MEGALOPOLIS: A Weird, Pretentious Blend Of Bad Acting And Beautiful Imagery

Now playing at every megalopolex from here to New Rome:

MEGALOPOLIS (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 2024)

It’s been three days since I took in a screening of the legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s highly anticipated, and highly dreaded big, ambitious epic MEGALOPOLIS, and I’m still processing the damn thing. I’ll just jump in – it takes place in New Rome, which is New York City in a world in which the Roman Empire never ended, and concerns a visionary architect, Cesar Catilina, portrayed by Adam Driver.

With the backdrop of skyscrapers that shine like gold, under an endless yellow sky, Cesar aims to rebuild the city into some glorious shape-shifting utopia out of some magical substance called Megalon, but he’s opposed by Mayor Frank Cicero (Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito), but lo and behold, the mayor’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) falls in love with Cesar. 

 

On the flashy sidelines in what seems like endless partying is the scene stealing Aubrey Plaza as a blonde, gold-digging news anchor named Wow Platinum (she said on The Daily Show that she “watched a lot of Fox News to research my role as a corrupt journalist”), an actor that Coppola remarked was cast because he was “cancelled,” Jon Vought as Cesar’s uncle Hamilton Crassus (crass name for a crass character), Dustin Hoffman as Crassus’s confidant Nush “The Fixer” Berman, Crassus’s son Clodio (Shia LaBeouf, who just gets creepier with age), and Clodio’s sister Cladia (SNL’s Chloe Fineman who called he character a “coke whore” on Late Night with Seth Myers). 

 

Lawrence Fishburne, whose third ever film credit was as a 17-year old Larry Fishburne in Coppola’s 1979 vietnam masterpiece APOCALYPSE NOW, grandly narrates, and plays Cesar’s assistant and chauffeur. Another member of the cast with major history with the director is his sister, Talia Shire (THE GODFATHER, and ROCKY series), as Cesar’s mother, but she isn’t given much to do. Neither does Jason Schwartzman as one of the Mayor’s men, he’s Coppola’s nephew so it was nice he was invited.

 

Oh, and somehow Driver’s Cesar has the ability to stop time, simply by yelling “Time, stop!” Now this is a compelling used element, and amazingly shot by Coppola veteran, cinematographer Mihai Mălaimare Jr., and the movie surrounding it is gorgeous-looking, but it is never explained, and doesn’t make any sense in the narrative, but I’m not sure if it’s supposed to. Like many things that litter the screen in this strange story, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be saying.

 

But if you let it wash over you, there’s a lot of lush imagery and stunning set pieces to get lost in. One such mesmerizing sequence involves Grace VanderWaal as Vesta Sweetwater, a Vestal Virgin pop star, is harmonizing with an army of multiple versions of herself hanging from the ceiling of the coliseum, and I’m watching thinking, I don’t know what any of this means, but it looks fantastic!

 

After a 9/11-style disaster involving a fallen satellite, the building of the new Megalon-enhanced paradise goes forward, while LaBeouf crazily tries to f*** with Cesar’s reign as hard as he tried to f*** with the fourth Indiana Jones movie, and Plaza’s Wow Platinum (love that name) gets caught up in her own web of manipulations.

 

Unfortunately so much of the acting in this overblown opus is stilted, awkward, and unconvincing. Driver fares the best as his protagonist has an intense gravitas to him (even breathing a little bit of new life into Shakespeare’s done-to-death “To be or not to be” soliloquy), but Cesar is a broadly drawn magazine image for a character, and there never feels like there’s a back story or much depth to the guy. Coppola’s camera obviously adores Emmanuel as Cesar’s love interest, but her dialogue all seems like she’s narrating the film to herself, and it’s a bad thing when her blankness at times recalls Sophia Coppola’s miscast turn in GODFATHER PART III.

Plaza’s Wow Platinum (again, primo moniker) is definitely the most engaging persona here as she’s so unlike any other character the great deadpan actress has played, and feels like she’s in a much more interesting movie than everyone else.

Now, as for the movie’s meaning and/or message, it is obviously Coppola’s attempt at an allegory about how the crumbling of society in our modern times is historically embedded, but I’m not sure how the abstract architectural adventures of Cesar really makes any purposeful point. I may someday though.

