10 Terrible Movies That Tricked You Into Thinking They're Good
2. Elvis
Decades from now, film historians will wrack their brains trying to explain how Baz Luhrmann's execrable Elvis Presley biopic received eight Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture.
But Luhrmann spun quite the yarn to trick audiences into believing the movie was good, and far beyond its nauseating, inexplicably Oscar-nominated editing, it comes down to one man: Austin Butler.
Butler gives such a mesmerisingly transformative performance as Presley that he elevates basically everything else around him - save, perhaps, for Tom Hanks, who in a rare off-key turn renders Presley's manager Colonel Tom Parker as a grotesque, laughable caricature.
Butler's performance is deserving of a much better movie, no question, yet the seductive allure of his work here - which practically feels like summoning the King of Rock and Roll himself - creates a tide that raises the entire project.
Take away Butler's performance, though, and Elvis is yet another mind-numbingly over-directed effort from Luhrmann, with a script that feels like a checklist expansion of Presley's Wikipedia page.