Written and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Grace VanderWaal, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, James Remar, Chloe Fineman, Isabelle Kusman, D.B. Sweeney, Haley Sims, Balthazar Getty, Bailey Ives, Adams Bellouis, Madeleine Gardella, and Romy Mars.
SYNOPSIS:
The city of New Rome is the main conflict between Cesar Catilina, a brilliant artist in favor of a utopian future, and the greedy mayor Franklyn Cicero. Between them is Julia Cicero, her loyalty divided between her father and her beloved.
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Somewhere buried underneath the bluntly narrated New Rome parallels to America’s current downward spiral, the family scheming, betrayals, sociopolitical commentary, endless philosophical musings quoting other famous works and speeches that never quite stick or mean much, sci-fi concepts such as a biological building material dubbed Megalon, the earnest desire to build a promising future and preserve crucial aspects of the present and past, and an ensemble where everyone seems to think they are in a new movie from scene to scene, is a good film within legendary writer/director Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-in-development-hell passion project Megalopolis.
These haphazard elements come together for a final scene that is sincerely moving. The preceding 2 hours and 10 minutes is an onslaught of ideas presented and ambitious set pieces (ranging from living, breathing, suffering statues to extravagant Roman-inspired weddings with modern twists such as wrestling matches replacing gladiatorial combat to futuristic envisionings of a better world) carrying an impressive, transfixing visual language (courtesy of cinematography from previous Francis Ford Coppola collaborator Mihai Malaimare Jr) that ensures even if viewers are flabbergasted at how disjointed and unwieldy the narrative is, it is undeniably hypnotic and striking to absorb.
The question then becomes, does that mean anything if the film is ambitious to a crippling fault and a structural disaster? An early scene sees New Rome Chairman of the Design Authority/architect Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver, who is either miraculously on Francis Ford Coppola’s wavelength or so locked into his distinct take on the character that, if nothing else, it’s a memorable performance for right and wrong reasons) stopping time during the demolition of a building. The reason doesn’t matter, but at times, Megalopolis is similarly catastrophically crumbling (under the weight of its gigantic audacity) that one wishes they too could say “time… stop!”, take a breather, and digest what’s happening for a moment.
By the way, yes, Cesar can stop time. However, it’s an ability that plays more into characterization than anything plot-specific, which might be why it’s one of the few and far between elements that work here. Not only is he a man who can stop time, but he is also paranoid that there isn’t enough time to accomplish his ambitious dream of building a futuristic utopia called Megalopolis. There is also something about the idea of someone who can stop time yet still feels as if they don’t have enough, which is trippy and compelling.
Cesar is opposed by the polarizing Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who is less concerned about the future and more interested in doing something about the present. Yet, he mostly appears to be selling the usual political lies to keep up public trust. However, that support is gradually fading and soon transitions into full-blown riots (with other factors coming into play.) As such, he is determined to do whatever he can to put up a roadblock for Cesar, even if it means slandering his public image as possibly having murdered his wife since the body was never recovered. Mayor Cicero’s socialite daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) attempts to fool Cesar in disguise and gather some intel (one of the film’s most unintentionally hilarious scenes, and one that is inexplicably being used to market the theatrical run), which is easily seen through and gets her belittled in such a manner that, to be a fly on the wall while everyone was working through the performances would have been a treat.
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Nevertheless, romance eventually develops and becomes the film’s heart, and it probably should have been a more significant focus. Instead, Megalopolis is caught up in backstabbing wealthy relatives of Cesar, including a billionaire bank owner played by Jon Voight (he looks seriously confused and not in a funny way, but the concerning late-career Bruce Willis way where there turned out to be a neurological diagnosis in play), a power-hungry cousin (Shia LaBeouf) willing to doublecross anyone, and Cesar’s former mistress and gossip-obsessed newscaster Platinum Wow (Aubrey Plaza delivering the most consistent performance, and a fittingly crudely nutty one at that even if the character comes across as a misguided, uneasy helping of rampant misogyny from the film’s controversial filmmaker.)
The in-house scheming and drama between them take away from a relatively moving romantic subplot between Cesar and Julia, even if there still isn’t any real character development happening. It more comes down to a feeling radiating from the screen. Considering that aspects of Cesar’s egotistical personality and humiliating slander are on full display, it also doesn’t feel out of the realm of possibility that Francis Ford Coppola is throwing up a version of himself on screen (a theory more credible considering the ending credits dedicate the film to his deceased wife). Francis Ford Coppola’s call to action to build a better world with updated principles is admirable and even something some people need to hear, but one wishes that he constructed a better movie out of it than Megalopolis.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
You can call me one-track-minded or say that I focus on the wrong things, but do not include an element that I am then expected to forget. Especially if that “element” is an animal – and a dog, even.
In No More Time, we meet a couple, and it takes quite some time before we suddenly see that they have a dog with them. It appears in a scene suddenly, because their sweet little dog has a purpose: A “meet-cute” with a girl who wants to pet their dog.
After that, the dog is rarely in the movie or mentioned. Sure, we see it in the background once or twice, but when something strange (or noisy) happens, it’s never around. This completely ruins the illusion for me. Part of the brilliance of having an animal with you during an apocalyptic event is that it can help you.
And yet, in No More Time, this is never truly utilized. It feels like a strange afterthought for that one scene with the girl to work, but as a dog lover, I am now invested in the dog. Not unlike in I Am Legend or Darryl’s dog in The Walking Dead. As such, this completely ruined the overall experience for me.
If it were just me, I could (sort of) live with it. But there’s a reason why an entire website is named after people demanding to know whether the dog dies, before they’ll decide if they’ll watch a movie.
