  We'll see.

Cinematography is not my favorite so far.  Definitely a frontrunner for Production Design, though.  Second place on Costumes.  Making Tom Hanks look like Danny DeVito's Penguin is a Hair and Makeup accomplishment, sure, but it's not beating Colin Farrell's Penguin.  

Elvis is back in theaters for a limited run and it is currently streaming on HBO Max.