Elvis (2022)

 There is a scene early in Baz Lurhmann's 'Elvis' where a young Presley, then living in a poor mostly black Mississippi neighborhood, follows some intoxicating rhythms first to a shack of a club where a couple is vigorously making out, and then to a tent rivial service. Both venues are throbbing with rhythmic physical motion, both reaching for ecsticy, one in an earthy and one in a spiritual way. Yet both gropings for paradise look and sound striking similar. The parallels to the contradictions at the heart of the life of The King of Rock and Roll, and of the film's central relationship readily present themselves.

Lurhmann, a director known for outsized sensabilites, visual flair and musical excess, is really the perfect choice to direct a biopic of Elvis Presley. As a man who has found  new ways to approach off told tales from Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet to The Great Gatsby and Moulin Rogue, Baz approaches the life story of Elvis Presley through the lense of arguably the most important relationship of his life.

Colonel Tom Parker, not his real name or rank, was Elvis's longtime, yea life long agent. A consument "snowman", Parker famously controlled Presley's career, often forcing it in directions not of his clients preference in order to make quick short term profits, of which he would enjoy a whopping 50% share. The most famous example of Parker's explotive approach are probably the many low quality movies, some of them admittedly endearing, Elvis made in the 50's and 60's. Another example is Elvis's multi year Vegas residency in which The King was almost a form of slave, and under which the drug habit flourished that would untimely take his life.

Cast against type Tom Hanks plays Parker as a sort of evil wizard, employing a voice I've heard described as "Elmer Fudd meets Bela Lugsoi's Dracula." Sensing the ultimate meal ticket Parker casts his spell on Presley early on with elaborate promises of musical fame and fourtine, even an acting career. Parker does indeed deliver, but runs Presley raged over the course of decades. Presley's periodic rebellions against Parker's tight control, sometimes successful and sometimes not, constitute the narrative core of this movie. It is at its heart a series of vignettes, Lurhmann seems to pressume the film's audiance knows the basic outline of Elvis's life story, and from that picks the episodes he's most interested in, like censorship troubles in the 50's, the 68 comeback special, and the 70's Vegas residency.

While the strong qualities of the visual composition and the editing of the film are among its highlights, the movie is carried by its lead. Newcomer Austin Butler has a hell of a star turn here, he is charming and at times captivating. The Elvis persona is so well known that the task of capturing that essence, plus bringing some depth to it, and all the physical things that come with the role, is really a much greater acting challange then it might appear in a world loaded with Elvis impersonators. An Oscar nod is not out of the question, Butler is excellent. (Olivia DeJonge also does a lot without much screen time as Pricilla.)

While 'Elvis' is a film which I like more and more the more I think about it, and which I definitely want to see again, it still remains very much trapped in the confines of the bio-pic formula, even as it finds new and entertaining ways to play around within them. What it does it does very well, for all its external flash at its heart it's a very empathetic, and in the end tragically melancholy story. In this way it's does The King as right as he's ever been done. ***

Twenty Bucks (1993)

 A twenty dollar bill ties together various vignettes as it passes from person to person. Kinda unneven, a little gimmicky, but has its moments. Standouts are Christopher Lloyd and Elizabeth Shue. Also staring Linda Hunt, Gladys Knight, David Schwimmer, Brendan Fraser, Steve Busccimi, David Rasche, Diane Baker, William H. Macey, and Spaulding Gray. **1/2

Born to Kill (1947)

 Robert Wise directs this adaptation of the James Gunn novel 'Deadler then the Male'. Lawrence Tierney is an impulsive asshole and double murderer who becomes obsessed with the woman who discovered his victiams bodies. Unable to land Claire Trevor as she is engaged to Philip Terry, he instead marries her sister Audrey Long. Audrey is richer, nicer, and prettier then Claire but Lawrence can't leave well enough alone. Lawrence's friend Elisha Cook Jr. and detective Walter Slezak further complicate matters for him. Esther Howard adds some color. Melodramatic noir is well executed and unconventional. ***

Daisy Miller (1974)

In 'Daisy Miller' Peter Bogdanovich directs his then lover Cybill Shepherd opposite Barry Brown in an adaptation of the 1878 Henry James novella of the same name. An ill fated love among ex patriot Americans in Switzerland and Italy, even Bogdanovich has owned up to this movie being an odd choice for him at the time. There is certinally a novelty to the piece, and an admirable formality. Talkie and kind of a blah story, but its well mounted and has its charms. Shepherd is pretty and Brown gives an intriguing performance, he may have had a real career in the making but was felled by suicide 4 years later at the age of 27. **1/2 

Road Games (1981)

Australian movie with two American leads. Stacy Keach and his pet dingo long haul freight across the south of the continent. He's a peculiar philosophical sort who likes to quote poetry and insists "Just because I drive truck dosen't make me a truck driver."

Jamie Lee Curtis is an American diplomats daughter Keach picks up hitch hicking. A kind of Rear Window on the road we follow at a distance storylines of vehicles the rig alternately passes and is passed by. Keach pieces together that the driver of a van is a serial killer, or is he just being paranoid?

