ELVIS — CANNES 2022

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This soup-to-nuts musical biopic about Elvis Presley is a stunner.

Wow!

Sit back and enjoy.

Best if you're watching "Elvis" on a big screen; this is 100% a BIG SCREEN movie.

No holding back.

Tom Hanks delivers the most superb performance of his legendary career as con-man/music agent Colonel Tom Parker.

Hanks delivers the goods in spades. This is the work of a dedicated creator of character.

Tom Hanks is truly an actor's actor.

Likewise, “Elvis” proves to be director/co-screenwriter Baz Luhrmann’s best film by far.

As for the film’s lead actor, Austin Butler is phenomenal in his deeply executed portrayal of Elvis Presley.

Butler’s performance is much more than an impersonation. You feel in touch with the real Elvis Presley through Austin Butler’s dynamic use of acting craft.

Fire, baby.

Talk about range. 

This young man has range to spare.

And yes, that's Butler singing every Elvis song with his own vocal cords and skill.

Insane in the membrane.

Shut the front door, and listen to unadorned perfection.

Let’s just give Austin Butler his Best Actor Oscar now.

Credit goes to co-screenwriters: Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner for authoring a truly masterful script.

Film courses will focus on this movie.

Mandy Walker's cinematography is strictly superb.

On fleek bitches.

 

Elvis Presley’s personal and public story is a cautionary tale connected to the turbulent American decades that witnessed political assassinations, rampant racism, puritanical assaults on freedom, and the best voice that you could possibly imagine, namely that of one Elvis Aaron Presley.

Baz Luhrmann and his truly gifted team of dedicated actors and filmmakers do Elvis Presley’s rich musical legacy proud.  

If you only see one movie from 2022, "Elvis" is the one to choose.

Rated PG. 159 mins.

TONIC

      Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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For a standard issue paint-by-numbers crime thriller, "Tonic" has its charms.

Think, James Toback's 1978 neo-noir "Fingers," where Harvey Keitel plays a pianist with lots of big city trouble on his hands.

Granted "Fingers" is a better movie. You takes your chances.

Still, there's something endearing about watching Billy Blair ("Machete Kills") pour on the inner turmoil as Sebastian Poe, a small town musician in seven grand worth of debt to Officer Terry, a dirty cop played by an equally intense Jason Coviello ("Yellowstone").

B-movie baby.

Plot holes notwithstanding, Blair's full commitment to his doomed character give the picture its sense of suspenseful anguish.

Some scenes veer toward camp; the filmmakers could have pushed more in that direction to give the movie a much-needed dose of humor.

Officer Terry entertains some twisted thoughts about how to treat Poe's testicles, and he doesn't mind grabbing them to his satisfaction.

Oh but for the demented bromance between Poe and his sadistic master. They even dress the same.

Cute couple of opposites attracted to one another.

As for a life-affirming ending; who needs that in 2023?

Not Rated. 103 mins.

 

ONE FOR ALL: THE DJ CHRIS VILLA STORY

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As pedestrian as it gets, this amateurish documentary confirms the idea that DJing represents the antithesis of musicianship.

You could argue that DJs ruin songs by altering their original production with endless scratching, clipping, and mechanical manipulation. Oh, and endless fooling around with headphone placement comes with the territory.

Talk to any working musician about the live work they lose to DJs, and you'll get an ear full.

Curating a cool song list used to be the province of Jones Generation music lovers who would make endless mix tapes (cassettes) to impress their friends. That was cool.

For as much of a nice guy as "One For All" paints its subject, Chris Villa's personal story comes across as mundane.

Villa's effort at winning the Red Bull 3Style World Championship, sets the movie's minimal narrative arc.

Clearly, there is a closed community of people who make the rules and harvest money for Red Bull, but we don't get any behind-the-scenes dirt.

Would-be DJs out there might get a whiff of inspiration from watching Chris Villa's story, but you won't learn any craft. That is if you consider rhythmically fiddling with faders and dials much of a craft.

Personally, I say get an instrument, like a guitar, and learn how to play it.

Music doesn't come from DJs.

Not Rated. 110 mins.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

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Insufferable.

This overwrought, oh-so-gently racist, movie is a dog of stupidity.

You can sift through the relevance of Hollywood handing this filmic garbage seven Oscars.

Pawns.

Vomiting all of the time now.

The filmmakers attempt in vain to obfuscate their pointed barbs at America's sanctions against China, as spun through a subplot involving the IRS audit of an immigrant family's coin laundry business.

Clever, not.

A softball lesbian subplot involving Joy (Stephanie Hsu), the troubled twentysomething daughter of the film's matriarch Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), functions to give the movie a phony hook upon which to hang its muddled narrative.

Universe-jumping breaks the movie into dozens of narrative splinters that add up to, well, dozens of meaningless splinters.

"Everything Everywhere All At Once" is a steaming example of visual, sonic, and thematic noise.

Propaganda for propaganda's sake.

Rated R. 129 mins.

ZERO STARS