Most of Elvis’s movies are not great, but this one is charming enough and a good (if formulaic) story about the cost of doing the music business and choosing whether to leave people behind in order to get what you want. The jailhouse number is obviously iconic, and that’s the lasting impression I have of the movie and not much else). Would make an interesting double feature with Penitentiary (1979), which I'll be watching in a few weeks for Junesploitation and which also has a meaningful mentor relationship between fellow prison inmates.
Elvis (TV, 1979)
Trailers: Elvis (2022), Rocketman
Directed by John Carpenter and starring his soon-to-be frequent collaborator Kurt Russell, this is your standard made-for-TV biopic that waters a whole lot of stuff down and was made frankly too soon after Presley’s death to be objective in any way. I kind of liked the framing device of his comeback concert in Vegas, and the thread of his relationship with his mother and the memory of his lost brother is a nice emotional touch. I was frustrated, though, that there is not one mention of his life after that, notably his eventual heavy drug use (though maybe not a lot of that was public knowledge at the time?). Russell makes a compelling Elvis, though, and would play him again years later in 3000 Miles to Graceland.
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