ELVIS (2022) ****

If you go into Elvis expecting a by-the-numbers biopic of America’s greatest entertainer, you will no doubt be disappointed.  It’s less a conventional biopic and more a dark, melancholic examination of mental and psychological abuse.  It's about how the abuser will use any tool at their disposal to control the narrative and insert themselves into it.  How the cycle of abuse begins, is perpetrated, threatens to curtail, and then starts back up again.  It is the story of Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) and Elvis Presley (Austin Butler).

Parker is a carnival huckster who knows how to sell a show.  When he witnesses firsthand the reaction to Elvis’ performance at a county fair, he sees dollar signs.  Parker is able to move Elvis out of the county fair circuit and soon makes him the biggest pop culture artist of all time.  It doesn’t take long before the Parker’s control pushes Elvis to rebel, but somehow, he always winds up crawling back into the Colonel’s clutches.

Elvis is a tragedy.  It is about how a good-natured mama’s boy with unfathomable talent is commoditized, monetized, and controlled by a shrewd businessman.  It is the story of American business, and the way businessmen exploit their workers past the point of exhaustion.  It is about the American Dream and how the dreamers often become distracted, manipulated, and just plain taken advantage of along the way. 

Many will want a straightforward Elvis movie.  I get that.  This is not it.  What is amazing about the film is how firm of a grasp the Colonel has on the story.  He is in control of the narrative from the very first frame, manipulating the audience, just as he manipulated The King.  Elvis goes along with the Colonel’s shady business practices, mostly to provide for his family, but even then, he eventually tires of the Colonel and tries to wriggle out of his iron grip. 

What is fascinating about the film, is that when Elvis temporarily defies the Colonel, the movie soars and becomes an intoxicatingly dizzying spectacle like only Baz Luhrmann could make.  Like when Elvis goes behind the Colonel’s back to make his comeback television special.  We see Elvis totally in his element without the Colonel’s meddling, and he is firing on all creative cylinders.  The moment when he ignores Parker’s mandate for an old-timey Christmas number to deliver the passionate “If I Can Dream” is especially triumphant.  In these moments, Elvis (both the movie and the man) literally and figuratively finds his voice, and we can see what he could’ve accomplished if he wasn’t shackled to the sleazy Colonel. 

The Colonel’s manipulations don’t stop with Elvis.  In the end, when he laments The King’s death, he says it wasn’t the heart attack or the pills that killed him, but “His love for YOU!”  He’s projecting the blame of Elvis’ descent into drugs not on himself, but the audience… US.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that blamed the death of its title character on the viewer like that before.  It just shows the lengths Parker will go to in order to make himself out the be the hero.  He has his claws in the audience just as much as he does Elvis. 

This is a special movie.  One of the best of the year.  It has all the bombast and fun an Elvis film directed by Luhrmann could have.  However, it’s the dark dynamic between the Colonel and Elvis that gives it so much power.  I can understand why people won’t like it.  If you want a safe Elvis bio, there are plenty of them out there.  (The John Carpenter one is probably the best.)  If you want something braver, riskier, and darker, this will be the way to go.  It is bound to leave the viewer all shook up.

CANDYMAN (2021) *

Rebooting Candyman made sense from a financial standpoint.  So many horror franchises are getting legacy sequels nowadays, so it seemed like a good idea to resurrect Candyman for modern-day audiences.  The fact that Jordan (Get Out) Peele co-wrote and produced the flick certainly gave hope that this just wasn’t going to be another by-the-numbers cash grab.  As it turns out, this Candyman is a muddled, messy, and often dull slog. 

Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is an artist who is struggling to live up to his early potential.  He finds inspiration in the urban legend of the Candyman, and when he incorporates elements of the Candyman legend into his work, people around him begin to die.  Eventually, he finds himself slowly transforming into the titular hook-handed boogeyman. 

This seems like it started out as a radical reimagining of the character, but somewhere along the way, someone got cold feet and tried to play Connect the Dots to tie it all back to the original.  The fact that half the movie revolves around a different Candyman (a wrongly murdered man in the ‘70s) seems to suggest that.  The idea that the hero is slowly (with the emphasis on SLOWLY) changing into the killer is interesting, but it never really works.  Besides, the only halfway effective moment in his transformation was blatantly stolen from Cronenberg’s The Fly.

The kills are weak too.  Many of them feel shoehorned in there (like the high school bathroom massacre) just to up the body count as they have little connection to the overall story.  The film is particularly shaky whenever it tries to introduce social topics into the mix.  Issues like police brutality, gentrification, and the exploitation of African American artists are given broad, clumsy strokes, but these ideas are all kernels that never really pop.  

