Mr. Rank Amateur Film Critic was once prepared to dislike Baz Lurhman films.

I mean, what kind of name is “Baz?” Almost as bad as “Elon.”

Then I saw “Moulin Rouge”–I was still teaching European history at AGHS, including a lesson on Paris at this time–and I sat in the theater with a stupid smile on my face until the sad part. I love this scene still and, dayamn, Ewan McGregor is handsome. (For a completely different film, his devoted father and husband in 2012’s “The Impossible,” about a family washed apart by a tsunami, restores your faith in dads.)

I had never seen a version of “The Great Gatsby” that I liked until Lurhmann’s. Leo was captivating, and the film’s palette–bright primary colors, like Jay’s roadster amid the ash-heaps–was amazing. In fact, I’d never been that fond of “Gatsby,” the novel–I preferred its prototype, a longish short story, “Winter Dreams.” The Luhrman film gave me a new appreciation for the novel.

So I went back to an earlier film, “Strictly Ballroom,” and the female lead, Tara Maurice, was not so captivating. She was dowdy. And then she kind of blossoms. The final ballroom contest scene is marvelous.

“Elvis” is not my favorite Luhrman film, with the great exceptions of the scenes that connect Elvis to his Black roots and the scene, just after this one, where he begins to gyrate at the Hayride. But this is the scene–I guess because I took a year of the History of the American South in college– that still mesmerizes me.

And, I realized that it would be cheating not to share that scene. Maybe it’s Tom Hanks’s (Forrest Gump/Captain Miller, the character who falls in love with Meg Ryan in two films) lurking, as the Colonel– like a cross between a venomous cobra and Jabba the Hutt–that bothers me about this film.