Film Review of the Week

Documentary

EPiC: Elvis In Concert (12A)

Review: In A Little Less Conversation, one of hundreds of Elvis Presley songs that are missing from the 45-track set list that spans director Baz Luhrmann’s sensational 90-minute concert film experience, The King memorably demands less talk and more action, beginning the first verse with the heartfelt plea, “Baby, close your eyes and listen to the music!” His wish is granted with pelvis-thrusting gusto in Epic: Elvis Presley In Concert, an exhilarating restoration of presumed lost and previously unseen material that showcases the singer’s charisma, showmanship and playful sense of humour, nearly 50 years after his death at his Graceland estate, aged 42.

During the making of his 2022 biographical drama Elvis, Luhrmann went in search of missing footage from the concert films Elvis: That’s The Way It Is and Elvis On Tour. Researchers descended into the Warners Bros film vaults, located in underground salt mines in Kansas, and stumbled upon a treasure trove comprising 59 hours of previously unseen film negative. Over the next two years, this material and newly discovered Super8 footage from the Graceland Archives were lovingly restored by Peter Jackson’s post-production and film restoration facility in New Zealand and paired with meticulously restored sound from various unconventional sources.

The result is dazzling picture quality and thunderous sound that shakes, rattles and rolls, especially in the gargantuan Imax format. Unheard recordings of Elvis talking candidly about his life, music and the close relationship with his fans are beautiful gift-wrapping. “If I do something good, they let me know. If I don’t, they let me know that,” he drawls. Thrilling excerpts and renditions of tracks including That’s All Right, (You’re The) Devil In Disguise, Big Hunk O’ Love and Suspicious Minds are interspersed with lively stage banter. Before a rendition of I Can’t Stop Loving You, Elvis mentions he needs water. “It’s like Bob Dylan just sat in my mouth!” he quips.

Luhrmann abides by the less talk, more action plea, but sometimes Elvis’ words speak loudest. When an interviewer contemptuously asks if the showman considers himself a singer, Elvis politely responds, “Well, I sold five million records. Somebody calls it singing.” Later, as a physically gruelling schedule of up to three performances a day takes its toll, he reflects, “What a way to make a living – it’s really tough.”

“I’ve never been to Britain,” he tells a journalist during a press conference. “I’d like to go to Europe. I’d like to go to Japan and all those places. I’ve never been out of this country except in the service,” he adds. At the time of his death, Presley never played outside of North America, including three concerts in Canada. In some magnificent yet poignant way, Luhrmann’s film feels like the glittering world tour the King always imagined.

Horror

Scream 7 (18)

Review: In some cultures, seven is considered a lucky number. In the rabidly self-self-self-referential pop culture that the Scream films embrace with tongue wedged firmly in lacerated cheek, seven is the most crushingly disappointing number. For long stretches, the first instalment with original screenwriter Kevin Williamson in the director’s chair is a slickly executed blast with some satisfyingly squelchy kills. Unfortunately, one key sequence derails the entire picture and Scream 7 never recovers.

Sidney Prescott-Evans (Neve Campbell), one of the survivors of the original Ghostface killer(s), has relocated to the picture postcard town of Pine Grove to run a neighbourhood coffee shop and raise her sassy 17-year-old daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), with her police officer husband, Mark (Joel McHale). She politely tolerates interest from crime podcast junkies in her tragic past, luridly chronicled in the Stab films, but refuses to go into details about the people she has lost with Tatum. Consequently, mother and daughter find themselves at an emotional impasse, especially when it comes to Tatum’s boyfriend Ben (Sam Rechner).

“Just because you don’t trust people doesn’t mean people can’t be trusted,” Tatum angrily spits at her mother during their latest argument. A new Ghostface killer brazenly arrives in Pine Grove with a diabolical plan to target everyone that Sidney loves. To protect her family and old acquaintances including Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), with whom Sidney has a “complicated but enduring” friendship, the stoic survivor must confront ghosts of her grim past and scrutinise the most obvious suspects: Tatum’s classmates Chloe (Celeste O’Connor), Hannah (Mckenna Grace) and Lucas (Asa Germann) and the school’s mean-spirited drama teacher (Timothy Simons).

