Legendary Mexican director Guillermo del Toro was invited by Variety, along with 20 other renowned filmmakers, to choose their favorite film of the year, naming the film Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Austin Butler as number one. 

"It was like a concert: an experience, peppered with details, perfectly observed gestures and hidden clues," wrote the director. "Austin Butler and Baz show Elvis' world-shaking transformative talent, his joy, his soul, his sadness — actor and director working in tandem to re-embrace and re-energize the power and danger Elvis possessed."

Del Toro told Variety that he had the opportunity to be at Cannes during the film's premiere and was proud to be part of the 12-minute standing ovation from the audience. 

"There is incredible control in composing a baroque piece of filmmaking like Elvis, incredible control of the tools of audiovisual storytelling: staging, lensing, camera movement, control of cutting rhythms and use of sound design and music with virtuoso precision. And maintaining that tone when it's necessary and being able to ease off the gas or ramp it up when it's not," del Toro wrote about the technical side of the film.

Elvis follows the life of rock and roll singer and actor Elvis Presley, told from the perspective of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, whose financial abuse of him is a major focus. 

Other films that stand out on Variety's list include All Quiet on the Western Front, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, The Fabelmans, The Good Nurse, Everything Everywhere All at Once, among others. 

After its release on June 24, Elvis became one of the highest-grossing films of 2022 and entered Billboard's top 25 music biopics due to its domestic box office (U.S. and Canada).