Elvis - Movie Review

Starring Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomas, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr, David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Luke Bracey and Dacre Montgomery.

Written by Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce & Jeremy Doner.

Directed by Baz Luhrmann.

★★★½ 

Baz Luhrmann is nothing if he is not a showman, and so it seems the perfect marriage of someone like Baz to take on the larger-than-life Elvis Presley in a biopic that's exhilarating and tragic. I don't know how much Elvis has to say to the 21st century, but in a time where carny-type con-men control so much behind the scenes, it feels timely to tell this story now.

Austin Butler, currently best known as the murderous cowboy-hippie Tex from Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, gives a star-making performance here. I eventually forgot about him and felt like I'm just watching Elvis.

Our narrator, however, is not the King himself, but his Svengali manager Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). "There are some who might see me as the villain in this story," he foreshadows in his odd Dutch accent. As soon as you see and hear him, it takes a moment to decide whether or not to accept what Hanks is going for here. I accepted it, and I saw it as a tightrope-walking performance. Parker feels like an anti-hero con-artist at first, and his ambition did help get Elvis into the national spotlight, but Parker is also one who stayed latched on to Elvis's back like a tick, sucking his meal-ticket dry.

Baz bounces through Elvis's childhood, his instant stardom, his unlikely fame, his hypnotic performances that frightened a Greatest Generation of Dads watching their daughters lose their minds to this hip-swiveling greaser. Who was this southern white boy hanging out with Black entertainers in the segregated 1950's, making their rhythm 'n' blues sound go mainstream? (I was glad his friendship with BB King got as much screen-time as it did.) As we get deep into the 1960's, the movie slows down and we get a better idea of who Elvis really is.

I sat there as the credits rolled, grateful for Elvis's place in music history in a way that I hadn't felt before, but also sad at the lost potential. What if Elvis had figured out around 1965 that Parker was a vampire holding him back more than he was helping his career get to the next level? He's the greatest-selling solo recording artist ever, and yet, if he hadn't been filled with drugs and thrown on the Vegas stage every night while filming C-grade movies during the day, how much higher could he have soared?

It's a movie that asks people to examine their own lives. Who really loves you for you vs. who lets you self-destruct because of how they selfishly benefit off of you? Sadly, Elvis didn't figure out the answer soon enough, and he died alone of a heart attack at age 42.

Jurassic World still #1, Lightyear #2

For the weekend of June 17-19, 2022, Jurassic World Dominion managed to stay ahead of Pixar's Lightyear. JWD didn't have as steep drop as anticipated with its negative reviews, and it still looks favored to join other sequels Doctor Strange 2 and Top Gun Maverick to hit the $400 million domestic mark. It'll at least catch The Batman's $369 million domestic.

Lightyear's stumble out of the gate could mean any number of things. Are animated movies in trouble in these economic times? Other post-pandemic animated movies have been hits (Sing 2) although with lower opening and long legs. Disney's Encanto was beloved but never made $100 million domestic. Would anyone have predicted last year that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 would be more successful than Lightyear? Maybe families know Lightyear will be on DisneyPlus in 2-3 months and have patience. Maybe replacing Tim Allen affected more conservative parents. It's a better opening for Pixar than their last theatrical release 2020's Onward ($39 million) but a far cry from 2019's Toy Story 4's $120 million opening. This makes me more intrigued how Minions: The Rise of Gru will do.

Meanwhile this is the first time since the weekend of June 21, 2013, that the top 3 films each grossed over $40 million (Monsters University, World War Z, and Man of Steel in its second week).

Opens June 24

ELVIS with Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge and Kodi Smit-McPhee.

BLACK PHONE with Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies and James Ransone.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON with the voices of Jenny Slate and Isaella Rosselini.

Jurassic World Dominion is #1

For the weekend of June 10-12, 2022, Jurassic World Dominion managed to out-open The Batman and Top Gun Maverick to be the second largest opening of 2022, behind only Doctor Strange 2. The sixth installment, billed as the final one of the Jurassic franchise, opened just barely below Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom's numbers, but Universal has to be thrilled, especially since it's receiving the worst reviews of the six, even below Jurassic Park III. It will face immediate competition this Friday with Pixar's Lightyear, the first Pixar movie to not go straight-to-DisneyPlus since Onward.

Paramount's pleased with the long legs of Maverick, its third $100 million grosser of 2022 and it'll easily get to $400 million and has an outside shot at $500 million domestic. It's already by far the highest domestic grosser of Tom Cruise's career and will soon pass Mission Impossible Fallout as his highest worldwide grosser.

