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Megalopolis (15, 138 minutes)
Verdict: Thumbs down
When I saw Megalopolis at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, I anointed it with a single star. Looking back, that was tough. It is not without its virtues, so it probably deserves two.
But it’s still a resounding disappointment, a desperately bloated and self-indulgent exercise on the part of 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola. And I write as one of your biggest fans. The Godfather is my favorite movie of all time. Only his 1970s output, which also included The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now, elevates him to the highest level of filmmakers. It is next to the greatest of the greats.
But with that great talent comes a big ego and a clear expectation that Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis: A Fable, to give it its full, boastful cinematic title, will make us marvel again at his genius. Instead, let’s cry for their arrogance.
Megalopolis is an exciting project that has been decades in the making and that Coppola financed in part by auctioning off a portion of his successful wine business. And yet, to use a wine analogy, the film (a futuristic story about a dysfunctional city ruled by venal politicians) is corked.
Still, it’s not as if there isn’t a powerful springboard for his idea that America in the near future, and New York City in particular, could be comparable to ancient Rome as decline and decay loom. He calls his metropolis New Rome, a place undermined by greed, and men only try to get rich.
Megalopolis is an exciting project that has been decades in the making and that Coppola financed himself. (Frame from the movie Megalopolis)
The plot is not so much confusing as labyrinthine, but Coppola continues to use images that can mean nothing to anyone but him.
There are some flashes of cinematic brilliance, to be sure, and the premise is interesting. (Laurence Fishburne as Fundi Romaine in Megalopolis)
Adam Driver plays architect Caesar Catilina, the city’s main mover and shaker, nephew of mega-rich banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight). Caesar is also a Nobel Prize winner and, rumored to be, a wife killer. When we first meet Caesar, he is standing outside his office atop the magnificent Chrysler Building, apparently about to take his own life. But he has the mystical ability to make time stop, and this allows him to return to safety.
This witchcraft is wrapped in a magical golden building material he has invented called ‘Megalon’, with which he intends to erect a shiny new utopia. But he has an influential enemy in Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who pretends to care about those whose neighborhoods will be razed to make way for Caesar’s megalopolis.
If this all sounds confusing, that’s because it is. Yet Coppola has barely hit the ground running, hammering the ancient Rome analogy for all it’s worth, which will likely be much less than it once was if this film receives the metaphorical nod from the moviegoing public.
Caesar’s enormous popularity plummets when a tape appears of him having sex with a vestal virgin, which is a real no-no in New Rome, but his lover Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), daughter of Mayor Cicero, supports him. . Meanwhile, his ex-lover (Aubrey Plaza), a TV host who takes pride in the quirky name Wow Platinum, has married Caesar’s wealthy banker uncle and is busy plotting with the old man’s amoral grandson, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf). ), to steal his fortune. .
At this point the plot is no longer so confusing as it is labyrinthine, but Coppola continues, using images that can mean nothing to anyone but himself, and reminding us of his gigantic self-esteem (or perhaps, to be more generous, his cheeky wit). causing Julia and César to discuss the names of their unborn child: Sunny Hope for a girl… Francis for a boy.
If only there was more wit in other parts of the film. There are some flashes of cinematic brilliance, to be sure, and the premise is interesting, not that New York hasn’t been depicted a thousand times before as a moral cesspool full of opportunists and maniacs; after all, that’s how Gotham City came to be.
All things considered, this film appears to be a megaflopolis, in which case Coppola could look to the sky and cite a much more palatable cinematic depiction of Roman excess, the incomparable Carry On Cleo (1964), lamenting: “Infamy, infamy, Everyone has something against me!’
The race completed (15, 118 minutes)
Verdict: Lacerating and brilliant
The Outrun is an unflinching adaptation of a memoir by Amy Liptrot, who co-wrote the script with director Nora Fingscheidt. (Even from the flight)
The classiest movie of the week is the one that has a fraction of the budget of Megalopolis.
It’s a fascinating study of addiction with an extraordinary central performance by Saoirse Ronan, as good as anything you’ll see all year.
The Outrun is an unflinching adaptation of a memoir by Amy Liptrot, who co-wrote the script with director Nora Fingscheidt. Time jumps as we follow 29-year-old Rona (Ronan) back and forth between her disorderly life in London and her childhood home in Orkney, where her alcoholism is a source of quiet desperation for her. devoted and kind mother. (Saskia Reeves).
Rona is much closer to her bipolar father (Stephen Dillane).
It’s heartbreaking, but the healing power of nature offers glimmers of hope in a story that I found fascinating from start to finish.
Wolves (15, 107 minutes)
Verdict: Clooney and Pitt fail to shine in tense one-joke comedy
Wolfs, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, the tense comedy depends on a single joke
Wolfs is a weak and derivative comedy-thriller, relying heavily on the assumption that George Clooney and Brad Pitt have some kind of magical relationship.
Unfortunately, at least from where I was sitting, they don’t. They play shady fixers who reluctantly team up to help a district attorney (Amy Ryan) get rid of a male companion (Austin Abrams), who appears to have died.
The film’s excruciatingly tense comedy hinges on a single joke: that these two men, having long assumed that they did a discreet cleaning job that no one else could do, are furious to find someone else doing it.
Writer-director Jon Watts tries valiantly, but without much success, to give the plot more weight by involving a shipment of heroin and a group of trigger-happy Albanian gangsters, each a garish caricature, while a score of jazz screams “mischief movie” at us. But Wolfs howl in vain.
My old ass (15, 98 minutes)
Pictured: Maisy Stella as Elliott and Kerrice Brooks as Ro in an undated film of My Old Ass.
My Old Ass is Much Better, a wildly engaging 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 a hectic Canadian summer. by her 39-year-old future self (Aubrey Plaza). It’s original, moving and fun.
- I also liked Will & Harper (15, 114 minutes, three stars), a moving road trip documentary that follows Will Ferrell across America with his old comedy writer friend, the ex Andrew Steele, now a trans woman, Harper.
Wolfs is now on Apple TV+, My Old Ass is in theaters, and Will & Harper is now on Netflix.