Elvis (2022)

It garnered the lead, Austin Butler, BAFTA and Golden Globe awards but he never has a chance to act given the relentless strobe of Baz Luhrmann's three-hour docudrama: the camera flicks, spins, and sweeps, never resting for a second on anything - Butler included - and we unnecessarily spin and enter Graceland upside-down several times, so, while interesting, this is an exhausting look at Elvis's life, his upbringing, dizzying rise to stardom, financial exploitation, and premature death. 

★★★☆☆

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What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015)

Now watching

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A Man For All Seasons (1968)

A six-time Academy Award-winning historical drama screenwritten by Robert Bolt based on his play, A Man For All Seasons tells the story of Thomas More, the Lord High Chancellor of England from 1529 to 1532, who despite political pressure did not waver in his Catholic religious principles even when the desire for an heir with his mistress Anne Boleyn led King Henry VIII to usurp papal authority.

★★★★☆

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Amadeus (1984)

I have no idea whether the rumour Salieri murdered Mozart was borne out of some kernel of truth or was completely fabricated by Pushkin in the play he wrote in the 1830s, but that play was turned into an opera and then in 1979 Peter Shaffer's play came out, written as far as I know without credit to those earlier works, and then this sumptuous Academy Award-winning period drama based on Shaffer's play was released in 1984 (filmed on location in Prague (in the Estates Theatre, for example, where Mozart conducted the premiere of his Don Giovanni and where I recently watched The Marriage of Figaro, leading to my wanting to watch this again)) and now one thing is certain: the Italian Salieri's career has been entirely eclipsed and now, thanks to this movie, Salieri will always be remembered second as a composer and first as the Austrian composer's murderer, whether that is true, only slightly true, or not.

★★★★☆

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A Dangerous Method (2011)

This drama depicts the professional relationship of Jung and Freud in the early 1900s, raises fascinating ideas regarding their psychoanalytical methods, and features a terrific performance from Keira Knightley as real life patient and mistress of Jung, Sabina Spielrien, but the movie remains as clinical, as austere and removed as the psychoanalysts themselves.

★★★☆☆

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Memories of Murder (살인의 추억) (2003)

Only South Korea's Bong Joon-ho could produce from such grim true-life serial killer events this terrifically heady mix of human absurdist farce, police procedural thrills, mystery, and tragicomedy.

★★★★★

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