Hello and welcome back to another week here at Mindless Movie Reviews. This week, I witnessed a movie that even as I write this more than 24 hours after watching it, my mind is still trying to fully decipher what I saw. I really can’t wait to get into this, so let’s get right to it and get the spoiler warning out of the way. If you haven’t seen this yet and are looking forward to it, then you may want to come back here later because there is no way I can properly discuss this without giving anything away.
Ok, so thanks to those who continued. “Megalopolis” is the latest film and labor of love (he financed the entire film himself) by Francis Ford Coppola. He both wrote and directed the movie and the whole process took him about a decade to finish. What that finished product is depends greatly on the person who is watching it and how they interpret it. It’s been a while since I’ve read so many mixed reviews about a film and both sides have compelling arguments.
“Megalopolis” is a fairy tale of sorts but takes place in New Rome which to me strongly resembles what Rome would look like today if it hadn’t fallen off its high horse all those years ago. It’s in a very modern city but with lots of accents of ancient Roman designs and fashion. There is also lots of violence in the streets, politics galore, and plenty of greed to go around… also very similar to what we see in other modern cities relative to what we see on our movie screens.
This tale stars Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina. He is a visionary and a modern-day designer/architect. He has a very public dispute with Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Stanton) who isn’t very well-liked and who is always trying to keep things the way they are… just the opposite of what Cesar is trying to do. Even though Stanton is getting second billing here, I think the other major star is Nathalie Emmanuel (as Julia Cicero). She is the daughter of the mayor and eventual lover/wife of Cesar and is consistently caught up from being in the middle of the two opposing forces. Both Driver and Emmanuel do a great job as the leading duo, but the surrounding cast was nothing to sneeze at either.
Aubrey Plaza as Wow Platinum the scored lover turned money-hungry billionaire wife. Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher in a role that was 100% made just for him. Jon Voight as Hamilton Crassus III, a billionaire banker who marries Wow more as a trophy than anything else. Laurence Fishburne as Cesar’s right-hand man, but more importantly, a very well-spoken narrator of the entire story. Also, a surprise appearance of Dustin Hoffman as Nush Berman, a sort of gangster type of guy that “fixes” issues for the mayor. Seeing him dust off his acting skills was great. All of these characters (and their various roles in the story), help move the movie along and sort of splits the film into three different connected mini-stories.
While a lot of important plot points are left out of this movie and some things are very quickly glossed over or time passes without any idea of how much, there is still much to love about this movie. Even as Driver is at the top of his game throughout most of the 2+ hours, it’s the cinematography and the style of filming that will set this apart for years to come. Even though there is chaos happening on the screen, it looks beautiful the entire time. Even though the story is a mess here and there, we are compelled to keep watching because of everything that makes this a stunning viewing experience.
The story speeds up quite a bit in the final third with lots of stuff happening in a short amount of time. So, I was definitely left with some questions. Like how exactly did they grow his face back? How was Megalopolis ready to open all of a sudden after all this time? When did the mayor do a whole 180-degree turn on how he felt about Cesar? All of this appeared to be that Coppola maybe didn’t have an ending ready to go, but stumbled through it anyway. It was already pushing two and a half hours, why not push the three-hour mark to smooth the ending out a little bit?
Overall, this was a beautiful film to watch and one that I recommend seeing in theaters to grasp the grand scale of it. I’m only sorry that I missed out on the IMAX experience from what I read. The story is a bit all over the place and not one that I would tell someone to go watch if they didn’t like long movies or didn’t want to pay really close attention. There is lots to miss if you get up to go pee, so over-sized theater pop be damned… I will hold it in till the end!!!
My final words on this are don’t read too much into reviews you are reading (except this one of course), because you are likely to get even more confused. Some people say it’s the worst movie of this decade, and I can see why they would think that, but at the same time, there are people who say it’s a cinematic masterpiece… I can see their side too. So, do yourself a favor, go see it yourself, and gather your own thoughts about it like I did. I give this chaotic masterpiece a 7 out of 10. Ask me in a month, and my answer may have likely changed by then.
Ok, that’s it for this week’s review. Have you had a chance to check this out yet? If so, what are your thoughts on it? Which side of the fence would you go… garbage, brilliance, or someone in the middle like me? Join me here next week for another mindless movie review of some sort.
