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.

AMERICAN MURDERER

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Writer/director Matthew Gentile announces his presence as a capable filmmaker with a gritty true crime thriller that takes no prisoners.

If casting is everything then Gentile proves the theorem.

Tom Pelphrey confirms his status as an actor of substance, behind his impressive turn in "Ozark," as Jason Brown, a con man with a taste for robbery and murder.

"American Murderer" may not be the most inventive title for a movie that necessarily pulls up its stakes a denouement too soon, but it delivers the goods with efficiency and style.

For her part, Jacki Weaver tears a phone book in half as our freaky con man's disillusioned mother Jeanne. This phenomenal scenes blows the doors off the movie.

Great writing.

The ever stalwart Ryan Phillippe keeps the heat on high in his search for a culprit who's smarter than his actions tell.

Here is a workmanlike thriller to break out the popcorn for all your entertainment needs.

Hollywood should take notice, Matthew Gentile is a filmmaking force to be reckoned with.

Solid supporting performances from Idina Menzel, Paul Schneider, Moises Arias, and Kevin Corrigan put the icing on the cake.

Ta da.

Rated R. 102 mins.

LICORICE PIZZA

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Paul Thomas Anderson shits the bed of his own movie with a couple of truly horrendous scenes of anti-Asian caricature.

Not funny. Not right. Just openly insulting, humiliating, and mean.

Deal-breaker.

The ostensibly comic scenes cut "Licorice Pizza" into as many parts as slices of a classic cheese pie.

The outrageous scenes sit apart from anything else in the movie.

Not good.

Charitable to call Anderson's heavy-handed racist text and subtext insensitive.

Pointed, might be more like it.

For all of the '70s era sex joie de vivre that Anderson celebrates, the writer/director ruins his own inspired creation.

So while its ensemble efforts of actors and filmmakers create something magical, the spell is broken.

"Licorice Pizza" is doomed to the confines of its racist attitudes, that it normalizes by its very existence.

What a waste.

Rated R. 133 mins.

ZERO STARS

BLONDE

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Straight masterpiece.

Screenwriter/director Andrew Dominik's filmic adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates's 2000 fictionalized novel of the same title serves as a trenchant indictment of capitalism, the media, and of an incoherent American patriarchy that knows nothing but abuse.

Ana de Armas is uncanny in her fearless portrayal of Hollywood's most iconic actress.

Stunner.

It's a coincidence that in the same year that Austin Butler embodied Elvis Presley with an otherworldly performance of rigor and inspiration, Ana de Armas hits a similar if not more profound height of authenticity.

Elvis and Marilyn were each prisoners of their enormous fame/marketability.

Ana de Armas may just be the finest actor of our time.

Unforgettable.

Spellbinding.

Through the darkness and pain of a constant stream of traumas, Norma Jeane Baker battled demons near and remembered with a sharp intellect that Andrew Dominik keenly exposes through Ana de Armas's high-wire performance.

Indisputably, Andrew Dominik is a true master artist of Cinema.

The proof is in the pudding.

Gracefully cuts quick to the bone.

Audiences familiar with Dominik's past films, "Chopper" (2000), "The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford" (2007), and "Killing Them Softly" (2012), might have an inkling for the depth of visually dynamic storytelling on display in "Blonde."

"Blonde" functions as a feminist narrative that digs in dark corners of 20th century American reality and ideology where beauty is a trashy fad object to be worshiped, reviled, used up and thrown away.

Rigorous feminist think piece. You bet.

Joyce Carol Oates was no slouch.

So, if you're real serious, read Joyce Carol Oates's novel "Blonde," because you can.

And, besides, Joyce Carol Oates is still alive at the time of this writing, and even gave Ana de Armas

props for her exquisite portrayal of Norma Jeane Baker/Marilyn Monroe.

Right on.

Norma Jeane Mortenson revolted against the cold indifference of those who imagined they owned her, which was just about everyone.

Rebel.

It was a herculean effort that could not be sustained for very long.

What we are left with is just a memory of a rare, fragile, talented young woman being bought and sold into modern-day slavery under the guise of Hollywood.

These days people give their lives away on social media and YouTube for pennies. 

People's lives are reduced to content.

This phenomenal film is not that.

This is Cinema.

Take your content and shove it.

Rated NC-17. 166 mins.