 

But at this time, I can’t in good faith recommend MEGALOPOLIS. It struck me as a pretentious, badly acted, poorly paced, messy, cringingly weird, but eye-poppingly beautiful piece of catastrophic cinema made from what I bet is one of the nuttiest screenplays ever (written by Coppola himself with no help!). It does say something that I would watch it again as I feel like I may get something out of another viewing, but I really don’t think casual non-film geek movie-goers will connect to this perplexing passion project, and make it a hit. I’ll be very surprised if it does well at the box office this weekend.

 

I will say it would probably make a good double feature with the new re-release of CALIGULA: THE ULTIMATE CUT, as MEGALOPOLIS often plays like that decadent yet prestigious porno (produced by Penthouse Bob Guccione’s no less), but without the mass orgies. 

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Full Frame 2024: Part One

After years of being a virtual only event, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival returned to the Carolina Theater, and Convention Center in downtown Durham, N.C. this last weekend. Despite not being as robustly attended as in the pre-pandemic days, there was a healthy roster of films with 50 titles including 35 features and 15 short films from 22 countries, and a lot of familiar faces piling in to take in the four day run of primo infotainment.

The shadows of Full Frame founder Nancy Buirski, and documentary filmmaker god D.A. Pennebaker, who both passed since the last in-person Full Frame in 2019, loomed large over this year’s recovened proceedings, and were lovingly celebrated this festival with screenings of their work, and tribute panels featuring remembrances from colleagues.

Having missed the first day of Full Frame 2024, I kicked off my Friday at the fest with Buirski's final film:

DESPERATE SOULS, THE DARK CITY, AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY 

(Dir. Nancy Buirski, 2022)

Nobody who’s ever seen John Schlesinger’s 1969 classic, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, the gritty X-rated counterculture drama that won the Best Picture Oscar in 1970, will ever forget it. I say that because it's been decades since I've seen it on VHS, but its scuzzy depiction of the friendship between two hustlers, Jon Voight’s Texan rube, Joe Buck, and Dustin Hoffman’s sleazy schemer “Ratso” Rizzo is permanently burned into by brain.

Inspired by Glenn Frankel’s 2021 book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic, Buirski examines the complicated feelings, and tumultuous times behind the amorously questionable adaptation of James Leo Herlihy’s 1965 novel, and offers a lot of tasty context to take in, especially in its exploration of the gay cowboy motif, which, of course, leads to BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN comparisons (and use of clips).

Voight appears in tight close-up to give his side of the story, happily with no right-wing nuttiness, while co-star Hoffman appears only in archival interviews, alongside insights provided by actors Bob Balaban (whose first film this was), Brenda Vaccaro, Jennifer Salt (daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt); and critics Charles Kaiser, J. Hoberman, and Lucy Sante.

Buirski’s superb film effectively breaks down of Schelisher’s unforgettable film in thought provoking moment after moment, leaving one to reevaluate MIDNIGHT COWBOY’S place in film history, queer cinema, and pop culture overall. Having seen several other of the Pulitzer Prize winning woman's other films having gotten spotlights at previous Full Frames like THE LOVING STORY, BY SIDNEY LUMET, and THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR, with her in attendance, and participating in Q & As afterwards, it was quite moving to take in her latest, but extremely sad to not have her there at the end this time to discuss it.

Next up, I finished off my Friday night with a ragged rock doc:

A POEM IS A NAKED PERSON (Dir. Les Blank, 1974)

Going in, I was expecting to learn something about the life of legendary Tulsa musician Leon Russell, but this curious, ramshackle doc that was shot 50 years ago, but shelved until 2015, doesn’t aim to educate - just entertain. The film is split between weird, quirky footage from over a three-year period (‘72-‘74) filmed at Russell’s studio on Grand Lake in Oklahoma, and rowdy concert sequences that show Russell at the top of his game mesmerizing packed audiences.

There are also fascinating time capsule-worthy appearances by George Jones, Willie Nelson, and the lesser-known singer-songwriter Eric Anderson, who seems to clash a bit with Russell in the studio. So I didn't learn anything about Russell’s background, catalogue, or what makes him tick, but I did learn that he was a glorious crowd-pleasing showman with a killer voice, and grand piano chops. And despite this relic’s disjointed, dated approach, that was all I needed.

