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• Baz Luhrmann’s <i>Elvis</i> Is an Exhilarating, Maddening Spectacle—But One Made With Love

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Is an Exhilarating, Maddening Spectacle—But One Made With Love

B az Luhrmann’s movies—even the great ones, like his 1996 Shakespeare-via- Tiger Beat romance Romeo + Juliet , or The Great Gatsby, from 2013, a fringed shimmy of decadence and loneliness—are loathed by many for what they see as the director’s garishness, his adoration of spectacle, his penchant for headache-inducing, mincemeat-and-glitter editing. But in 2022, in a culture where long-form series storytelling reigns supreme, Luhrmann’s devotion to two-and-a-half-hour bursts of excess is pleasingly old-fashioned, like a confetti blast from a cannon at a county fair. It’s true that his movies don’t always work, or rarely work all the way though, and that’s certainly the case with Elvis, his sequined jumpsuit of a biopic playing out of competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival . At times it’s barely a movie—the first hour or so is exceptionally fragmented and frenetic, as if Luhrmann were time-traveling through a holographic rendering of Elvis Presley’s life, dipping and darting through the significant events with little time to touch down. But through all the arty overindulgences, one truth shines through: Luhrmann loves Elvis so much it hurts. And in a world where there’s always, supposedly, a constant stream of new things to love, or at least to binge-watch, love of Elvis—our American pauper king with a cloth-of-gold voice—feels like a truly pure thing.

Luhrmann and his co-writers Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner use the story of Elvis’ supremely crooked manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks, lurking beneath prosthetic jowls), to frame the larger, more glorious and more tragic story of Elvis. Though he was born in Tupelo, Mississippi—his identical twin, Jesse Garon, died at birth— Elvis grew up poor in Memphis, adoring and being adored by his mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson). Luhrmann shows us Elvis as a preadolescent, splitting his time between a juke joint and a revival tent down the road. (Too young to get into the former, he could only peer through a crack in the wall, entranced by the Black blues guys performing inside.) These are the twin poles of young Elvis’ life, the foundation for all that came after, and Luhrmann connects them in one extremely stylized shot: in Elvis world, gospel and blues are literally connected by one dirt road. This junior version of Elvis goes back and forth freely, drinking deeply from one well before moving to the other, and back again.

His rise happens quickly, and before you know it, he’s become the Elvis we know, or the one we think we know: he’s played by Austin Butler, who goes beyond merely replicating Elvis’ signature moves (though he’s terrific at that); he seems to be striving to conjure some phantasmal fingerprint. For long stretches of the movie, Butler’s Elvis doesn’t really have many lines: we see him, in his pre-fame years, jumping out of the truck he drives for a living and walking down a Memphis street, swinging a guitar in one hand a lunchbox in the other. Did the real-life Elvis actually do this? Doubtful. But isn’t it exactly what you want to see in a movie?

Read more reviews by Stephanie Zacharek

Before long, our movie Elvis has landed a slot performing on the Louisiana Hayride, and Sam Phillips over at Sun Studios—who specializes in “race records,” music made by Black performers—takes a chance on him at the behest of his assistant, Marion Keisker, who hears something in the kid. Elvis cuts a record. Then he’s jiggling onstage in a loose pink suit, its supple fabric hiding more than it reveals, but even so, the world gets a hint at the secrets contained therein. The girls, and most of the boys, too, go nuts.

Butler conjures the guilelessness of Elvis’ face, his soft yet chiseled cheekbones, the look in his eyes that says, “I’m up for anything—are you?” He and Luhrmann hop through the major events of Presley’s life, sometimes going for long stretches without taking a breath. Elvis is exhausting, a mess; it’s also exhilarating, a crazy blur you can’t look away from. (Catherine Martin’s costume and production design is, as always, exemplary—period-perfect but also brushed with imaginative flourishes.) We see Elvis shopping at his beloved Lansky Brothers, lured in because one of his favorite musicians, B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) shops there. We see him succumbing to the dangerous manipulations of Colonel Parker, and later kicking against them, most notably as he mounts his 1968 comeback special. (He was supposed to put on a garish Christmas sweater and sing some piece of holiday dreck, not become the stuff of legend in a black leather suit that, you just know, would be hot to the touch if only you could get close enough to it.)

But as we know, Elvis loses that fight. Colonel Parker sends a quack known as Dr. Nick to pump him full of drugs, to keep him on his feet even as he’s going out of his mind. The tragedy escalates. Does Luhrmann show us the real Elvis, or is he just re-embroidering the Elvis who already lives in our imagination? The answer seems to be that Luhrmann sees equal value in fact and myth. Though Elvis more or less follows the facts as we know them, there are moments of invention that are piercing. When Elvis’ long-suffering wife Priscilla (played by Olivia DeJonge ) finally leaves him, he chases after her, rushing down the staircase at Graceland in pants and a purple robe, a drugged-out mess. She can’t take it anymore; she’s got to leave, and she’s taking little Lisa Marie with her. Elvis stands there in bare feet, begging her not to go. And when he realizes he can’t stop her, he says, more in defeat than in hopefulness, “When you’re 40 and I’m 50, we’ll be back together—you’ll see.” Even if Elvis never really uttered that line, its map of romantic longing had long been written in his voice. In Elvis, when Butler sings, it’s Elvis’ voice that streams out, in lustrous ribbons of recklessness, of ardor, of hope for the future. That voice is a repository of every joy and misery that life could possibly hold.

Read More: He’ll Always Be Elvis: Remembering the ‘King’ 40 Years On

When the trailer for Elvis was released, a few months back, the responses on social media, and among people I know, ranged from “That looks unhinged! I’m dying to see it!” to “I can’t even look at that thing,” to “What accent, exactly, is Tom Hanks trying to achieve?” (The movie, incidentally, explains the unidentifiable diction of this man without a country, and probably without a soul.) In the movie’s last moments, Luhrmann recreates one of the saddest Elvis remnants, a live performance of “Unchained Melody” from June of 1977, just two months before his death. Butler, his face puffed out with prosthetics, sits at a grand piano littered with Coca Cola cups and a discarded terrycloth towel or two. The song, a swallow’s swoop of longing, begins pouring out of Elvis’s wrecked body—but as we watch, Luhrmann pulls a mystical switch, and footage of the real Elvis replaces the magnificent Butler-as-Elvis doppelgänger we’ve been watching. For a few confusing moments, the real Elvis is no longer a ghost—he has returned to us, an actor playing himself, and we see that as good as that Butler kid was, there’s no comparison to the real thing.

But the feeling of relief is fleeting. Elvis , now gone for more than 40 years, is a ghost, no matter how passionately Luhrmann and Butler have tried to reconstitute his ectoplasm. The only consolation is that when a person is no longer a person, he is at last free to become a dream. In the final moments of Elvis, Luhrmann returns his beloved subject to that world, like a fisherman freeing his catch. “Lonely rivers flow/to the sea, to the sea,” the song tells us, as the true Elvis swims back to his home of safety—he’s better off as a dream, maybe, safe from everyone who might hurt or use him. But for a few hours there, he seemed to walk among us once again, a sighting that no one would believe if we tried to tell them. But we saw him. We really did. And then he slipped away, having had enough of our claim over him, if never enough of our love.

Correction, July 5

The original version of this story misstated the film’s screenwriters; Jeremy Doner was omitted.

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In ‘Elvis,’ Baz Luhrmann brilliantly floods our senses with arresting sights and sounds

The director’s trademark razzle-dazzle surrounds tom hanks as an oily colonel tom parker and austin butler, electrifying as the king..

“Elvis” star Austin Butler plays the singer in every stage of his career, starting with the hip-swiveling rocker who made the girls swoon.

Warner Bros.

The numbers vary from Internet source to Internet source, but the general consensus seems to be there were something like 200 Elvis Presley impersonators in the world at the time of the King’s death in 1977 and the number has grown to at least 35,000 today. And we’re not even including all the actors who have portrayed Elvis on TV and in the movies, from Kurt Russell to Jonathan Rhys Meyers to David Keith to Don Johnson to Harvey Keitel to Michael Shannon to Val Kilmer as the Elvis apparition who advises Christian Slater’s Clarence in “True Romance.”

So one can’t help but ask: With every chapter of the man’s life and times already so deeply etched into the pop culture landscape, do we really need another movie about the man and the myth and the legend that was Elvis Presley?

