A nice complimentary piece to Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 Elvis Biopic. EPiC is essentially a pseudo documentary/concert film that came about as a result of Luhrmanns research team discovering hundreds of hours of previously unseen footage of Elvis performing in and around his Vegas residency period. The film flows in and out of songs with linking interview narration from the King himself as he talks about his feelings towards being a performer, his personal life and the toll it takes on him.

I always find documentary hard to really comment on, concert films even moreso really…But whats presented here is probably the best Elvis ‘Concert’ film to be released commercially (Not including the comeback special or ‘Aloah from Hawaii’) its imperfect…but its rock solid.

What works here is the editing, which is frankly obscenely good in my opinion. there are segments of the edit here where we weave in and out of different iterations of Elvis singing the same song at different points in the 70s and it flows and moves so effortlessly as to be border faultless. The music mixing is excellent REALLY blowing the dust of these rapidly approaching 50 year old recordings and remixing demos live performances and studio mixes to produce a modern feeling, but respectful of the era set of song mixes that on a good sound system felt like you were watching the concert itself live in person.

The documentary elements are a nice touch and help weave a solid narrative between the Elvis the crowd saw, and the quieter; goofier counterpart hanging out back stage.

It also has to be said that this footage looks immaculate, they mix in some more famous archive footage with the newly restored stuff, but all of it looks incredible, almost as if filmed yesterday and on a big screen, it really shows every fine detail. its really a remarkable work.

As for the not so good? Well…while I do think they did a good job in remastering and remixing the concert tracks, they have a really bad habit of mixing tiny snippets of other elvis songs into the film…but not really developing them or cutting them short. The most notable one for me being a brief moment where they start to play ‘An American Trilogy’ but cut it short before it even really begins. ‘In the Ghetto’ gets similar treatment. And it was frustrating because they are two personal favourites of mine, and to have them play about 20 seconds of them both before cutting to something compeletly different left me aching to see what they could have done with those tracks.

Equally; while the editing for the most part is an incredible work…with ‘Polk Salad Annie’ being a particular highlight for me. Sometimes it feels a little TOO breakneck for its own good, careering around the show and the audience to the point that it becomes difficult to really keep track of what im supposed to be looking at…the random use of psychadelic manipulation of the concert footage as well at times worked out okay…But for the most part just felt a bit cheap and weird…and not in a good way.

But! Overall, I really liked this one. i’ll almost certainly nab a 4k if it gets one, I can absolutely recommend it if your a fan of 70s Elvis, or just like the hits. and I can definitely see myself catching this one again in future. Though…quite HOW they missed out ‘See See Rider’ given it was Elvis’s intro song for a LOT of his concerts is totally missed on me!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/epic-elvis-presley-in-concert/