Nate At The Movies

Even with my various film checklists to work on, from Star Wars and Marvel to the Oscars Death Race, this weekend was still looking pretty bare. I didn’t care about Scream 7, so instead I took a swing on EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, which had been getting good enough reviews for me to consider. I remember enjoying Elvis back in 2022, and if this doc featured the real guy, I imagined that I’d have a decent time. I didn’t realize I was going to enjoy myself this much, though, and I wish I hadn’t been so tired from school today so I wouldn’t have had to fight sleep through the first 15 minutes or so of this surprising documentary.

I haven’t always been a fan of Baz Luhrmann’s directorial style—just recently I didn’t really love his frenetic editing in The Great Gatsby—but his maximalist execution really fit with the fiery performance style of Elvis. Luhrmann did take the first five minutes or so to messily sum up Elvis’s life before his Vegas residency, but once we got to the concert, he locked in. The back-and-forth between songs and candid personal moments really effectively showed the range of Elvis’s life, proving him to be both an electric performer and an authentic, passionate man, even with his flaws and mistakes. I enjoyed seeing Elvis embrace a child who adored him just as much as I enjoyed some of his performances.

Speaking of those performances, they were captivating. The Las Vegas residency was a great part of Elvis’s career to highlight; I think I only want to hear these songs with a full orchestra and a dozen backup singers from now on. The classics were made better by this arrangement, from “Burnin’ Love” to “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (I show one of his Vegas performances to my 5th graders who learn about him, so I’ve already heard and love that key change at the end), but I also heard so many songs that I didn’t know before that I quickly became obsessed with. I’ll have to comb through his discography because I truly don’t know it well enough, but one that I really loved hearing in the theater was “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’”. I loved some of the covers he did, too, from “Always On My Mind” to the hymns and “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. I had no idea he was such a music nerd!

As far as music documentaries go, I don’t think I’ve seen one more electric than EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. Not only was I rocking in my seat as I experienced new Elvis song after new Elvis song—my interest in him was also completely reinvigorated, which is a pretty special feat for a music documentary. As I mentioned, Elvis is one of eight American musicians I teach my 5th graders about, and I’ve realized that, even with all of my own research, there is still so much of Elvis that we can all appreciate. I’ll have to redo my slides over the summer to fully capture this new understanding of Elvis that I have, and I bet I’ll include an extra song or two from his Vegas residency; they were just that awesome. I didn’t expect to like EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert as much as I did, especially for a musician I wouldn’t have said I “loved” going in, but I’m glad that, coming out, I’m a much bigger Elvis fan.