In the case of “Elvis,” the answer is a resounding YES, thanks to the gloriously excessive, razzle-dazzle direction of Baz Luhrmann (“Romeo + Juliet,” “Moulin Rouge!”), a smoldering star turn performance from Austin Butler as the title character and a sure-to-be-polarizing but fantastically eccentric spin on Colonel Tom Parker, courtesy of a nearly unrecognizable Tom Hanks. This is 2 hours and 39 minutes of screen-popping, candy-colored, highly stylized, fever-dream showmanship that serves as a Greatest Hits compilation touching on the many, many permutations of Elvis, from malleable country bumpkin to sex symbol icon to B-movie star to seemingly irrelevant near has-been to the Comeback King to Las Vegas icon to his death at the age of 42, and it’s such a sprawling, amazing rollercoaster ride that it’s difficult to process the fact Presley has been dead longer than he was with us.

If you thought the magnificently flamboyant Luhrmann was well-suited to put the flashiest of spins on “The Great Gatsby,” you can imagine what he does with the made-for-overkill mythology of Elvis — and from the moment we see a bejeweled version of the Warner Bros. Pictures logo, we know Luhrmann is going to flood our senses with a nonstop medley of arresting sights and sounds, never taking his foot off the directorial gas pedal. (Who wants to see a version of Elvis unplugged, am I right?)

“Elvis” is told through the skewed, self-serving, huckster’s perspective of Colonel Tom Parker, who was not a colonel and was born Andreas Cornelis van Kujik in the Netherlands (hence the strange Dutch/Southern hybrid accent), an admittedly great showman and promoter who latched onto Presley early on and rode his show pony into the ground, allegedly bilking Presley of millions and maneuvering him into making all sorts of deals that benefitted Parker first and Presley a distant second. Parker keeps trying to convince us he’s not the villain in the story, as he we see him always lurking backstage, always making side deals to line his pockets or cover his gambling debts, always in the middle of everything while looking out for himself first, always spinning things with his almost cartoonishly evil cadence.

Tom Hanks is nearly unrecognizable as Elvis’ wheeler-dealer of a manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Luhrmann employs a sparkling array of visual and aural tactics, from period-piece graphics to sepia-toned flashbacks, from nostalgic color schemes to swooping camera movements to split screens and cool and creative match-cut transitions. We know Elvis didn’t write his own material and we know he appropriated the sounds of gospel and blues from Black artists, and perhaps more than any previous Presley biopic, “Elvis” continually acknowledges that, with the likes of BB King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Little Richard (Alton Mason), Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) and Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola Quartey) getting their moments.

Still, the film’s fate rests on the shoulders of Austin Butler, who flashed serious movie-star potential as the evil fool Tex Watson in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and is mesmerizingly strong here. Butler doesn’t do an Elvis impersonation, but he does a stunningly good job of capturing the hip-swiveling, pink-suited Elvis who makes girls swoon and scream in a comedically effective early sequence; the ’60s Elvis who starred in a series of forgettable and dopey movies; the brilliant performer who made one of the most memorable pop-star comebacks of all time in a 1968 TV special, and the lost and borderline self-parodying Karate King who sweated and toiled on the Vegas stage and only occasionally touched greatness. Butler is an electric performer who shines in the spotlight when Elvis is onstage, but he also infuses Presley with an empathetic humanity and vulnerability. We know the man was hardly a saint, but we understand his sins.

Hanks’ characterization of Colonel Tom Parker is a big swing for someone who has held the unofficial title of America’s Most Likable Movie Star for more than 30 years. Some might argue he’s miscast, but I found the performance to be suitably oily, for despite Parker’s protestations, he IS the villain of the story. Even as Parker constantly reminds us that he “made” Elvis Presley (and there’s an element of truth to that), we see that time and again, he also contributed to the destruction of the man.

Still, for all its tragic elements and the heartbreak of an ending we know is coming, “Elvis” is a brilliant celebration of an artist who left a lasting and huge footprint on our culture.

Baz Luhrmann’s unruly ‘Elvis’ shakes up the Cannes Film Festival

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Elvis Presley famously never got the overseas touring career he deserved. He played only three venues outside the U.S., all of them in Canada in 1957, well before reaching peak superstardom. Instead of going international, he remained a fixture of the International Hotel in Las Vegas from 1969 to 1976, performing show after sold-out show until just a year before his death. Keeping Presley tied to Vegas was just one of the many machinations of his ruthlessly exploitative manager, Col. Tom Parker , who, it’s now widely believed, was afraid to leave the U.S. after having immigrated there illegally from the Netherlands years earlier.

That sad history is unpacked at some length in “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s unsurprisingly extravagant new movie about Presley’s life, art and career, which had its world premiere Wednesday night at the 75th annual Cannes Film Festival. (Warner Bros. will release the film June 24 in U.S. theaters.) Presley may never have gotten to perform for his fans in France, but Cannes gladly rolled out the red carpet for Luhrmann and his stars, Austin Butler, who makes a credibly charismatic Elvis, and Tom Hanks, who makes Col. Parker every inch the self-serving scumbag. Defensive and self-pitying, Parker narrates this long and gaudily overstuffed tale of a King and his Kingmaker, arguing — unpersuasively — that he isn’t the villain that history has made him out to be.

The problem is that while Parker is very much the villain of “Elvis,” Luhrmann has also gone out of his way to make him something of a co-protagonist. Ordinarily I like it when Hanks cuts against the good-guy grain, but his work here is hammy, grating and unmodulated to a fault, accomplished with a combo of fat suit, prosthetic jowls and over-the-top accent that makes Colin Farrell’s Penguin and Stellan Skarsgard’s Baron Von Harkonnen look positively restrained. It also adds unnecessary narrative padding to a movie that clocks in north of 2 1/2 hours, and which would earn more of that running time if it weren’t repeatedly forcing its ostensible subject to share his spotlight.

It’s a shame, because in many other respects, “Elvis” feels like an intuitive and sometimes even ideal match of filmmaker and subject. Luhrmann doesn’t do much by halves, and here his flamboyant stylistic excesses are very much of a piece with Elvis’ own. The performance sequences crackle with live-wire energy, even when Luhrmann is drawing them out or even slowing them down. (A blissful early scene of a glammed-out young Elvis getting a crowd of women all shook up — and unleashing wave after wave of pink-suited pelvic gyrations — seems to go on forever.) Sometimes Luhrmann will play the concert footage in sizzling black-and-white; sometimes he’ll split the screen not into quadrants but octants. It’s all a bit much, which means it’s just right.

Butler is a decent physical match for Elvis and a better one vocally. While that’s often the real Presley you hear singing in the movie, the wall-to-wall soundtrack also teems with Butler-recorded covers of “I’ll Fly Away,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” among others. Some effort is made early on to locate Elvis’ musical and spiritual origins in the churches and revival tents of Mississippi, and also to confront his oft-contested legacy as a performer and appropriator of Black music. Among the key Black artists seen briefly here are B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola), Little Richard (Alton Mason) and Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh).

Before long, Col. Parker catches on to the bottomless commercial potential of an artist who could “sell a Black sound with a white face,” as Presley was described in Eugene Jarecki’s excellent 2018 documentary, “The King.” That film pointedly drew a parallel between the waste and decadence of Presley’s ignominious final years and the moral complacency and confusion of Trump’s America. By contrast, Luhrmann’s “Elvis” largely keeps politics and larger metaphors at bay; it’s content to spin a conventional, crowd-pleasing narrative of an iconic artist’s rise and fall.

And so we see Elvis’ career triumphs, his meteoric ascent to the top of the charts and his proud defiance of the conservative-minded squares who tried to keep his devilish dancing under control. We see his tempestuous marriage to Priscilla (a sympathetic Olivia DeJonge); his neglect of his daughter, Lisa Marie; and his years struggling with addiction and depression, most of which play out in a sprawling Vegas penthouse suite that looks more like a prison in every shot. To complain that “Elvis” is basically a compilation of musical-biopic conventions is a bit like complaining about a greatest-hits album; it also misses one of Luhrmann’s strengths as a filmmaker, which is his ability to suffuse clichés with sincerity, energy and feeling.

