Megalopolis (15, 138 minutes)
Verdict: Thumbs down
When I saw Megalopolis at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, I anointed it with just one star. Looking back, that was intense. It’s not devoid of virtues, so it probably deserves two.
But it’s still a crushing disappointment, a desperately bloated and self-indulgent exercise from 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola. And I write as one of his biggest fans. The Godfather is my favorite movie of all time. His productions from the 1970s alone, which also included The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, elevate him to the highest ranks of filmmakers. He stands next to the greatest of the greats.
But with that mighty talent comes a mighty ego, and the clear expectation that Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: A Fable, to give it its full and vain film title, will once again make us marvel at his genius. Instead, let us weep at his pride.
Megalopolis is a passion project decades in the planning, which Coppola has partially funded himself by auctioning off part of his successful wine production company. And yet, to use a wine analogy: the film (a futuristic story about a dysfunctional city run by corrupt politicians) is corked.
Still, it’s not like there isn’t a powerful springboard for his idea that America in the near future, and New York City in particular, could be likened to ancient Rome as decline and decay take hold. He calls his metropolis New Rome, a place undermined by greed, and the people who only want to enrich themselves.
Megalopolis is a passion project that has been in the planning for decades and that Coppola financed himself. (Film still from Megalopolis)
The plot isn’t so much confusing as it is labyrinthine, but Coppola plows ahead, using images that mean nothing to anyone but him.
There are certainly a few flashes of cinematic brilliance, and the premise is interesting. (Laurence Fishburne as Fundi Romaine in Megalopolis)
Adam Driver plays architect Cesar Catilina, the city’s main mover and shaker, the nephew of mega-rich banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight). Cesar is also a Nobel Prize winner – and is said to have murdered a woman killer. When we first meet Cesar, he is standing outside his office at the top of the beautiful Chrysler Building, seemingly about to commit suicide. But he possesses the mystical ability to make time stand still, and this allows him to step back to safety.
This sorcery is wrapped in a magical golden building material he has invented called ‘Megalon’, with which he plans to build a shiny new utopia. But he has an influential enemy: Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants to care for those whose neighborhoods will be razed to make way for Cesar’s Megalopolis.
If this all sounds confusing, that’s because it is. Still, Coppola has barely gotten going and is hammering the ancient Rome analogy for all it’s worth — which will likely be a lot less than it once was if this film gets a metaphorical thumbs down from the movie-going public.
Cesar’s wild popularity takes a dive when a tape surfaces of him having sex with a Vestal Virgin, which is a real no-no in New Rome, but his lover Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), Mayor Cicero’s daughter, allows him bee. . Meanwhile, his ex-lover (Aubrey Plaza), a television host who goes by the whimsical name Wow Platinum, has married Cesar’s wealthy banking uncle and is busy scheming with the old man’s amoral grandson Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) to get his to steal a fortune. .
Meanwhile, the plot is not so much confusing as labyrinthine, but Coppola plows on, using images that mean nothing to anyone but him, and that remind us of his gargantuan self-esteem (or perhaps, to be more generous, of his brash white) by having Julia and Cesar discuss names for their unborn child: Sunny Hope for a girl… Francis for a boy.
If only there was more humor elsewhere in the film. There are certainly a few flashes of cinematic brilliance, and the premise is interesting, not that New York hasn’t been depicted a thousand times before as a moral cesspool full of chancers and maniacs; After all, that’s how Gotham City came to be.
All things considered, this film certainly seems like it might be a megaflopolis, in which case Coppola might look to the heavens and cite a much more entertaining cinematic representation of Roman excess, the incomparable Carry On Cleo (1964), which wails: ‘Infamy , infamy, they’re all out to get me!’
The Outrun (15, 118 minutes)
Verdict: Heartbreaking and brilliant
The Outrun is a fearless adaptation of a memoir by Amy Liptrot, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Nora Fingscheidt. (Still from avoiding)
The most stylish movie of the week is one that has a fraction of the Megalopolis budget.
It’s a riveting study of addiction with an extraordinary central performance from Saoirse Ronan, as good as anything you’ll see all year.
The Outrun is a fearless adaptation of a memoir by Amy Liptrot, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Nora Fingscheidt. It jumps in time as we follow 29-year-old Rona (Ronan) back and forth between her messy life in London and her childhood home in the Orkney Islands, where her alcoholism is a source of quiet desperation for her pious, kind mother . (Saskia Reeves).
Rona is much closer to her bipolar father (Stephen Dillane).
It’s heartbreaking stuff, but the healing power of nature offers a glimmer of hope in a story that I found fascinating from start to finish.
Wolfs (15, 107 minutes)
Verdict: Clooney and Pitt fail to spark in a tense, one-joke comedy
Starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, Wolf’s tense comedy hinges on a single joke
Wolfs is a weak and derivative comedy-thriller, which relies heavily on the assumption that George Clooney and Brad Pitt have some kind of magical understanding.
Unfortunately, at least from where I was sitting, they don’t. They play shadowy fixers who reluctantly team up to help a prosecutor (Amy Ryan) get rid of a male escort (Austin Abrams), who appears to have died.
The film’s terribly tense comedy rests on a single joke: that these two men, long believed to be doing discreet cleanup work that no one else could, are both furious when someone else does it.
Writer-director Jon Watts playfully but not very successfully tries to beef up the plot by involving a heroin shipment and a pack of trigger-happy Albanian gangsters, each a screeching caricature, while a jazzy score screams “caper movie.” us. But Wolfs ululates in vain.
My old ass (15, 98 min)
Pictured: Maisy Stella as Elliott and Kerrice Brooks as Ro in an undated film still from My Old Ass
My Old Ass is much better, a hugely compelling coming-of-age story from writer-director Megan Park in which 18-year-old Elliott (a truly impressive feature debut from singer Maisy Stella) is guided through an eventful Canadian summer by her 39- year-old future self (Aubrey Plaza). It is original, poignant and funny.
I also loved Will & Harper (15, 114 minutes), a moving road trip documentary that follows Will Ferrell across America with his old friend, comedy writer, formerly Andrew Steele, now a trans woman, Harper.