Movie #: 3092 Title: Megalopolis 2024

Rating: 7.00

Director (last): Coppola (first): Francis Ford

Writer (last): Coppola (first): Francis Ford

Controversial monumental mishmash by Francis Ford Coppola who repeats the cardinal mistake of James Cameron: I can write this shit. No you can't. Ostensibly about an architect, Cesar Catilina, (without any discernible insights into architecture, unless you call the weird, ugly constructions in CGI "architecture) in conflict with a mayor and gangs of fascists over his vision of a future city that is something but we're not sure what. Coppola fails to convince us that there is something beautiful or wonderful or even desirable at stake here. He just piles on striking images and sequences alluding to Greek and Roman myths, Shakespeare, and Donald Trump. A third party is mega- millionaire Hamilton Crassus, who marries Wow Platinum, a celebrity journalist, and who might just finance Catilina's vision. Meanwhile, Clodio, a Trump-like character, is looking to pull a coup. Coppola gives considerable screen time to the love affair between the Mayor's daughter, Julia, and Catilina, but it fizzles. She is apparently inspired by her vision of his ability to stop time. The stopping time thing is supposed to resonate in some way but it doesn't. Coppola also had the actors improvise a lot of the time and you notice the odd clunker of a line coming out of their mouths. There is a sequence of a video of the vestal virgin having sex with Catilina and everybody reacts like its 1950-- no one assumes it is fake? It is supposed to ruin the careers of Catilina and Vesta Sweetwater but Julie quickly finds a birth certificate proving Vesta was 23, not 16, and that the video was fake-- but really? Terrible plotting. Or that it doesn't really matter? There's a narcissistic element here: the artist (Catilina) like Coppola, suffers the outrageous slings and arrows of critics and ungenerous financiers.

Is this movie a "gem"? No

Evil Twin:

Good Twin: Metropolis

 

Added: 2024-10-05 [yyyy-mm-dd]