Those gifts were on unimprovable display in Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge,” which kicked off the 2001 festival in high style. That was the first edition of Cannes programmed by its longtime artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, and the opening-night selection of “Moulin Rouge” was a major coup that improved relations between the festival and Hollywood, which had grown somewhat reluctant in the ’90s to bring studio films to the Croisette. Luhrmann would return to open the 2013 festival with “The Great Gatsby,” which, like most opening-night films, was forgotten within a few days’ time but nonetheless felt like an ideal starter for an event where art, commerce, glamour and silliness exist in near-perfect balance. To that end, “Elvis” wouldn’t have been a bad choice of Cannes opener this year, though I suspect that Warner Bros., which has high hopes for the movie when it’s released next month, wanted to avoid the harsher critical scrutiny that often comes with an opening-night reception.

And so “Elvis” landed late in the festival and played outside the main competition, which has produced a number of strong entries as it enters its final stretch. One of the most roundly admired so far is “Tori and Lokita,” the best work in nearly a decade from the two-time Palme d’Or-winning Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Running a taut 88 minutes (which means you could watch it almost twice in the time it would take you to get through “Elvis” once), the movie follows two African immigrants, 11-year-old Tori (Pablo Schils) and 16-year-old Lokita (Joely Mbundu), who are posing as brother and sister in an unnamed Belgian city. There, they struggle to survive and forge a life for themselves, finding themselves at the nonexistent mercy of drug dealers, sexual abusers and corrupt church leaders alike.

The Dardennes don’t announce all this upfront. As usual, their method is to drop you right into a swift, relentlessly naturalistic story in which character and circumstance are frequently revealed in a flurry of white-knuckle action. What unfolds is an infuriating tale of exploitation, in which the very hope of a better life is repeatedly weaponized against Tori and Lokita, luring them into ever more despair-worthy conditions of enslavement. And yet even in a drama whose every development is motivated by material need — and even with a devastating wallop of an ending — the Dardennes somehow push their way to an impossible state of grace.

Another outstanding drama about the challenges of survival in a strange land could be found in the masterful “Godland,” though unlike the furiously paced “Tori and Lokita,” this one is a long, slow burn — or perhaps a long, slow thaw, given its chilly Nordic setting. Mysteriously absent from the main competition (it premiered in an adjacent strand of the festival called Un Certain Regard), this latest drama from the Icelandic writer-director Hlynur Pálmason ( “A White, White Day” ) follows a Danish priest, Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), who is called on to build a church in the frigid north. The difficulty of the journey is, in some ways, exacerbated by the clergyman’s own pretensions and delusions; life proves no more hospitable when he finally reaches his destination.

Magnificently shot in a nearly square frame with rounded corners, an aesthetic that evokes the old photographs that Lucas likes to take in his spare time, “Godland” tells a story of natural wonder, elemental beauty and human folly. Hove makes Lucas a boldly repellent protagonist, a one-man rebuke to the idea that faith necessarily endows anyone with foresight, humility or kindness. His story has some of the bleak, fatalistic wit of “A White, White Day”; it also has that movie’s excellent star, Ingvar Sigurðsson, who serves as both Lucas’ guide and his nemesis. By the end you’re grateful to have experienced this long and treacherous journey with them, even if neither of them can say the same.

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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The standard rock biopic formula gets all shook up in Elvis , with Baz Luhrmann's dazzling energy and style perfectly complemented by Austin Butler's outstanding lead performance.

Like the man himself, Elvis delivers dazzling, crowd-pleasing entertainment that provokes a wide range of emotions.

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Cannes review: Electrifying Elvis delivers the icon like never before

Director Baz Luhrmann recaptures his Moulin Rouge! mojo with a hip-swiveling profile loaded with risk and reward.

Senior Editor, Movies

Can it be that we really don't know Elvis anymore — not as the seismic force that shook people and remade the popscape? Barring those who actually lived through it (a group to be envied), that's almost certainly the case. Baz Luhrmann 's Elvis , a dazzling, splatter-paint evocation of the myth and the man, does a mighty job of bringing us closer to what that revolutionary moment must have felt like. It may not be slavishly devoted to the facts (this isn't your typical birth-to-deather), but as with Todd Haynes 's glam fantasia Velvet Goldmine , the movie achieves something trickier and more valuable, mining shocking intimacy from sweeping cultural changes.

Luhrmann, an inspired stylist who somehow managed to freshen up The Great Gatsby , doesn't make us wait long for the first of these jolts. Before unleashing a glimpse of his Presley, we hear the voice emanating off a percolating debut single, "That's All Right," then we follow a shadowy figure taking the stage at a 1954 concert, the emphasis on mystery and discovery. By the time Austin Butler stares down the lens and melts it (his revelatory performance, fully lived-in and vulnerable, never plays like imitation), Luhrmann has hooked us by the strangeness of it all: the slicked hair, the androgynous makeup, the girls in the audience uncontrollably leaping to their feet.

Already we've seen Elvis' snoozy country-music competition ( Kodi Smit-McPhee plays one of these casualties, almost a fan-fictional variation on his gangly creation from The Power of the Dog ), and there's no contest. "It was the greatest carnival attraction I'd ever seen," murmurs narrating uber-manager-to-be Colonel Tom Parker (a stunty, half-successful Tom Hanks ), and a thesis snaps into place, one that Luhrmann, himself an impresario, develops in a screenplay credited to him and three other contributing writers: This is story about salesmanship, onstage and off.

Elvis crystallizes as a media-minded showdown between Parker's product manager — he convinces the naïve Presley to commit exclusively on a Ferris wheel, if the circus metaphor wasn't clear enough — and an increasingly willful and visionary artist. Luhrmann's filmmaking style follows suit, beginning in a flurry of look-at-me zip pans and crotch zooms, Presley making his meteoric way up the marquee posters, then deepening into intense fourth-wall piercings as Butler's Elvis thirsts for authenticity. (The director's ear for jolting modern musical juxtapositions remains in full flower, with new contributions by Doja Cat , Shonka Dukureh and Gary Clark Jr. , among others; Presley's own classics are creatively remixed, covered, and sometimes even modulated into minor keys.)

Not a perfect lookalike (and that's fine), Butler does extremely well by the music and stage moves, but he's even more compelling during Presley's post-Army Hollywood years, presented as dissatisfied ones. Elvis has an extended centerpiece that you can't quite believe arrives in a major studio movie: a behind-the-scenes exfoliation of Presley's landmark 1968 TV comeback special, during which Parker's dreams of wholesome Christmas entertainment collide with an increasingly politicized singer, shaken by the recent assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ("He's not even wearing the sweater!" a panicky executive barks in the control room, confronted by Butler's leather-clad, gospel-belting Presley.)

As fun as Elvis often is, it scores some remarkably sharp points, particularly regarding Presley's unfaked love of Black musicians, and the appropriations that fueled his crossover success. Of the many biopics to enshrine the King (and Elvis eclipses them all), none has featured a triple split-screen montage charting the performance of a single song back to its blues-shack roots. (Even the serious Presley documentaries don't cement the point as clearly as Luhrmann does.) "Too many people are making too much money to put you in jail," a shrewd B.B. King ( Waves ' Kelvin Harrison Jr.) tells Presley at one of his low points; the line is scalding.

For a filmmaker sometimes criticized for skimming the surface, Luhrmann uses the material to go as deep as he does wide. Sometimes Elvis feels like a lost Oliver Stone film from his daring 1990s heyday: a big-canvas exploration of debauched American appetites. Fittingly, the Las Vegas years slacken a bit, televisions getting bulleted and pills chased. Still, Luhrmann makes room for Nixonian paranoia, especially in one hushed conversation with estranged wife Priscilla ( Olivia DeJonge ). "I never made a classic film I could be proud of," Elvis, a James Dean fan, tells her. Fans of Blue Hawaii will wince, but something equally rare has come to pass — a portrait of a serious man trapped in an unserious life. Grade: A–

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‘elvis’ review: austin butler wows as the king.

You can’t help falling in love with Austin Butler.

The 30-year-old actor, who has mostly appeared in crummy TV shows like “The Carrie Diaries” up till now, soulfully croons and sways his hips right into our hearts as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s kaleidoscopic new biopic.

Running time: 159 minutes. Rated PG-13 (substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking). In theaters.

The King is one helluva tough assignment.