Hitchcock is an obvious influence here, we even see a Hitchcock magazine among Keach's possessions. The film has a real oddness to it, a very particular sense of humor, dry and at times surreal. It keeps you off balance so your not entirely sure what's happening, there are moments of the unexpected through out and it all culminates in a really fantastic ending. A real find. ***1/2

The Teacher (1974)

 After his best friend is killed in a fall Jay North (TV's Dennis the Menace) embarks on an affair with his teacher (the stunning Angel Tompkins), while being stalked by his late friends traumatized Vietnam veteran brother (Anthony James). This rather casually paced thriller is a teenage boys dream. Shot in 12 days for $65,000. **

The Babysitter (1969)

Her man in jail on murder charges, a bikers moll plans to blackmail the prosecutor with his oldest daughters lesbianism. In that process she stumbles upon the prosecutor having an affair with his youngest child's babysitter. Boasting nudity, tacos, lots of making out, a catchy theme song and a tense bridge game, filmed in black & white it's a very 1960's kind of filth. 

Writer/star George E. Carey wants you to know that young women would be legitametly very attracted to him, and that he'd only sleep with them if his wife was being a consistent shrew. His goal seems to be passing sexplotation off as character study. That conceit dosen't entirly work, but the film is consistently entertaining in a "I can't believe the movies doing this" kind of way. 

One of only three films to star the charismatic Patricia Wymer, who would leave the industry in the early 70's and die tragically in a house fire at age 46. She should have had a longer life and career, and this movie should be more of a cult classic then it is.**1/2

A Night to Remember (1958)

 British film based on Walter Lord's 1955 non fiction book of the same name, widely considered the definitive account on the sinking of the Titanic. Accordingly the film goes for a low key almost documentary style approach, no great central love story, no real melodrama, though it contains approprate moments of absurdity ("Don't you understand the rules yet? I'll put you on report."). Cast includes Kenneth More, David McCallum, Honor Blackman. ***1/2.

Under Capricorn (1949)

 This movie is not easy to find, I had been looking for it for years. 'Under Capricorn' is one of Alfred Hitchcock's least succesful films both criticality and commercially. It was also the last of Hitch's films I had yet to see which was made after he came to America to work for David O. Selznick around 1939/1940.

I had wrongly rememberd it as being a film he was forced to make while under contract with Selznick, the two famously did not get along and had major creative disagreements. This movie is actually the second of two movies, the other being 'Rope' (1948), Hitch made for his own short lived production company Transatlantic Pictures, both movies (along with his next four) where released through Warner Brothers.

'Under Capricorn' does not fall under the directors expected milieu, at least mostly. Which lead me to wonder why he made it if he didn't have to. Well that question is answered in some special features on the DVD, the director was looking for another project to make with Ingrid Bergman, with whom he had previously worked on 'Spellbound' and 'Notorious'.

Based on a play adaption of a novel, and here further adapted (apparently unevenly) by actor and Hitchcock friend Hume Cronyn, 'Under Capricorn' is a lightly gothic love triangle set in 1830's Austrialia.

Micheal Wilding plays an Irish gentleman who comes to Australia with his cousian, the newly appointed colonial governer, in the hopes of making his fortune. There he discovers that Ingrid Bergman, a childhood friend of his sisters, is married to Jospeh Cotten, one of the wealthiest men in New South Wales and a former convict. Cotten takes to Wilding, makes him a buisness partner and has him move into his palatial home, hoping his presence will remind his depressed wife of happier times and cheer her up. What it ends up doing, among other things, is causing Wilding to fall for Bergman. There is also a subplot of family maid Margret Leighton trying to poison Bergman because she has fallen in love with Cotten. Interestingly more then a decade later Wilding and Leighton would marry in real life.

The film is bland and slow, an awkward fit for its director. Only his second movie in color (after Rope), Hitch was obsessed with long dolly shots in this film. The complexity of what the director was trying to do and his perfectionism about it, caused the films Oscar winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff to later note that it was the only film he ever worked on during which he actually broke down and cried.

This film about a Bergman centric love triangle, was not helped when around the time of its release an actual love triangle involving its star, her husband and the man who would become her second husband, leaked out into the press. Ingrid's public image was very much grounded in a sense of her virtue (she was perhaps most famous for playing a nun), and the scandle was even more poorly received then it might otherwise have been, even in what was still a rather puritanical time in America.

Not a money maker, in a 1960's interview on the DVD Hitchcock mentioned that he retained no rights to the movie, having lost them to a bank. A strange artifact of a film, it's not so much that 'Under Capricorn' is a "bad" movie, as it is a misguided one that simply fails to be much good.**

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Everything it needed to be and a little bit more. A real crowed pleaser, perfect summer fair. ***

Happy Gilmore (1996)

 Early Sandler vehical has Adam as Happy Gilmore, a want to be hocky player with anger issues. Circumstances conspire to make Happy aware that he is in fact a golf prodigy, and he goes on tour in an effort to make enough money to save the home of his beloved grandmother, before she losses it due to back taxes. Essentially a remke of 'Caddyshack'. About what you'd expect, not really my thing. **

Murder by Television (1935)

 Corporate competition for a new process for broadcasting television world wide without relays results in murder. A showcase of sorts for the novelty of television, we see cameras, and tubes, and what television images looked like. The film is ironicly rather static, a drawing room mystery melodrama, and I'm still not clear who all was involved in the murder. 

Muder was accomplished via televison broadcasted "death ray". Bella Lugosi plays twins, spoiler. Ethnic house servants provide most of the comic relief, mildly racist. *