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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Rocketman (2019)

Fans will relish the chance to rediscover Elton John's music in this new form with clips of his songs strung together Mamma Mia-style into a kind of motion picture photo album, while others will hopefully find something to be interested in over the  course of the singer's very familiar trajectory to worldwide celebrity, although like Elton John himself, they will find it hard to find anything in the singer's adopted persona to emotionally connect with - an abandoned childhood identity, for instance.

★★★☆☆

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Vox Lux (2019)

It is entirely possible the provocative scenes of terrorism and Willem Dafoe's voiceover (an omniscient fairytale narration which lapses occasionally into an uncertain subjunctive mood, as unnecessary as it is overwritten: sex is "nocturnal activities" and Stockholm a "far from exotic city in Europe", thank you very much) were tacked on in a last ditch effort to render different from A Star Is Born this dismaying snorefest, the abyssmal likes of which I haven't experienced since Winona Ryder and James Franco's The Letter.

★☆☆☆☆

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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

There is nothing objectionable in watching people catapault from one success to another as Freddie Mercury and his band Queen do in this bandopic, but there is nothing much unique about the trajectory traced by this particular movie, either - the band experiences the crazy heights and then the abject lows experienced by all winners of The Voice and all musicians in movies - have you seen A Star Is Born? - and all you are left with in the end as you watch a painstakingly recreated 20-minute set at a rock concert is doubt regarding the reality of Queen's longevity and questions - because I just don't know - about the accuracy of Rami Malek's impersonation.

★★★☆☆

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A Star Is Born (2018)

I lose interest after the early episodes of The Voice and American Idol too once the 'dreams come true' talent-discovery moments have passed, and it doesn't help that the electric first encounter and romance between Gaga's Ally and Cooper's Jackson in the first half of the very long movie descends in the second half into a boring highlight reel of "the sorts of things that happen" to celebrity couples.

★★★☆☆

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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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