Unlike Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, the subject of “ Bohemian Rhapsody ,” and Elton John, who got his own movie with “ Rocketman ,” Presley comes with more pop-culture baggage than you could stuff into a million Gracelands.

There’s the campy Vegas impersonators, the “thank you, thank you very much” catchphrase, the white jumpsuit, the late-in-life weight gain and, of course, dying on the toilet at age 42. 

For such a singular figure in music — still instantly recognizable to teens today in a way that Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon are not — he’s not allowed much dignity.

Luhrmann’s hugely entertaining film and Butler’s sensational performance are dead set on righting that wrong. A movie that runs on jet fuel and confetti, “Elvis” is a tribute to Presley’s innovative spirit, deep passion for fusing blues, country and gospel music and the intense connection he had with his audience. Elvis taking inspiration from black musicians like B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and Little Richard (Alton Mason, exceptional) is another focus.

More broadly, the movie is about the unique struggles of being ultrafamous during the social tumult, increased visibility and rapidly changing mores of the 1950s through the ’70s. The King goes from obscene disturber-of-the-peace to a has-been for old folks in just two decades. 

Where Luhrmann is at his unsurprising best, though, are Elvis’ stage triumphs. Like he did with “Moulin Rouge!,” the Aussie director interprets a nearly 70-year-old moment with wide-open modern eyes and a freewheeling sexuality. At an early show before he goes on tour with nice boy Hank Snow, Elvis starts to shake his body, and the girls in the crowd scream like they’re accusing witches in “The Crucible.” You’ll wanna shout along with them . . . but please keep your underwear on.

“Hound Dog,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” “Suspicious Minds” and “Blue Suede Shoes,” among others, are rowdy and rousing. And Butler and Luhrmann don’t settle for nostalgia with them — they are electric and in your face.

“Elvis” is a long movie, and most of it is devoted to the pitfalls of fame. He meets Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) when he is serving overseas in Germany, and Lisa Marie is born. But he sleeps around on his wife while on tour, pops pills and has a destructive relationship with his sleazy manager Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who pushes him to compromise the identity that fans love him for. The villain — both in the story and in real life — is Hanks as Elvis’ eccentric and opportunistic manager. What the fresh hell was he thinking? The actor, gunning for a Razzie, puts on a head-scratcher of a voice, like Forrest Gump meets Rumpelstiltskin, perhaps to add to Parker’s secretive backstory. The thing is, Parker never sounded so ridiculous, and Hanks’ Anna Delvey take is distracting. Whenever he was on screen, that nonsensical brogue was always on my mind.

At least until Butler came back into the building. The actor grows from 1955 to 1977 with subtlety and believability and never appears trapped behind prosthetics or helped along by computer-generating imaging. Nor does he succumb to a silly impression. He grabs us by the collar and never lets go. Being so good as Elvis will either explode his career, or shove it into a mouse hole.

Luhrmann, meanwhile, is the cilantro of modern directors. You either spit him out or pack your salsa full of him. I say, gimme  mas . He’s exuberant and spectacular when most of his contemporaries are comatose. His film is bloated, yeah, but 2 hours and 40 minutes of our lives are better spent on Elvis Presley than the Season 4 finale of “Stranger Things.”  Plus, only Lurhmann knew what Elvis’ legacy needed to be in 2022 — all shook up.

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The 10 best (and the absolute worst) Elvis movies, ranked

The story of Elvis Presley's film career is one of wasted potential. Too many of the 31 movies he shot from 1956 to 1969 were money-making hack jobs, their scripts existing to do little more than fill time between musical numbers. Indeed, in  Baz Luhrmann's new "Elvis" biopic , the King of Rock 'n' Roll's entire Hollywood career is reduced to a flashy montage.

But for the Elvis fan , part of the appeal lies in watching his instinctive onscreen ability and thinking about what might have been: imagining Presley with Robert Mitchum in "Thunder Road" or opposite Barbra Streisand in "A Star Is Born," two roles he could have had.

To mark the 45th anniversary of Elvis' death (Aug. 16, 1977),USA TODAY picks 10 (well, OK, 11) favorites from the Presley canon, plus a few to avoid.

Fact checking the new 'Elvis movie: Did he really fire Colonel Tom Parker onstage in Las Vegas?

10. 'Change of Habit' (1969)

The singer's final feature isn't a great film, by any stretch of the imagination. It's barely a decent one. But it goes a long way on its concept alone: Presley plays an inner-city doctor whose love interest is Mary Tyler Moore – as a nun. What's not to love there, right? "Change of Habit" is sort of the film equivalent of "In the Ghetto," a heavy-handed attempt at cultural relevance. (At one point, his character says, "I get the feeling there's a message here.") Look for the great Darlene Love in an uncredited role as a backup singer. Ed Asner, who would later play Lou Grant to Moore's Mary Richards , is in it, too, though he and Moore don't have any scenes together.

'Where has this been hiding?': Tom Hanks changed his mind about his favorite Elvis song

(tie) 'Blue Hawaii' (1961)

In a perfect world, "Blue Hawaii" would have been the worst movie Presley ever made. Instead, it's solidly in the top third. For all practical purposes, it's a travelogue with a nice soundtrack, including "Can't Help Falling in Love." That would have been just fine, if it hadn't been so successful that the moviemakers and Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker , used it as the template for nearly every Presley film that followed, with ever less impressive results.

Review:  Austin Butler rules as the King, but Baz Luhrmann's 'Elvis' is an unchained mess of a movie

9. 'Love Me Tender' (1956)

Presley's first film appearance might rank higher on this list if he had starred in it – but he had only a supporting role in what Variety called "a minor-league oater," the only time he'd be in that position. Presley clearly was inserted in the film, set during the 1860s, to capitalize on his popularity. Theaters hoped to pull young viewers away from the TVs that were popping up in households across the nation, and it worked. It's charming to watch a greenhorn Presley enthusiastically acting opposite more seasoned veterans who knew they weren't in a particularly good picture.

'I couldn't be an imposter': How Austin Butler vanished into the role of Elvis Presley

8. 'Kid Galahad' (1962)

Take Presley out of the equation, and "Kid Galahad" is a run-of-the-mill boxing picture. In fact, that's just what it was the first time around, in 1937, when Michael Curtiz (who'd go on to direct Elvis in "King Creole") made it with Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Presley, whose weight had ballooned, made for a doughy but hard-punching ingénue who gets caught up in a fight-fixing scheme. At least he had a decent supporting cast, which included Charles Bronson.

We didn't have the empathy to talk about Elvis' health problems then. What about now?

7. 'Follow That Dream' (1962)

After "Blue Hawaii," Presley headed to Florida, where he played a beach squatter named Toby Kwimper that New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther described as "a combination Sir Galahad and Li'l Abner." Presley seems engaged here, and displays a nice comic touch. Bumped up one spot on this list for helping set the life's course of an 11-year-old Tom Petty, who visited the set.

Appropriation or appreciation?  How 'Elvis' highlights his complicated history with Black music

6. 'Viva Las Vegas' (1964)

Flashy, gaudy, trashy and thin on story, just like the Vegas myth. There's not much of a script, but swimming instructor Ann-Margret looks hot, and so do Presley's cars. "As pleasant and unimportant as a banana split," said The New York Times, and that's just about right. The film that foreshadowed Presley's future boasts some great tunes, though, and one of the most perfect sequences in any of his films – a dreamscape for the jazz-infused "I Need Somebody to Lean On" in which Presley has the beatific look on his face that he usually reserved for gospel tunes.

5. 'Wild in the Country' (1961)

Perhaps Presley's most ambitious dramatic film, "Wild in the Country" was ultimately undone by the competing priorities of those making it. The script, penned by playwright Clifford Odets, called for Presley to play a callow country boy loaded with literary talent. A cast that included Hope Lange and Tuesday Weld and an attempt at topical relevance made "Wild" better than the average Presley film, though Variety found it "wobbly and artificial." Smash "Blue Hawaii" followed, firmly establishing the kind of movies he'd make for the rest of his career.

4. 'Flaming Star' (1960)

After the genial but fatuous "G.I. Blues," 20th Century Fox tried to re-establish Presley's dramatic credentials, casting him in this Western as Pacer Burton, a half-breed caught in a culture war and land dispute. Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra had both been associated with the project, co-written by Nunnally Johnson, who previously had written and directed "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" and "The Three Faces of Eve." The role demanded more of Presley than most of his movies, and he found genuine chemistry with the great Dolores del Rio. The New York Times called "Flaming Star" "an unpretentious but sturdy Western that takes the time, the place and the people seriously." Theater owners called it a flop.

