Liza Johnson’s Elvis & Nixon tells the untold story of the legendary meeting between Elvis Aaron Presley (Michael Shannon) and Richard Milhous Nixon (Kevin Spacey), immortalized in the most requested photograph in the National Archives. Days before Christmas in 1970, the most famous man in America turns up at the doorstep of the most powerful one, inexplicably seeking to be made a Federal Agent at Large for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. What follows is a farcical scramble, as entourages jockey to coordinate a mutually acceptable meet-and-greet. One of the more surreal encounters in American history, the Elvis and Nixon meeting perhaps captures perfectly a pre-Watergate moment in time: before their names came to evoke tragedy and corruption; when the cultural cachet was passing from politicians to celebrities; and when America had both a King and a President.

—Cara Cusumano

Liza Johnson