Rocketman

Dexter Fletcher directs Elton John’s life from childhood to treatment for addiction, told from a group therapy room. Scenes open into songs throughout, and Taron Egerton sings them himself. The chronology is displaced on purpose. The Troubadour sequence, set in 1970, is carried by a song written in 1972, and the number placed in rehab was recorded in 1982. John defended this in an essay under his own name: the film is obviously not all true, but it is the truth. In the same piece he said some studios wanted the drugs and sex toned down for a PG-13 certificate, and that he has not led a PG-13 rated life. It went out rated R. One fact frames the whole account: John is an executive producer and his husband David Furnish a producer, so even the passages that play as confession are an account he signed off. Made for 40 million dollars, it passed 195 million worldwide on Box Office Mojo figures. It competed in the Academy song category and won it, for the song written by John and Bernie Taupin. A good fit if a room turning into a musical number mid conversation counts as a way of telling the story. Not for you if you will be checking each song’s date against the year on screen.