3. 'Loving You' (1957)

Elvis' first starring vehicle was a fairly conventional showbiz musical, with country boy Deke Rivers rising to fame then dealing with its pitfalls. In other words, a story not unlike Presley's own. By 1950s teen rock-film standards, "Loving You" is credible, with plenty of energy and a strong soundtrack including the No. 1 hit "Teddy Bear," "Mean Woman Blues" and "(Let's Have A) Party." Variety pronounced that Presley "shows improvement as an actor" and that the film "exposes the singer to the kind of thing he does best." You know, like singing and hip-swiveling. Too bad Presley and his handlers would soon learn they could still make money with less effort and attention to quality.

2. 'Jailhouse Rock' (1957)

The singer's third film received mixed reviews at the time, with several high-profile publications panning it vociferously. British magazine The Spectator, for instance, called it "dangerously near being repulsive." They were, of course, wrong. This story of an ex-con pop star has held up better than almost any of Presley's other movies. The plot offers parallels to Presley's own story, particularly when he gets involved with a manipulative manager. It's also got first-rate songs from the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and the title song's great dance sequence, arguably the most thrilling thing Presley ever committed to film.

1. 'King Creole' (1958)

Presley's best picture shows what surrounding him with talent could do for him. Director Michael Curtiz ("Casablanca," "Mildred Pierce," "Angels With Dirty Faces") brings a noir-ish black-and-white style to the story of a young singer who falls in with organized crime in New Orleans. Initially written with James Dean in mind, "King Creole" was based on Harold Robbins' "A Stone for Danny Fisher," and co-stars Carolyn Jones (who later found fame as Morticia Addams on "The Addams Family") and Walter Matthau. Even The New York Times, which usually mocked Presley's films, found itself surprised by his performance: "Cut my legs off and call me Shorty!" Howard Thompson's review began. "Elvis Presley can act."

Elvis Presley made plenty of bad films, but these were the lamest

'paradise, hawaiian style' (1966).

The third and most unwatchable of Presley's Hawaii films. Remember how engaged and excited he looked in "King Creole" and "Jailhouse Rock"? Yeah, that guy's gone.

'Easy Come, Easy Go' (1967)

Having previously served in the Army ("G.I. Blues") and the Air Force ("Kissin' Cousins"), Presley enters the Navy as a frogman. It's hard to sing underwater, but that's OK: When your most memorable tune is "Yoga Is As Yoga Does," there's no point singing, anyway.

'Harum Scarum' (1965)

Presley battles Arab assassins in a film so bad it would take "a fifty-fifth cousin to P.T. Barnum to sell it," Colonel Tom Parker wrote to MGM. This from a guy who suggested a talking camel narrate the picture.

Elvis and His Times

L ong before Elvis Mitchell’s last movie review for the New York Times was published, on April 30, it was clear he’d been hired to play against type. Mitchell, over six feet, with two-foot-long dreads (which he tends with Kiehl’s products), robed in Costume National and Helmut Lang, will never be your average be-khaki’d Times man. He’s bigger than life, or at least bigger than most print journalists, a road show of pop-culture exuberance who makes the rounds of TV shows, film festivals, and lecture appointments, hobnobbing with stars and industry figures.

He always seemed to be looking for something better. Which isn’t the way you’re supposed to act at the Times , which hired him in late 1999 as part of a plan to replace chief film critic Janet Maslin with a triumvirate. But he never seemed to make time for the job: A freelance editor was assigned to help focus his copy (unusual for a critic there), and there was a sense that his reviews, while entertaining, had a certain stream-of-consciousness quality to them ( 13 Going on 30 : “Content to eat its retro snack cake and have it, too. ‘Let them eat Twinkies,’ the movie suggests”; Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights : “Like an episode of American Dreams written by Pepé Le Pew”).

Two weeks ago, Mitchell was informed by culture editor Steve Erlanger that A. O. Scott, his erudite office mate, was going to become chief critic.

As of press time, that decision hadn’t even been announced. When reached on his cell phone (Los Angeles area code 213; he never got a New York number), Mitchell refused to comment. Erlanger didn’t return calls. But Mitchell’s admirers were quick to praise him. “As a critic, he was a lightning rod for his times,” mourned Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein (who was already on the record flattering Mitchell as his favorite critic) via e-mail. “And as a journalist, he was an underappreciated asset.”

Many at the Times thought he was, if anything, a bit over appreciated. Mitchell is known for his opportunism as much as his talent, and he has a great ability to generate opportunities for himself. Often too many, to the point where it could be an editing adventure to track him down to get him to file. Nonetheless, he’s made steady progress into the big leagues from his undergraduate days at Wayne State University (where he started doing movie reviews on Detroit public radio) through a flurry of sometimes overlapping gigs at National Public Radio, the Detroit Free Press , the Village Voice , the Fort Worth Star-Telegram , and the Independent Film Channel.

“Mitchell is bigger than life, or at least bigger than most print journalists, a road show of pop-culture exuberance.”

“Elvis has this sort of Candide-like air about him,” says Outside executive editor Jay Stowe, who edited Mitchell at Spin (yes, he worked there, too). It’s not naïveté, exactly, but an aura of doing what he wants and seeming surprised, in all innocence, when people take offense.

A good example was in 1992, when Mitchell was recruited to a development job at Paramount Pictures by his friend Brandon Tartikoff. He was fired six months later after Paramount decided that the job conflicted with his reviewing duties on NPR’s “Weekend Edition.” ( Variety reported he was “shocked.”)

He’d earned a reputation for not staying on a job too long—he never even showed up to a gig at the Los Angeles Times . (He says he was never officially hired.) When he got a job offer at a studio within the first year of his starting at the Times , many Times people, to his surprise, said to him, “We figured you weren’t going to be a lifer.”

But then again, he’d spent four years in the mid-nineties trying to write screenplays (one project was a Bob Marley movie with Ron Shelton). A bachelor, he spent months in New York Times housing before he got a place. And he seemed to enjoy the glam life a bit much for a reporter. He had a bad habit of not turning in his expenses until they’d run up gigantically, and kept popping up in the gossip columns and in the trades being considered for jobs in the industry he was covering, including being in the running at Sony Pictures (because of his friendship with its chairwoman, Amy Pascal, who is married to Bernie Weinraub, an L.A.-based Times entertainment reporter) and to be the head of Warner Independent Films. He denied both stories, but a source close to him says that he’s been up for at least two industry jobs as well as the editorship of Billboard since he arrived at the Times , and had told his bosses about it.

He also told John Darnton, the culture editor when he was hired, about being approached by Henry Louis Gates Jr. about teaching at the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard, but his appointment to teach two classes as a visiting lecturer this semester nonetheless took the Times by surprise. (“He took another full-time job while he was working here as a film critic?” is a typical expression of culture-section disbelief.)

He quickly became larger than life in Cambridge, too—“he’s a celebrity figure around campus,” says one student—much as he is a starlike figure around Sundance, attended to by publicists.

His lecture class’s enrollment was open to whoever wanted to join. (The school even printed up a poster advertising this fact, with a picture of him grinning mischievously, his dreads hanging over his face.) It’s not an especially academic class: The students watch films ( Los Olvidados; Kill Bill, Vol. 2 , the day before it opened nationally; The Warriors , after which he kept repeating the tagline, “Can you dig it?”) and then write four 500-to-800-word reviews. But Harvard students being Harvard students, there’s a bit of grousing about his improvisational, meandering lecture style.

His other class, “The African-American Experience in Film: 1930–1970,” is a seminar, and a bit more intimate: He often invites his students to the Enormous Room, a campus-area bar on Massachusetts Avenue, to see one of his teaching assistants D.J. Mitchell isn’t shy; he’s extremely flirtatious, according to students who have come in contact with him.

It’s not clear if he’s coming back next year, although Gates, who needs to rebuild his Princeton-decimated department, would like him to. “I admire his toughness and rigor,” Gates says. “He was a superb presence in the classroom. I’d like to bring him back.”

