Megalopolis Review
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Megalopolis
Lionsgate
R. 138 min
There are terrible movies out there; some pieces of crap some just terrible movies. Francis Ford Coppola is no bum, the guy is one of the most brilliant and revered directors, writers, producers, you name it, in the business. MEGALOPOLIS is his pet project for nearly 4 decades, one that he's been working on as a labor of love and one that he's sold off a huge portion of his winery to self sponsor, because frankly, passion aside, none of the studios was willing to drop the huge amount of cash on a project they expected to be a monumental box office bomb. ( further reference see Kevin Costner and HORIZON)
I suppose we will know that when this issue hits the stands.
As you know I won't write my review till I've made up my mind at which point I might check other critics opinions and I'm on board with about half of them. I hated this movie but it's not because it's a piece of shit. I've mentioned this before about Coppola and that is that he is such a monumental figure in Hollywood that there's not a producer about to tell him what he can or can't do especially in a movie he's paying for himself. Sometimes that can be great see Kevin Costner again with DANCES WITH WOLVES but sometimes it can turn into a disaster. Even Tom Brady has a bad game once in awhile. I think maybe Coppola got off track because the message he wants to send is pretty workmanlike. When I say Workman like when you hear the final hook at the end of the film I think everyone in the theater was rolling their eyes and making that jerking off hand motion. Okay it's amazing to look at the cinematography the effects are just incredible and that's hard to do in a world where everybody has incredible effects. Looks like just about every character represents a different portion of society as Coppola does his best to compare the decline and fall of World Civilization to the Roman Empire, I get it he's Sicilian so we can understand the hostility toward the Romans. But to blame it all on the Roman Empire is a little bit shallow Human Nature has been the same way, I'm guessing, since Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal started walking upright and fighting with each other over who gets the biggest piece of dinosaur meet or the best looking cave woman. Among some of the ham-handed points he wants to beat into our heads are that greed is bad, unbridled passion for the common man can turn into a quest for power and power corrupts. Religion is bad because it gives people an excuse to be assholes to other people . Indiscriminate sex is bad because that leads into, well, it's been a while I forget. War sucks but it's almost inevitable that society will always be at war. And I'm not sure if Pete Townshend is Sicilian, probably not, but remember his quote: meet the new boss; same as the old boss. Forever and ever amen.
Actually the first half of the film is not too bad as it jumps from seeing to seeing and character to character trying to underscore all of these points but about halfway through it seems like Coppola got lost and started repeating those big rants over and over. Yes frank, we get it. From then on it's just a mishmash of unintelligible effects interspersed with a few Shakespeare quotes because, he's Coppola and can do whatever the hell he wants.
It's not until the closing soliloquy, some BS about I pledge allegiance to the human race you suck but you could do a lot better. I am paraphrasing. There is of course a substantial list of stars kissing the directors rang like Luca Brazzi kissed Don Corleone's. That's a better allegory anyway.
The cast includes such luminaries as Jon Voight Dustin Hoffman Shia LaBeouf Adam Driver Giancarlo Esposito Grace VanderWaal Romy Mars and plenty of others. The characters and actors don't really matter that much because each is a caricature and a representation of some societal ill. I just can't see my way clear to giving it a good grade regardless of the skill required to put the presentation together or the amount of thought that would take to delivering this silly message. There are times when everyone might feel that they are stupid because they can't understand what's going on then again it's quite possible that there's nothing really worthwhile going on. So who the hell knows.
C-
WSS
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Thanks Steve your reviews are always helpful, especially this one on megalopolis. It never made me interested enough to try and figure out what exactly is happening. And the sex scene with blonde babe and shia labouf's character, as nearly graphic as it was, plus jon voights juvenile boner joke made this film worse imo.
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