Megalopolis (2024)

Megalopolis is kinda Miniopolis...

I went with my fingers crossed but no, hey, got the intentions but great filmmaking this not iz (Yoda said)

Coppola's dream project for over 30 years, inspired by Ann Raynd's The Fountainhead, Rome's & ancient Greece republics, architecture and philosophers, Goethe's Hold the Time, and a lot of Shakespeare, as well as New York's dirty townhall politics an construction shenanigans.

The Baddies:

-too pretentious

-too literary

-too naive too

-too megalo

-too Shakesperian, but like bad Shakespeare, done by juvenile people

-a teenager film done by a very old man, lecturing about the world

-lost plots (the Russian satellite, the megalon subplot)

-philosophy on the screen-does not work (talking in quotes certainly sucks)

-Adam Driver doing Hamlet

-some of the effects -really bad- statues doing stuff, backgrounds and such (there is a budgetary reason)

-Dustin Hoffman character wasted (James Caan was supposed to play this...)

-not impressed by the cinematography which I expected to be brilliant, sorry Mihai Malaimare jr...(his fourth film with il suo Maestro. Francis "discovered" him in Romania in 2006, giving him the chance to do Youth Without Youth, then he took him to Argentina to do Tetro, then kept him for Twixt). Meanwhile MM jr made a career in Hollywood (A Walk Among the Tombstones, The Master, The Harder They Fall, Jojo Rabbit !!!).

-the score (again by Osvaldo Golijov, his 4th film with FF Coppola) 

ok, the goodies:

the ending

the message

Jon Voight (Crassus) -The "Robin Hood" scene

the editing & the montage

-the Tryptich (Homage a Abel Gance ?)

-the Metropolis & other German expressionism influences in the Caesar's trip on the Madison Sq G banquet

-the Theda Bara homage (Aubrey Plaza)

-the sex scene with Auntie Wow (Platinum) & Shia 

-Nathalie Emmanuel looking hot & fresh (half the film was wondering what's her name and where I saw here before, oh yes, John Woo's The Killer remake)

-The end song -The The -Lonely Planet (from Dusk -1993)

2 1/2 out of 5, 5 out of 10 !!!

-Flawed as it isit needs to be seen in a cinema, on the big screen !!!

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& a wonderful Coppola interview on the film, the meaning of life and cinema. If only his film would've been like this ...:(