The Candyman movies were never very good to begin with, but this one has the dubious distinction of being the worst of the bunch.  The ending especially is frustrating, mostly because when the REAL Candyman shows up, it’s only for like five fucking seconds.  And speaking of the real Candyman, did they not have the budget to use flashbacks from the other movies?  Instead, we get a bunch of crappy looking shadow puppets that fill in the story gaps from the original to the reboot.  This crap might’ve been okay for a title sequence or something, but by about the fourth time the paper cutouts were trotted out, I found my patience sorely tested.

 In short, there ain’t nothing sweet about this Candyman.

BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD DO THE UNIVERSE (2022) *** ½

It’s been over a quarter of a century since Beavis and Butt-Head starred in a feature-length movie.  If anything, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe proves that in all that time, the headbanging duo haven’t change one iota.  Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Do the Universe plays sort of like a loose remake of their first movie, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.  Only this time out, instead of traveling cross-country while being pursued by government agents and people who want to kill them, they get sucked into a worm hole, wind up in 2022 and are pursued by government agents and people who want to kill them.  Along the way, they eat a lot of nachos, laugh uncontrollably at perceived innuendo, smack each other around, and of course, try to “score”.

Unlike most Johnny-come-lately sequels, Do the Universe hits the sweet spot more often than not.  That’s mostly because creator Mike Judge pretty much allows the characters to behave just like they did in the ‘90s.  The concessions to the present times are few, but frequently funny.  One of the many highlights comes when Beavis and Butt-Head accidentally crash a Women’s Studies course at a college where they learn about their “White Privilege”, which they predictably take full advantage of.  In a time when so many legacy sequels, reboots, and updates try to pass the torch, make social commentary, or simply cash-in on their IP, it’s refreshing to find one that simply resists the temptation to reinvent the wheel.

Compared to its predecessor, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe doesn’t quite have the same amount of fun and laughs.  However, the jokes that do land will leave you laughing long into the next scene.  I said “long”.  Huh-huh.  

INTERCEPTOR (2022) ** ½

Interceptor is a diverting enough actioner that is sort of a throwback to the kinds of action flicks they used to make in the ‘90s.  It has a Die Hard-ish type of plot with a touch of reheated neo-Cold War paranoia in there for good measure.  While it has one or two neat action beats here and there, it never quite puts the pedal to the metal.  Still, it’s not bad for lazy Sunday afternoon entertainment.  

Elsa Pataky stars as a demoted Army captain assigned to a military installation in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  The base contains the only missiles capable of stopping an all-out nuclear attack on American soil.  Naturally, terrorists siege the base with the intention of frying the firing mechanism and launching a nuclear assault on the good old U.S. of A.  Pataky winds up being the last woman standing to fend off the terrorists and becomes (as one character puts it) “the only thing standing between America and Armageddon!”.

I enjoyed Pataky in the Fast and Furious sequels (not to mention Beyond Re-Animator), so it was nice to see her taking the lead role in a scrappy B-action flick.  It’s a decent vehicle for her talents as she gets to play a capable, badass woman who can take out a bunch of dudes singlehandedly.  The action is competently staged for the most part, although the cramped confines of the missile base (there’s basically just one hallway and a command center) doesn’t give much leeway in terms of variety.  We do get at least one gnarly kill (a beheading), but the film really needed another rousing moment (or two) to put it over the top.  

Pataky, of course, is the wife of Chris Hemsworth, who also produced.  He even shows up in a funny cameo as a nerdy TV salesman who happens to watch the events of the film unfold live on television.  He manages to inject some levity into the proceedings, although his occasional appearances don’t exactly jibe with tone of the rest of the film.

THE KING’S MAN (2021) **

After thoroughly enjoying Kingsman:  The Golden Circle more than I expected, I decided to check out this prequel.  I’m not sure who asked for a Kingsman origin story set one hundred (!?) years before the first movie, but we got one anyway.  It’s certainly an odd duck.  It’s almost as if director Matthew Vaughn wanted to make a WWI movie and couldn’t get funding, so he just grafted the Kingsman brand onto it in order to get it made.  Whatever the case was, it just never really clicks.

Ralph Fiennes stars as a nobleman who masquerades as a pacifist, but is actually a covert secret agent keeping tabs on world governments.  As Europe enters The Great War, a similar agency working to cause global chaos further instigates and manipulates the countries.  Fiennes eventually says enough is enough and using intel developed by an intricate syndicate of domestic workers placed in the highest echelon of government, sets out to stop the war once and for all.  

The fun of the first two Kingsman movies was the fact that it was an amped-up, bawdy updating of the James Bond franchise.  Setting the prequel during WWI was a weird move.  The film doesn’t really tie into the others until the last scene and features little of what made those flicks so much fun.  Most of the time, it’s a dour and joyless slog punctuated by an occasional over the top fight scene.  These sequences, while they alleviate the boredom, aren’t nearly as wild or entertaining as the stuff we saw in the previous installments.  