T hough Mitchell’s exit has more to do with the anointment of the more Times ian (and, many think, more talented) Scott, it can’t help but scratch one of the Times ’ most tormenting neuroses: How unfriendly a place is the paper to blacks? And how to hold onto them? And how to avoid the perception of coddling them to the point that they live beyond the rules that other people feel they live by?

Mitchell was increasingly unhappy at the paper, those close to him say, ever since Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd were canned last summer. The Times remains an overwhelmingly white environment, however well-intentioned, and Boyd was a symbol and a presence that many black journalists found comforting. He and Boyd, the paper’s first African- American managing editor, were friends. As of press time, Mitchell hadn’t resigned officially. He’s had conversations with Bill Keller about possibly staying on to work on the Discovery Times Channel. But it won’t be as a film critic.

Which saddens Skip Gates. “He’s certainly the most powerful black film critic in history, full stop,” Gates says. “It was a great day for the race when he got that job, and it would be a shame for him to lose that platform.”

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New York Times Review | This Is Elvis

By Janet Maslin - Originally published May 8, 1981

First, a word about the spirit in which 'This Is Elvis', which opens today at the Sutton Theater, was made. With the approval of Elvis' all-powerful manager, Colonel Tom Parker , and with unmistakable intent to hoodwink, the directors, Malcolm Leo and Andrew Solt, have faked interviews, dramatic scenes and newsreels and interspersed them with the real thing. They have even created a 'voice of Elvis' to offer posthumous commentary on the niceness of Colonel Parker, the treachery of the Colonel's enemies, Elvis' regrets ('If only I could've seen what was happening to me, I would have done something about it'.) and just about everything save life beyond the grave.

After a scene in which Colonel Parker pretends to get the news of Elvis' death, the film cuts to glimpses of the very young Elvis in Tupelo, Miss., strolling down the lane like a latter-day Huck Finn, kneeling at the feet of an ancient bluesman (played, unexpectedly, by the blues great Furry Lewis). Another, older, actor appears to impersonate Elvis singing a song for his schoolmates. They bop and sway and snap their fingers as only amateur actors can. But now the film is ready for film clips and kinescopes of the real Elvis , glimpses that cut through the bogus stuff like so many bolts of lightning. The early performance scenes are simply electrifying, with an Elvis who is utterly confident of his talent, and yet amazed by it, too. He handles audiences expertly, pausing every so often to grin and marvel at their rapture - a rapture the movie's viewers are bound to share.

The film, which is none too frank about Elvis' problems, nonetheless closely chronicles his decline. The polite, bashful fellow who beams with pride when Ed Sullivan pronounces him 'a real decent fine boy' becomes flashy, bloated and crude. The Elvis whose face is so fresh and unguarded, whose expression reveals so much when the press asks him about his sweetheart or his mama, becomes a glassy eyed wreck. At the end of the film, in a scene whose irony is both too broad and too enormous for this film to contain, the pitifully deteriorated Elvis sings 'My Way', barely remembering the words. He dies six weeks later, and is brought to the grave by a procession of those Cadillacs he loved to buy. 'This Is Elvis' is such a grab bag it offers dozens of memorable moments, some of them exciting, some sad, some bizarre. Mr. Leo and Mr. Solt have unearthed rare home-movie footage of a boyish Elvis entertaining friends at his new mansion, of Elvis and Priscilla Presley clowning for the camera and of an older Elvis surrounded by his obedient rat pack. In contrast to this, there are the newsreels that prove Elvis never more revealing than when he tries to be discreet.

A couple of production numbers from his movies say as much about the climate of the country as they do about this one singer; the same is true of interviews by anti-rock-and-rollers protesting that this music is depravity. Even the television footage is remarkable, from Elvis' thrilling renditions of 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' and 'Hound Dog' to a nervous post-Army appearance with Frank Sinatra, to the Las Vegas comeback special that launched the jeweled-jumpsuit stage of his career. Even the close-up view of Elvis' belt rack speaks volumes, as do the glimpses of Graceland, his mansion. 'This Is Elvis' tells a gaudy, unforgettable story, and it's part of the story it tells. 'This Is Elvis' is rated PG ('Parental Guidance Suggested'). It contains some off-color language.

Another Chapter

This is Elvis was written, produced and directed by Malcolm Leo and Andrew Solt ; director of photography, Gil Hubbs; edited by Bud Friedgen; original music score by Walter Scharf; released by Warner Bros. At the Sutton, Third Avenue and 57th Street. Running time: 101 minutes. This film is rated PG.

Acting Credits

Elvis, Age 18 - David Scott Elvis, Age 10 - Paul Boensch 3d Elvis, Age 42 - Johnny Harra Vernon Presley - Lawrence Koller Priscilla Presley - Rhonda Lyn Gladys Presley - Debbie Edge Dewey Phillips - Larry Raspberry Bluesman . . . . . Furry Lewis Minne Mae Presley - Liz Robinson Elvis, Age 35 - Dana MacKay Sam Phillips - Knox Phillips Linda Thompson - Cheryl Needham Ginger Alden - Andrea Cyrill Bill Black - Jerry Phillips Scotty Moore - Emory Smith

Production Credits

Director - Andrew Solt, Malcolm Leo Screenwriter - Andrew Solt Composer (Music Score) - Walter Scharf Producer - Andrew Solt Editor - Glenn Farr Producer - David L. Wolper Screenwriter - Malcolm Leo Set Designer - Charlie Hughes Cinematographer - Gil Hubbs Editor - Bud Friedgen Producer - Malcolm Leo

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Pop music really can change your life. That’s part of the setup of M. Night Shyamalan’s near-miss of a thriller “Trap,” a movie that feels less like the Night Brand than a lot of his twisty ventures, a pared-down version of what he does that needed a round or two more of fleshing out its best ideas and amplifying its visual language. Night is at his best when he has a team of craftspeople to help elevate his best ideas in films like “ The Sixth Sense ,” “ Old ” (a movie that has grown on me), and “ The Village ,” but “Trap” too often lacks the craftsmanship it needs to crackle with energy and tension. Despite these missteps, Josh Hartnett almost makes “Trap” worth seeing, imbuing his character with a playfulness that can be captivating. It’s a shame his great work sometimes feels trapped in a movie that doesn’t know what to do with it.

The majority of “Trap” unfolds at a place that can be truly terrifying for a parent forced to spend hundreds of dollars on the latest pop superstar. In this case, it’s Lady Raven, played by Night’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan, a pop star shaped in the image of someone like Taylor Swift – one of those performances wherein the average age in the crowd is in the teens, and everyone knows all the words. Saleka wrote and performed most of the music, and speaking bluntly, there’s a bit too much of it, especially because it’s not quite as catchy as T. Swift.

Attending this Lady Raven show in Philly is an average guy named Cooper (Hartnett) and his teen daughter Riley ( Ariel Donoghue ). Shortly after their arrival, and with minimal character development, Cooper notices a strong police presence at the venue, including heavily armed men at all the doors. Through a brief act of politeness, he earns the trust of a vendor ( Jonathan Langdon ) who lets him on a secret – the cops and feds are there because they know that a notorious serial killer named The Butcher is in the building. Cooper is that man.

Their plan to stop every man who leaves the building and basically put them in front of ace profiler Dr. Grant (a woefully miscast Hayley Mills , likely here just because she's famous for a different "Trap" movie and Night thought that was funny) to determine guilt makes absolutely no sense. Still, people buy a ticket for a movie like “Trap” knowing the premise, and Shyamalan’s film gets by on its set-up for a while, largely because it allows Hartnett to shine through the opening act. Hartnett makes numerous smart, subtle choices that convey Cooper’s precise personality, particularly in a sly smile that reveals how much this sociopath enjoys the unexpected challenge.

Sadly, Shyamalan’s script doesn’t give Hartnett’s performance the stage it deserves. Cooper should be a cagey genius, someone who has kept his identity secret from everyone in his life and only has to do so for a bit longer to escape capture again. Instead of sketching Cooper as the smartest person in the room, Shyamalan almost comically makes him into the luckiest. Cooper keeps narrowly averting exposure through what can only be called movie magic. And when Shyamalan’s concept is forced to leave the arena, it comes apart with a series of scenes that make increasingly little sense. There are numerous times when the answer to “Why would someone do that in that situation?” can only be “Because of the movie.”