Stay tuned for Part Two for more Full Frame 2024 coverage.

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FANTASTIC BEASTS: A Worthy HARRY POTTER Spin-Off

Opening tonight in No-Maj land at a muliplex near you:

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
(Dir. David Yates, 2016)

Where to find them is in a suitcase owned by a one Mr. Newt Scamander, who we meet just off the boat in New York in 1926 at the beginning of this spin-off of the HARRY POTTER series, which takes place 70 years before our young hero Harry first picks up a wand.

Scamander, portrayed by Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as a nervous, awkward bloke who even acknowledges that people find him annoying, gets caught up in mayhem at a bank in an amusing opening sequence in which his suitcase of crazy creatures gets mistakenly switched with one owned by Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) that contains pastries (Kowalski was at the bank trying to get a loan to open a bakery).

We learn that while in Britain folks without magical abilities are called “Muggles,” in America they are dubbed “No-Majs.”

Witnessing this event and recognizing Scamander as a wizard is a witch by the name of Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), who takes in Scamander to the offices of theMagical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA), but the President of the division, Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo) isn’t interested in the arrest because Tina was just demoted to the Wand Permit Office.

However, Colin Farrell as Percival Graves, the Director of Magical Security, is intrigued about the contents of Scamander’s suitcase, which at the moment is causing more mayhem back at Kowalski’s apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

After restoring the damage to the building, Newt and Tina gather Kowalski and the suitcase and make their way to Tina’s apartment where we meet Tina’s younger sister, Queenie Goldstein (actress/singer Alison Sudol), another witch who can read minds. Later that night, Scamander uses the suitcase as a portal to another dimension which contains a zoo of all of Scamander’s surreal, colorful creatures. Kowalski is stunned by what he sees, but saddened to learn that at the end of the adventure he’ll have to be obliviated, which means that his memory of his experience with his new friends will be wiped clean.

Meanwhile, another No-Maj, Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton), leader of the New Salem Philanthropic Society (a.k.a. the Second Salemers) rails against the existence of witches and Wizards, while her kids, Creedence and Modesty (Ezra Miller and Faith Wood-Blagrove) suspiciously sulk behind her.

There is also another subplot involving Jon Voight as Henry Shaw Sr., a newspaper mogul whose slick senator son, Henry Jr. (Josh Cowdery) is running for re-election, but despite a lively rally scene they don’t factor in much (probably just here to set some of the scene for the sequels).

The movie’s second half concerns Newt, Tina, Jacob, and Queenie working together to find one of the missing beasts and to stop a dark force called an Obscurial, which appears as an eerie, black cloud, from destroying the city. This, of course, involves an AVENGERS amount of city destruction via CGI that is seamlessly impressive but no match for what’s onscreen in DOCTOR STRANGE.

FANTASTIC BEASTS began life as a plot-less Hogwarts textbook that J.K. Rowlings wrote under the pseudonym of Scamander as a sideline enhancement to the Harry Potter book series. Here Rowlings fleshes the concept out into her first screenplay adaptation, which is proposed to be the first in a five part series.

Not sure how I feel about a second franchise sprouting out of what was a 128-page book – echoes of the bloated film trilogy made out of “The Hobbit” – but if Yates can keep the quality control in check like he does here, it could make for a very fun ride.

For Yates, who has directed four of the HARRY POTTER films, has fashioned a worthy, witty spinoff that has a lot of charm, visual splendor, and likable characters (especially Fogler, who steals the film from his fellow cast members throughout) to carry us through its two hour and thirteen minute running time, in which only a few scenes drag.

Now, I’ve only read the first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but I’ve seen all of the movies and for the most part enjoyed them. I may even agree with the AV Club’s Noel Murray, who in this fine essay, argues that the series might be “the best sustained exercise in fantasy literature adaptation in Hollywood history.”

Not sure if this prequel series will reach that height, but its first installment, FANTASTIC BEASTS, works both as an extension of the HP series’ ethos, and as a piece of standalone entertainment. Many may be cynical about Warner Brothers milking this particular magical cash cow, but I believe Rowlings and Yates will prove that their vision is big enough to sustain another round of magical storytelling.

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