I like Fiennes and all, but he’s just an ill fit as an action hero.  (Anyone who saw The Avengers can tell you that.)  The supporting players (Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Arterton, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, etc.) are well cast, and yet their roles are so flimsily written that they are unable to do very much with what they were given.  Only Rhys Ifans brings a spark to the proceedings as the mad monk, Rasputin.  His Russian ballerina moves during his big swordfight with Fiennes is the definite highlight, and hints at what could’ve been had the film possessed that same kind of energy throughout.  Sadly, once he vanishes from the proceedings, his presence is sorely missed, and the flick never quite recovers.  

I will say the film has one of the loopiest post-credits set-ups for a sequel I’ve ever seen.  It’s almost like a parody of your typical comic book post-credits sequence, but played with such deadly seriousness that it winds up getting the biggest laugh in the movie.  If only that same kind of bizarre energy was elsewhere in the flick, The King’s Man might’ve been a royal good time.

KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (2017) *** ½

After an attack on the secret society of British secret agents, Kingsman leaves only Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and Merlin (Mark Strong) alive, they set out to find the mastermind behind the assassination plot.  They travel to America where they team up with “The Statesmen” their cowboy counterparts in counterespionage led by “Champ” (Jeff Bridges).  Together, they discover the cheery leader of a secret drug cartel (Julieanne Moore) was behind the hit, and that she now has plans to taint the world’s drug supply.  

Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman:  The Golden Circle hits the ground running with a great opening fight sequence set entirely in a car and it never looks back.  It’s breathless and inventive, and easily surpasses the uneven (but enjoyable) original.  It may often be outlandish and cartoonish, sure, but it’s also a lot of fun.  

It helps that the new members of the cast are all welcomed additions.  It’s particularly fun seeing the likes of Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum, and Halle Berry as The Statesmen, even if they never are given a whole lot to do.  It’s Moore though who steals the movie as the happy homemaker drug czar.  Her lair is especially clever.  A fan of ‘50s, nostalgia, she’s turned a small acre of jungle into a demented version of Disney’s Main Street, complete with a malt shop guarded by two robot dogs.  The funniest touch is that she’s so powerful that she’s kidnapped Elton John and has him on hand to play his hits like a living captive human jukebox.  John is often very funny and gets some of the biggest laughs in the entire film.  

Taron Egerton is once again a solid leading man.  He and Strong have a couple of fine scenes together.  I also enjoyed seeing Colin Firth making a welcome return from the first movie.  It takes him a while to get his bearings (which is understandable since he died in the original), but once he starts kicking ass again, he looks like he’s having a blast.  

Like most of these comic book flicks, it runs on a bit too long (140 minutes), and probably has one or two too many gratuitous action sequences.  Luckily, it’s breathlessly paced and enormously entertaining.  In short, when it comes to comic book spy sequels, The Golden Circle gets the gold.

OLD (2021) ** ½

It’s no secret that I am not a fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s films.  Most of them feel like half-baked Twilight Zone episodes stretched out far past their breaking points with predictable twist endings that often land with a thud.  Old is the closest I’ve come to actually liking one of his films.  I say that with some major reservations because even though I was relatively entertained, it was mostly for all the wrong reasons as there are several unintentional laughs to be had throughout the first hour or so of the picture.  Too bad Shyamalan completely woofs it when it comes into the homestretch.  Till then though, Old is some reasonably entertaining hokum.  

A bickering couple take their kids to a beach resort to get away from it all before breaking the news to them they are getting a divorce.  They are told about a beautiful hidden beach near the hotel, and they head out there for a nice relaxing day of fun and sun with a couple of other guests.  They soon find out that not only are they unable to leave the beach, but it makes them age at an accelerated rate.  

There is some truly inspired goofy shit here that makes Old mostly tolerable.  I particularly liked the stuff with the kids hitting puberty and reenacting the entirety of The Blue Lagoon in a matter of minutes.  There’s also a rather nifty emergency surgery sequence that probably ranks as Shyamalan’s single best suspense scene of his career.  These sequences alone put Old head and shoulders above his other work.  

Unfortunately, like always, he completely shits the bed when it comes to the ending.  The big “Shyamalan Twist” really isn’t that bad this time around.  However, he just doesn’t know when to quit.  If the film ended right after the big reveal, it definitely would’ve been a *** flick.  The trouble is, he goes and gives us four or five non-endings right in a row to gratuitously wrap up various plot threads that didn’t need to be wrapped up, which adds about fifteen unnecessary minutes onto the already bloated running time.  Had he cut out all this nonsense, Old would’ve been a perfect day at the beach.