There’s an undeniably unique energy at a concert for a major pop star, a place where people scream (usually with glee), the lighting can be unpredictable, and someone in the crowd may not be all they appear to be. It’s a clever setting for a thriller, and where most of “Trap” unfolds, but Shyamalan doesn’t do enough with the geography of the space. A better film conveys how even a massive arena can feel claustrophobic when thousands of people surround you. But the cinematography by ace director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (“ Challengers ”) is oddly captivated by the large screens over the stage instead of the actual performer. This approach is surely to keep us more trapped in Cooper’s POV, but it ends up making the actual Lady Raven performance feel lackluster when we watch most of it on a screen on a screen. The editing by Noemi Katharina Preiswerk (who also cut Night’s “A Knock at the Cabin”) also lacks the hum that “Trap” really needed to work.

Ultimately, there’s something to be said for a man who can get a movie like “Trap” made in today’s market. It’s a weird, unpredictable movie not based on a pre-existing IP, and we are in an era where there are depressingly few original ideas in blockbuster filmmaking. For that alone – and the Joshaissance clearly unfolding with “ Oppenheimer ” and now this – it’s tempting to give “Trap” a pass. It’s just too bad that it ultimately feels like the word people so often throw at pop music confections: disposable.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Trap (2024)

Rated PG-13

105 minutes

Josh Hartnett as Cooper

Ariel Donoghue as Riley

Saleka as Lady Raven

Hayley Mills as Dr. Grant

Alison Pill as Rachel

Marnie McPhail as Jody's Mom

• M. Night Shyamalan

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NYT's The Mini crossword answers for August 6

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Here are the clues and answers to NYT's The Mini for Monday, August 6, 2024:

Petty fight

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Funny little habit

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The answer is unsee.

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The answer is inlay.

Colored, as hair

The answer is dyed.

Source of edible ink

The answer is squid .

Like the horror movie titles "Chopping Mall" and "Santa's Slay"

The answer is punny.

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Halloween Star and John Carpenter Favorite Dies at 85

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Charles Cyphers dies at the age of 85. The actor is undoubtedly best-known by fans of John Carpenter’s classic slasher flick, Halloween (1978), as the venerable Sheriff Leigh Bracket, starring along with Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis. Brackett helps Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasence) hunt for the Shape, aka Michael Myers (Nick Castle), the night the serial killer came home over 45 years ago. Cyphers’ manager, Chris Roe, revealed that the Halloween actor and Hollywood stalwart passed away after battling a “brief illness” (per Variety ). Roe said:

Charles was a lovable and sensitive man. He always had the best stories, and you got a full performance while he told you. He was a close friend and client of many years who will be dearly missed.

Halloween (1978)

In the original Halloween , Brackett’s daughter, Annie (Nancy Loomis), is killed by Michael Myers. During the aftermath, which unfolds in Halloween II (1981), the Sheriff discovers his teenage daughter has been slain. Loomis, who is also known as Nancy Louise Kyes, expressed a great deal of sorrow for the passing of her horror film co-star. Kyes said:

So sorry to hear about dear Chuck. My friend of many years, he could always be relied on for a kind word, a good laugh and a great story. How he will be missed.

‘Everyone’s Entitled to One Good Scare, Huh?’

Charles Cyphers' 50-year career in Hollywood included a number of films and television appearances dating back to the early 1970s. Cyphers most prolific work came in the TV show Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher, which aired for two seasons from 1996 until 1998. The talented thespian also appeared numerous times as Hugo Muncy on The Betty White Show in 1977 and 1978. But as genre fans already know, Cyphers flexed his acting muscles in many of John Carpenter's most beloved films.

Halloween’s Cyphers and Loomis worked together and with Carpenter on Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and they both returned to work with the filmmaker in The Fog . And part of the fun of The Fog was witnessing how so many Carpenter collaborators, including Cyphers, reunited to make the 1980 movie. Jamie Lee Curtis returned, too, and Loomis/Kyes spent most of her scenes paired up with the larger-than-life Scream Queen, and Curtis’ real-life mother, Janet Leigh.

Halloween Movies in Order: How to Watch Chronologically and by Release Date

The Halloween movies can be a messy undertaking to piece together. Here is every film in the series split by timeline, in chronological order.

Cyphers television credits include appearances on many high-profile series, including The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Charlie’s Angels, Wonder Woman, Starsky and Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard, Matlock, Dallas, Night Court, 21 Jump Street and even once on the short-lived A Nightmare on Elm Street series titled Freddy’s Nightmares .

One of Cyphers’ most beloved film roles came in Major League (1989), in which the actor collaborated with an all-star cast, including Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, Wesley Snipes, Rene Russo, Corbin Bernsen and the real-life Mr. Baseball, Bob Uecker. Cyphers’ other notable big-screen credits include Death Wish II and Loaded Weapon 1, along with the 1979 TV film, Elvis.

Cyphers also appeared in Carpenter’s Escape from New York . And in 2021, Cyphers reprised the role of Leigh Brackett in the second installment of David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy: Halloween Kills .

“You know it’s Halloween… I guess everyone’s entitled to one good scare, huh?” Those die-hard enthusiasts of Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) know that indelible quote was uttered by Sheriff Bracket (Cyphers) to Laurie Strode (Curtis) in the original horror classic. It’s perhaps Cyphers most impactful and memorable cinematic saying, and the talented actor will truly be missed.

Rest in peace, Charles Cyphers.

‘Trap’ Review: Josh Hartnett Plays a Serial Killer in an M. Night Shyamalan Thriller Where Each Twist Is More Contrived Than the Last

It starts out at a pop-diva concert, designed as an elaborate trap to catch Hartnett's killer. But his emotions are no more believable than his escapes.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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As a filmmaker, M. Night Shyamalan has been a household name for 25 years, starting in 1999, when he ruled the end of the summer with “The Sixth Sense.” You can basically divide the Shyamalan oeuvre into four periods. There was the era when he was an A-list visionary who some compared to Spielberg (a period that includes his finest film, “Unbreakable,” as well as “Signs” and “The Village”). There was the era when he began to lapse into self-parody (“Lady in the Water,” “The Happening”), and when the whole notion of the Shyamalan twist ending became less an entertainer’s trademark than a sign of the rut he was in.

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For about half the film, we’re watching a movie in the genre of De Palma’s “Snake Eyes”: a real-time thriller set in a crowded performance arena, where a giant entertainment event is both center stage and the drama’s elaborate backdrop. The event, in this case, is a concert given by Lady Raven, a pop superstar (played by Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka Shyamalan) who’s a kind of mashup of Lady Gaga and Olivia Rodrigo. Her songs are pulsating and catchy (Saleka Shyamalan wrote them, and they’re pretty damn good, as is her performance), inspiring her fans, who are mostly teenage girls, to sing along with every word and to scream at nearly every moment in awestruck Beatlemania.

Hartnett, who exudes star quality (he always did), imbues the character with an overeager sweetness that draws us right in. At least, it does until Cooper goes for a bathroom break and takes out his cell phone…to check up on the victim he has got imprisoned in a suburban basement somewhere. Not exactly the movie we thought we were watching. But yes, we’ve seen this movie too.

Warning: This is not a spoiler ­— it’s the very premise of “Trap.” Cooper is a serial killer known as the Butcher. He has 12 victims, each of whom he has left cut up in pieces. There’s been a manhunt to catch him going on for seven years. But now the authorities, led by a veteran FBI profiler (played by the British former child actor Hayley Mills), have sprung the ultimate trap. They have learned that the Butcher is going to be attending Lady Raven’s concert. And so they’ve surrounded Tanaka Arena with S.W.A.T. team members; no one can get out. There are 20,000 people attending the concert, 3,000 of whom are adult males. The authorities have various (conflicting) clues about the killer from surveillance footage (they’ve never seen what he looks like), and one possible clue: an animal tattoo. They know the Butcher is at the concert. Their agenda is to uncover him.   

Right away, though, you may think: How, exactly, are they going to do that? Serial killers are notorious wizards at eluding the police. They’re all about anonymity. Is the FBI going to interrogate each of the 3,000 men at the concert before they leave? That would take three days. Or is the profiler, with that sixth sense of hers, going to somehow know who he is?

