Elvis

 I grew up with a dad who absolutely loved Elvis Presley. He loves his music and he loved his movies. And, unlike a lot of the music that my parents listened to, I quite enjoyed it and enjoy listening to Elvis's music. Back then, though, Elvis was seen as this comic, ridiculous figure who met his end on a toilet. Nowadays, if people talk about Elvis, charges of cultural appropriation are thrown about. This movie does a very good job of explaining why Elvis was drawn to the music he was and why he sang the way he did. He was part of a community that wasn't white nor black, but very poor, which was a challenge to power structures in the south during the segregation era. He didn't do a lot to personally help those black artists at the time, and the movie makes it clear why. Although he was very talented and a musical genius, in other areas of his life he wasn't that smart because he was as I said before incredibly poor growing up. So he was the victim of incredible exploitation, part of that exploitation was songs that were originally made famous by black performers being re-recorded by Elvis and other white artists. The difference was that Elvis had his own unique take on the music, especially in the early years, that was equally dangerous to the white establishment as the black original artists' versions were. Just listen to a pat Boone cover of an early rock and roll song, and you'll see what this exploitation really sounded like. The movie itself is a weird fever dream, and more about Tom Parker than it is about Elvis. Tom Hanks got to say very good job in the role, but the movie is about Parker's perspective of his relationship, exploitative relationship with Elvis. So the movie is good but somewhat inaccurately entitled. I had two things that bugged me about it, first was that the songs from Elvis's life that were playing we're not necessarily playing at moments that were consistent with his biography, songs that he recorded later in his life happened earlier in the film, and I think that might be a little bit confusing. The other thing, it's not in this film all of Elvis's movies are considered bad. The man made something like 30 or 40 movies, they are not all bad.