20 February 2026 – Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert’ was surprisingly very good.  I liked the very personal, informal comments recorded by Elvis Presley, and it was the most ‘human’ I have ever seen him, freely discussing his own emotional responses, his desire to have a family, the things he found stressful, and a very deep-seated response to music, and being an entertainer.

At the same time, the way the film was cut and presented, allowed the full performance of individual songs, alongside rehearsals and mixing songs together.  An especially good example of that was a performance of ‘Little Sister’ (made famous by Ry Cooder) mixed with ‘Get Back’ by ‘The Beatles’, producing an outstanding ‘mash-up’ performance by Elvis live on stage.

This was both a good and bad example film for me to see for the first time on an IMAX screen.  It was good because of the up-close and personal footage of Elvis, and the sound quality of the music, but some of the older footage did not really do well on the IMAX screen, both in the surviving quality of the footage itself, and in the inability to change the screen aspect to suit the IMAX screen.

Nonetheless, my overall feeling was that this film was put together in an excellent manner, and despite my horror of his version of ‘The Great Gatsby’, which made me walk out of the cinema, I have to say that in this instance, Baz Luhrmann is to be congratulated on an excellent piece of work, in my opinion.

Fraser