Film Review - Elvis (2022)

 Elvis is the new film by Baz Luhrmann and stars Austin Butler as Elvis Presley and Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker his longtime manager who discovers him at a local carnival in 1950s America and then guides him to enormous success and fame even if that starts to come at a cost.

 

Elvis was another film I was very much looking forward to as I am a huge Baz Luhrmann fan and have liked all of his movies with the exception of 2008’s Australia which was a near complete total misfire on almost every front, I love the Red Curtain movies and even think the Great Gatsby from 2013 is underrated despite its mishandling of Daisy but could Baz make the King sing or drown him in a pile of glitter.

 

Well this is very much a case of the former as I was not disappointed in this movie and first off I must talk about Austin Butler who will next be seen as the new Feyd in Dune Part 2 next year is simply outstanding and then some in this movie, the way he embodies Elvis both as a performer and as a man simply must be seen to be believed, he knocks this role out of the park and then some and it is simply captivating to watch him here and like Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge or DiCaprio in Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Debicki in the Great Gatsby you are seeing a star being forged in the fire and rising to the occasion.

 

I’m now a lot more keen to see him as Feyd in Dune next year after watching him here for all I see here is a Star I want to see more of.

 

As for Tom Hanks he is fine but his makeup work at times reminded me a lot of the Penguin from Batman and we just had a new Penguin recently in Colin Farrell in the new Batman movie back in March and his accent here at times gets a little silly but I went with it enough for it to not bother me even though the makeup work did at times.

 

As for Baz’s direction well its Baz doing what Baz does, turning it all the way up to 15 with the kind of energetic direction and editing that only he can and it’s a style that is not for everyone but it is certainly for me and here I think it works well enough that it won me over.

 

However I must say that as much as I like this movie it is also too long, it goes for 159 minutes and when it ends and the lights come up you feel like your bottom’s gone numb in your cinema seat and that you’ve sat there for about 3 hours or so and I think this movie could’ve lost a good 10-15 or so and not lost too much in terms of the storytelling and characterization especially when Gatsby ran for about 142 minutes and didn’t feel long at all at least for me.

 

And so that was Elvis and like Minions 2 I was not disappointed and would probably rank it third in my BazMark ranking only behind Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge and I will be keen to see it again despite it being too long, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Minions The Rise of Gru (2022)

 Minions the Rise of Gru is the fifth entry in the Despicable Me franchise and this time Steve Carrell returns as a young Gru in 1970’s America when he was just a child wanting to become a member of the Vicious Six, a group of supervillains led by Wild Knuckles (Alan Arkin) who Gru idolises but when his application is rejected he steals a priceless stone but it goes missing during the escape so now Gru and the Minions must get it back and prove how despicable they can be.

 

Minions the Rise of Gru was a film that I was very much looking forward to as I am a big fan of the Despicable Me series which does not get the biggest amount of love in film circles but its one I’ve enjoyed for its colourful tone, the Minions being funny, Gru being a likeable villain and its bright animation style and while I liked the first Minions film in 2015 I think Gru coming back was a wise move as the Minions on their own couldn’t quite carry a film by themselves.

 

But Gru’s return pays off for the most part as I had a lot of fun with this movie and laughed quite a bit out loud in the cinema and firstly I love the grouping of Gru, Kevin, Stuart and Bob they make a nice quartet and one scene with them that references Jaws was very funny.

 

Also I really like the idea of the Vicious Six and the film uses them all very nicely, Arkin is fun as Wild Knuckles but there’s also Jean Clawed (Jean Claude Van Damme), Stronghold (Danny Trejo), Svengeance (Dolph Lundgren), Belle Bottom (Taraji P. Henson) and Nunchuck (Lucy Lawless) and all of them have great moments to shine as well both as a group as well as in individual moments where they put their skill sets to the test and one scene of them against Gru and company was a lot of fun in the cinema.

 

Also Michelle Yeoh fresh from Everything, Everywhere, All at Once has a nice small role as well as a Kung Fu teacher turned Acupuncturist and some of the gags with her character and the Minions as she tries to train them are very funny.

 

But if I have misstep about the film its how Gru is ultimately used throughout the film, while I think his return was a good move I also feel that for the middle of the film he kind of disappears a little bit, he’s still there but he is used better in the beginning and ending of the film and I think the Minions as fun as they are need Gru to help carry the films in this series.

 

And so that was Minions the Rise of Gru and I had a lot of fun watching this movie and I laughed a lot out loud and that was all I really wanted from this movie and so I give it a warm 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Lightyear (2022)

 Lightyear is the first Pixar film to open in cinemas since Onward in March 2020 which had its cinema release scuttled by the onset of the dark times-sorry-The Pandemic and this film is about the actual character of Buzz Lightyear and not the toy from the Toy Story films and this time Chris Evans voices Buzz instead of Tim Allen, the story here sees Buzz attempt to save his marooned crew on a remote planet by attempting to use lightspeed as a fast means to get them home but after one trip he finds the planet near deserted save for a small group of space rangers who want to take down the Zerg ship keeping them from leaving the planet.

 

Lightyear is sadly a big disappointment for me but before I delve into why I feel that way I want to touch on the positives I have with this movie and firstly the film has some nice animation visuals in it, Pixar normally delivers good quality visuals and here is no exception be it the remote planet, the details in the space ranger uniforms, the sparseness of the living modules the crew live in on their colony and even the food meals.

 

Also I love the character of Sox the Cat, he’s voiced by Peter Cohn and he is a lot of fun to watch and often steals many of the scenes he’s in from his observations to his practicality to his very cute face that made me think of my own furry Kitty critic when he was on screen.

 

But despite those positives I was very disappointed in this movie overall:

 

- The first reason is the story itself, it did very little for me in terms of an emotional response either happy or sad and given that this is a Pixar film I had hoped for something either exciting like the opening of Toy Story 2 or something sad like Toy Story 3 but instead it does this weird story that made me wonder who this movie is for.

 

Because I got to thinking the more I let this movie sift around in my head since seeing it was that I wasn’t sure whether a lot of kids would get with it and enjoy it nor was I 100% sure that most adults would enjoy it either.

 

And this leads me into my second problem which is the heroes themselves, I honestly didn’t really care about them very much as the movie has a bad habit of treating them as either buffoons or too wet behind the ears and its one thing to laugh WITH your heroes in a movie like this but this movie has you laughing AT them and not in a good way especially the character that Taika Waititi voices now I am a big Taika fan but here he was too cartoonish and silly for my liking.

 

- And lastly I was disappointed in Chris Evans as Buzz, now when he was announced as voicing this role instead of Tim Allen in this movie I was interested to see what he would do with this character given how good and successful he was as Captain America in the MCU but alas he does not get to play a noble and heroic Buzz instead he plays a maudlin and somber Buzz and it really hurts this movie in a big way at least for me and when he does repeat Tim Allen’s lines from the Toy Story films it too often feels like he is imitating Allen instead of doing his own thing.

 

And so that was Lightyear and this movie as well as Jurassic World Dominion aren’t really helped by opening so soon after Top Gun Maverick which for me did deliver a rollicking good time at the cinema whereas here it feels too maudlin and somber for kids and for the adults in the audience but it has some nice visuals and a cool movie Cat so I’ll give it a regrettable 2 out of 5.