Scream 7 welcomes back Campbell as the prime target of Ghostface’s machinations after a brief hiatus from the franchise. Her absence from the sixth film, set in New York City, is addressed head-on in dialogue between Sidney and Gale. “You’re lucky that you sat that one out – it was brutal!” snipes the no-nonsense news reporter, who bears visible scars from her near-fatal encounters with different maniacs since the opening foray in 1996. Returning twins Chad (Mason Gooding) and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown) are introduced to knowingly explain the theme of the seventh picture – nostalgia – and venerate Sidney as a Scream Queen immortalised in the annals of Hollywood history.

At a critical juncture, Williamson’s picture inexplicably slits its own throat. The offending scene moves the plot forward with several minutes of spoken exposition. It’s a bewildering and infuriating misstep, all the more glaring when everything else in a script co-written by the director and Guy Busick is polished and punctuated by delectable peekaboo moments with the masked menace. I wanted to scream out loud but not for the visceral, nerve-shredding reasons intended.

Musical

The Testament Of Ann Lee (15)

Review: Norwegian filmmaker and actress Mona Fastvold, who was Oscar-nominated with her partner Brady Corbet for their screenplay to The Brutalist, pushes creative boundaries again with an audacious musical biopic of the founder of the Shakers religious sect. Galvanised by an incendiary lead performance from Amanda Seyfried as the eponymous preacher, who followers anoint the female Messiah, The Testament Of Ann Lee is a defiantly unconventional history lesson that induces moments of euphoria with its breathlessly staged interludes of dance and song.

Ann Lee (Esmee Hewett) and brother William (Benjamin Bagota) are raised in 1730s Manchester and work in the local cotton factory. The girl becomes increasingly pious. “When she was a child, her mind was taken up with the things of God. She saw heavenly visions, instead of trifling toys,” explains Ann’s closest friend Mary Partington (Thomasin McKenzie), who acts as the film’s narrator. Ann blossoms into a spirited young woman (now played by Seyfried) and seeks spiritual succour at a meeting of Quakers led by James Wardley (Scott Handy) and his wife Jane (Stacy Martin). A spontaneous outpouring of emotion moves Ann and she subsequently marries another member of the congregation, Abraham Standerin (Christopher Abbott), but repeatedly denies him carnal pleasure because sex is a sin.

Abraham is “a perplexed observer of his wife’s theological virtues” and when Ann experiences a heavenly vision, she is anointed ‘Mother’ by her flock. Neighbours grow fearful and a wealthy farmer pays for the congregation to relocate to New England accompanied by the farmer’s son (Jamie Bogyo). Ann’s brother William (Lewis Pullman) establishes a Shakers settlement on land in Niskayuna and is joined by his sister and a steadily swelling population of converts. As news of Ann’s influence travels far and wide, she is openly accused of witchcraft.

The Testament Of Ann Lee slowly peels back the emotional layers of the title character as she brandishes her faith as a weapon against perceived sinfulness. Seyfried’s sensational performance electrifies every frame and she remains a magnetic screen presence during elaborate musical sequences festooned with dozens of enraptured dancers. Collaborating closely with composer Daniel Blumberg, choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall honours original Shaker melodies, hymns and words, and interprets spiritual incantations as rhapsodic, body-trembling movements that whip an ensemble cast into communal exultation.

Many of these sequences are shot in extended takes that force the camera to pirouette around performers, sometimes in the open air but most strikingly in candle-lit interiors. Dozens of dancers with long hair flail and twirl close to flickering naked flames, blissfully lost in swells of overlapping human voices. Languid pacing accounts for an unwieldy 137-minute running time that prevents Fastvold’s historical portrait from ascending straight to heaven. The film, like Ann, remains earthbound in ecstasy.