Opens June 10

LIGHTYEAR with the voices of Chris Evans, Keke Palmer and Taika Waititi.

Under the Banner of Heaven - TV Review

Starring Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Gil Burningham, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Wyatt Russell, Denise Gough, Billy Howle, Chloe Pirrie, Seth Numrich, Adelaide Clemens and Rory Culkin.

Written by Dustin Lance Black, Brandon Boyce, Gina Welch & Emer Gillespie.

Directed by David Mackenzie, Courtney Hunt, Dustin Lance Black, Isabel Sandoval & Thomas Schlamme.

I didn't want to write a review until I'd seen all 7 episodes and saw how they landed the plane. Dustin Lance Black (Milk, Big Love) has taken Jon Krakauer's nonfiction bestseller and fictionalized it for dramatic effect. Did I like the series? Overall, yes. But I'm also so familiar with the culture it's trying to recreate and the history it's trying to tell that I don't know how the show is for people outside of Utah who've never been Mormon. Reviews have overall been positive so I think it's doing its job that way. Let's get into it.

Krakauer's 2003 book took the Lafferty case, where brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty killed their sister-in-law Brenda and their 15-month-old niece Erica in 1984, and used it to condemn The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a whole, primarily the fundamentalist offshoots it inspires. It's fairly straightforward, but it spends as much time on Joseph Smith and Brigham Young as it does Ron and Dan Lafferty.

Here, the miniseries approaches it like a mystery. The central character is a fictitious cop named Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield), a believing Mormon whose own faith is shook by the case and the truths he learns about the origins of the Church. The Laffertys had a lot of sons, and he doesn't know if it was Brenda's husband Allen (Billy Howle) or any of the other four Lafferty brothers. They take enough liberties with the 1984 facts that they change the names of one of the brothers and the father. They also use Allen as a Basil Exposition to the whole affair. Allen himself never lost his testimony in the Church in real life, but here he's a deeply cynical widower who seems more concerned about spelling out "the truth about" 1800's Mormonism for Pyre (complete with ominous background music) than figuring how who killed his wife and daughter.

There's a lot of heavy lifting in the dialogue, and for me it wound up being one of the weaker elements of the show. I lived in Utah for part of 1984, but I moved to Texas a few weeks before the Lafferty murders and so have no memory hearing about the case. Culturally they get a lot of things right, but there are anachronisms that could take me out. (Mormons don't say "Heavenly Father" THAT much.) As the series progresses it does a good job of showing how fundamentalism and the mainstream church are at odds. Of course, the only villains in the show I'd describe as cartoonish are the church leaders. (No General Authority in 1984 would bring up the Mountain Meadows Massacre, let alone try to spin it as a positive.)

As far as the facts go, well, I bring up the aforementioned liberties. It puts forth a bizarre theory that Brigham Young and John Taylor conspired to have Joseph Smith killed so Brigham could take over the church. I think even Brigham's staunchest critics would raise their eyebrows to that. (And why on Earth would Taylor be in the room to get shot four times if that was his plan?)

The acting? Top-notch. Garfield really pulled me in as Pyre, and David Mackenzie vet Gil Burningham (Hell or High Water) is great as the non-Mormon Paiute detective who has to tread through all this weirdness to get to just the facts, ma'am, while putting up with bearded dudes calling him a Lamanite. Sam Worthington's journey as Ron from regular guy to fundamentalist killer is calibrated just right, and Wyatt Russell as Dan shows he's destined for future stardom. (His parents Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn must be proud.) Daisy Edgar-Jones made me wish she had more screen-time as Brenda. She's the normal Mormon wife who finds herself trapped in a family that's getting more and more dangerous and doesn't know how to cool the temperatures of everyone involved.

Worth seeing? Yes. There's plenty in here to chew on and debate and discuss, which is part of what makes good TV.

Top Gun Maverick #1 in 2nd week

For the weekend of June 3-5, 2022, Top Gun: Maverick held strong, dropping a mere 32.1% its second week. In fact it's the 8th best second weekend in box office history. It's well on its way to become Paramount's second highest grosser ever, and with these legs, it could catch Titanic. 

But it also benefitted from not much competition. No new big-budget releases this week, only horror flicks and arthouse fare. David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future failed to find an audience, even with Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart headlining it. Vikram, a 3-hour action thriller from India, wound up doing best.

Opens June 10

JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION with Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and Jeff Goldblum.