Cooper learns about all of this from a T-shirt clerk at a merch counter, and from the moment he does, his agenda is to slip out of the concert. Even though, as he discovers, the only possible way to do that is by getting backstage. For a while, as Cooper does things like steal a pass key, infiltrate a police pep talk, and bicker with the mother (Marnie McPhail) of one his daughter’s fickle friends, we go with the flow of the action, even as it’s all a bit heightened in its Shyamalan Zone unreality. Josh Hartnett is such a good actor that we’re more willing than not to follow in his paces as a killer in the vein of Joseph Cotton’s treacherous Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt.”

Around the time Cooper engages in a private dialogue with Lady Raven in her dressing room, we’re watching a movie that has abandoned all logic and plausibility. It’s not that I don’t buy that they could have that meeting; it’s that he outs himself to her as the killer. From that point on, whatever elaborate plan he comes up with, couldn’t she just…identify him? I guess we’re supposed to say, “Aha! It’s a ride! Go with it!” But asking an audience to go with something this fundamentally farfetched borders on an insult. More to the point: It’s not fun.

The second half of “Trap” is one trap door of contrivance after another. The movie turns into a “study” of Cooper: his stealth moves, his mommy issues, his divided personality. Yes, he really is a butcher, but he’s also a family man who loves his children. Talk about a split. A movie like “The Boston Strangler” (1968) dealt with this kind of thing in a haunting way, but as the contrivances of “Trap” balloon into something almost grotesque in their borderline absurdity, the movie raises the question: How invested can we be in a high-concept serial killer whose emotions are no more believable than his escapes?

Reviewed at AMC 34th St., New York, August 1, 2024. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 105 MIN.

• Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release of a Blinding Edge Pictures production. Producers: Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock, M. Night Shyamalan. Executive producer: Steven Schneider.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan. Camera: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Editors: Noemi Katharina. Music: Herdís Stefánsdóttir.
• With: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Kid Cudi, Tim Russ, Marnie McPhail, Vanessa Smythe.

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Orville Peck makes queer country for everyone. On ‘Stampede,’ stars like Willie Nelson join the fun

On his third album, “Stampede,” recording artist Orville Peck collaborated with everyone from Willie Nelson and Elton John to Mickey Guyton and Beck. (July 30)

Country music artist Orville Peck poses for portraits on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, in New York to promote his third album “Stampede.” (Photo by Matt Licari/Invision/AP)

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NEW YORK (AP) — It is not easy to be an outsider in country music, but Orville Peck has made a career out of it.

On his third album, “Stampede,” his nonconformist spirit has led to collaborations with everyone from Willie Nelson and Elton John to Mickey Guyton and Kylie Minogue.

When the South African musician released his debut album, “Pony,” in 2019, little was known about him. A country crooner with a deep baritone more in line with outlaws like Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings than anything on contemporary radio, Peck hid his identity (Peck is a pseudonym) and his face behind a mask.

A wide strip of leather completely obscured his forehead down to the nose bridge; the rest of his visage was concealed underneath a large Stetson and a foot of cascading fringe. As his public prolife rose and he continued to release new music, Peck started slowing stripping back the mask. Now, as he prepares to release “Stampede,” a duets album, only the hat and eye mask remain.

“I think it’s sort of in parallel with my confidence,” he says. “When I first started — my first album — I really needed the mask.”

It takes some self-assurance to release a duets album. Each song is a brand-new collaboration, a previously unexplored creative experiment, and a balancing act. “Every single song is me, 50%, and then 50% the other artist,” he says. “It’s a long tradition in country to do duets and have sort of duos. You know, I think of Johnny Cash and June Carter, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris,” he says, suggesting that this kind of album would arrive later in his career.

“But then when Willie asked me to do (the song) ‘Cowboys,’ it was like, ‘Oh, is this maybe the right moment?’ And so, then I asked Elton, and then I asked Kylie, and then, you know, so on, so forth.”

A dream get that didn’t work out? Dolly Parton.

In the case of Nelson, Peck is referring to the 1981 queer country cult classic, Ned Sublette’s “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other,” covered by Nelson in 2006 and an infrequent staple of Peck’s live show. When Nelson and Peck played a festival together a few years ago, the country legend invited Peck onto his tour bus for a cup of coffee and suggested they re-do the song as a duet. He told Peck, “It’s more important now than ever,” Peck recalls.

“I think the fact that he wanted to do this particular song with me, and the fact that his reasoning behind it was in support, and motivated in the encouragement of LGBTQ people, I mean, it’s like the most validating thing ever.” Later, they’d film a music video for the duet at Nelson’s Luck Ranch in Texas.

Across “Stampede,” too, are non-traditionalist duets and covers. There’s “Papa Was a Rodeo,” a bluegrass cover of the Magnetic Fields’ indie rock song, now with Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway. There’s an ode to Sin City, “Death Valley High,” with Beck, who told the AP the song was inspired by “Elvis in Vegas is, you know, Vegas by way of Memphis. It’s a totally different thing from Sinatra Vegas.”

There’s also “Midnight Ride,” a disco number with Kylie Minogue and Diplo, which the trio debuted live during a Pride event in Los Angeles in June.

“I’ve learned over the years how important visibility is,” Peck says, “Bringing something that’s really joyful and inclusive.”

A kind of outsiderness is where Peck feels home. “Country radio — country with a capital C — it’s sort of its own thing,” he says. “You got to do a lot of kissing babies and shaking hands to kind of play the Nashville game. And it’s just something I’ve never been interested in doing.

“I just want to have my music and my art speak for itself, and I don’t feel like I need to go kiss asses in Nashville to be accepted and be validated,” he continued.

“I know how country I am. I get to work with incredible legends like Willie Nelson, Tanya Tucker, all these people that I grew up idolizing, that love me. So, you know, that’s enough validation for me. And if I’m not on top 40 radio on country music, you know, that’s fine with me.”

Writer Krysta Fauria contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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‘Trap’ Review: Pop Goes the Thriller

Josh Hartnett stars as a father with a secret in this M. Night Shyamalan film set at a concert.

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By Amy Nicholson

“Dad, this is the literally the best day of my life,” the teenager Riley (Ariel Donoghue) beams to her doting father, Cooper (Josh Hartnett), in the opening minutes of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap.” That feeling won’t last — but for the first half of this mischievous thriller, we’re also having fun.

Riley is ecstatic to have stadium floor seats for her favorite pop icon, Lady Raven (Saleka). The child’s attention is on the stage. Ours is on her father who is having visible difficulty concentrating on the show. He’s clocking the cameras, the exits, the unusual number of cops, the no-nonsense F.B.I. profiler (Hayley Mills) muttering into her walkie-talkie. The police are hunting a serial killer named the Butcher, but all they’ve got to go on is that he’s a middle-aged man in this majority girl crowd. Underneath the thumping bass and the squeals, Shyamalan wordlessly clues us in that the unassuming Cooper is also a slayer desperate to escape.

Instead of telegraphing evil, Hartnett cranks up that gee-willikers likability that once trapped him as one of Hollywood’s factory-stamped generic leading men. At his most devilish, he’s all apple cheeks, grinning so amiably that a merch salesman (Jonathan Langdon) reveals that the Butcher has his own obsessives. When no one’s watching, Cooper’s eyes narrow at whatever is on his mind. Should he pull the fire alarm? Slip through the hydraulic lift in the floor? Can his daughter tell he’s acting weird?

It takes cleverness and control to pull off this unspoken tension. Shyamalan boasts the former and feigns the latter for a while before his hotdogging impulses take over. He’s like a guy who karaokes Hitchcock and then starts ad-libbing his own tune. We’re never onboard with the premise that a 20,000-plus crowd is the perfect place to arrest an unknown man. But we’re willing to play along until it starts to feel like Shyamalan so enjoys being inside Cooper’s head that he doesn’t want to leave. One fairly satisfying ending launches into encore after encore, with Shyamalan holding court past the time the audience is antsy to wrap up.

The plot is at its best when it’s simply a dad, a daughter and the puzzle he must solve to stay in her life. Hartnett and Donoghue have an affectionate, believable chemistry that’s boosted by the young actor’s natural charm — she doesn’t hit a phony note. To root for Riley’s happiness means rooting for Cooper’s, so every so often, particularly after we’ve cheered his latest brazen bit of genius, we’re reminded there’s a victim (Mark Bacolcol) handcuffed in his murder house. Worse, whenever Cooper needs a diversion, he’s willing to send a stranger’s daughter to the E.R.

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