The 7 Best New Movies on HBO Max in September 2022

thewrap.com:

“Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s extravagant musical biopic. Either you fall in love with its aesthetic, which depicts Elvis (as portrayed by “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” star Austin Butler) as the puppet for a scheming Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), festooned with editorial flourishes and stylistic embellishments, or you think that its high drama is actually, somehow, both overwrought and undercooked.

We very much fall into the camp of “Elvis” lovers, particularly in the movie’s first half, when Luhrmann really lets his freak flag fly. (There are times when the movie is genuinely overwhelming, in the best possible way.) Butler is a revelation, even if the movie’s unconventional structure occasionally forces him to play second-fiddle to Hanks’ sneering, Goldmember-like performance, which sees the actor caked in prosthetics and speaking with a bizarre accent.

Even some of the more bizarre elements of the movie, like its ability to indulge in nearly every musical biopic cliché years after “Walk Hard” seemingly shattered those tropes, seem muted compared to all of “Elvis’” glittery accomplishments.One of Guy Ritchie’s very best movies and certainly his most underrated, “Rocknrolla” came during a fallow period of the British filmmaker’s career, after back-to-back disappointments (his mystifying “Swept Away” remake with then-wife Madonna and the Kabbalistic gangster movie “Revolver”) and before he would jump into the pop mainstream with the Robert Downey, Jr. “Sherlock Holmes.” “Rocknrolla” was Ritchie’s attempt to tap into the down-and-dirty crime comedies that he started his career with, but opening it up to a bigger palette, stuffed with more characters and subplots and rococo visual flourishes.