The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.
Surrounding Chalamet is “a supporting cast you’d swear was assembled via Mad Libs,” because it features Fran Drescher, Penn Jillette, Tyler the Creator, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and—as a faded movie star Marty sweet-talks into an affair—Gwyneth Paltrow, “reminding you how good she was before Goop became her full-time gig.” To me, it’s the story beneath the story that makes Safdie’s “nerve-jangling, utterly exhilarating” movie one of the best of the year, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “It’s about a Jewish kid who knows just what kind of antisemitism and finely stratified racial dynamics he’s up against in postwar America, and who is using every means at his disposal to smack back.”
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‘Is This Thing On?’
Directed by Bradley Cooper (R)
★★★
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“There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.”
The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going until hour two,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Until then, it’s “lethargic and listless,” slowed by long takes “that drag on and on.” Fortunately, Arnett and Dern have real chemistry that kicks in when Dern’s Tess accidentally catches Arnett’s Alex performing his bit about their sidelined marriage and sees him with new eyes. Good as Arnett is, “it’s Dern who’s the revelation as a woman who truly doesn’t know what she wants and is figuring it out in real time,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Cooper, playing a reprobate friend of Alex’s, gives himself the script’s biggest laughs. More importantly, he proves again to be a director with “a real flair for domestic drama.”
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Joe Carnahan was a sagacious choice to co-write and direct the engrossing and visceral survival thriller “Not Without Hope,” given Carnahan’s track record of delivering gripping and gritty actioners, including early, stylish crime thrillers such as “Narc” (2002) and “Smokin’ Aces” (2006), and the absolutely badass and bonkers Liam Neeson v Giant Wolves epic “The Grey” (2011).
Based on the non-fiction book of the same name, “Not Without Hope” plunges us into the stormy waters of the Gulf of Mexico for the majority of the film, and delivers a breathtaking and harrowing dramatic re-creation of the 2009 accident that left four friends, including two NFL players, clinging to their single-engine boat and fighting for their lives. The survival-at-sea story here is a familiar one, told in films such as “White Squall,” “The Perfect Storm,” and “Adrift,” and the screenplay by Carnahan and E. Nicholas Mariani leans into well-worn tropes and, at times, features cliché-ridden dialogue. Still, this is a well-paced and powerful work, thanks to the strong performances by the ensemble cast, some well-placed moments of character introspection, and the documentary-style, water-level camerawork by Juanmi Azpiroz.
Zachary Levi (the TV series “Chuck,” the “Shazam!” movies) is best known for comedy and light action roles. Still, he delivers solid, straightforward, and effective dramatic work as Nick Schuyler, a personal trainer who helps his friends Marquis Cooper (Quentin Plair) and Corey Smith (Terrence Terrell), two journeyman NFL players, get ready for another season. When their pal Will Bleakley (Marshall Cook) shows up at a barbecue and announces he has just been laid off from his financial firm, he’s invited to join the trio the next morning on a day-trip fishing trip from Clearwater, FL., into the Gulf of Mexico. (The casting is a bit curious, as the four lead actors are 10-20 years older than the ages of the real-life individuals they’re playing — but all four are in great shape, and we believe them as big, strong, physically and emotionally tough guys.)
We can see the longtime bond between these four in the early going, though we don’t learn much about their respective stories before the fishing trip. Kudos Carnahan and the studio for delivering a film that earns its R rating, primarily for language and intense action; the main characters are jocks and former jocks, and they speak with the casual, profanity-laced banter favored by many an athlete. (Will, describing the sandwiches he’s made for the group: “I got 20 f*cking PB&Js, and 20 f*cking turkey and cheese.”) There’s no sugarcoating the way these guys talk—and the horrors they wind up facing on the seas.
The boat is about 70 miles off the coast of Clearwater when the anchor gets stuck, and the plan to thrust the boat forward to dislodge it backfires, resulting in the vessel capsizing and the men being thrown overboard. Making matters worse, their cell phones were all sealed away in a plastic bag in the cabin, and a ferocious storm was approaching. With title cards ticking off the timeline (“13 Hours Lost at Sea,” “20 Hours Lost at Sea,” “42 Hours Lost at Sea”), we toggle back and forth between the men frantically trying to turn over the boat, keep warm, signal faraway ships, battling hunger and thirst, and the dramas unfolding on land. Floriana Lima as Nick’s fiancée, Paula, and Jessica Blackmore as Coop’s wife, Rebekah, do fine work in the obligatory Wait-by-the-Phone roles.
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It’s terrific to see JoBeth Williams still lighting up the screen some 40 years after her “Big Chill” and “Poltergeist” days, delivering powerful work as Nick’s mother, Marcia, who refuses to believe her son is gone even as the odds of survival dwindle with each passing hour. Josh Duhamel also excels in the role of the real-life Captain Timothy Close, who oversaw the rescue efforts from U.S. Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg. At one point, Close delivers a bone-chilling monologue about what happens when hypothermia sets in—“hallucinations, dementia, rage…eventually, it breaks your mind in half”—a point driven home when we see what’s happening to those men at sea. It’s savage and brutal, and heartbreaking.
Given this was such a highly publicized story that took place a decade and a half ago, it’s no spoiler to sadly note there was only one survivor of the accident, with the other three men lost to the sea. Each death is treated with unblinking honesty and with dignity, as when the natural sounds fade at one point, and we hear just the mournful score. With Malta standing in for the Gulf of Mexico and the actors giving everything they have while spending most of the movie in the water and soaked to the bone, “Not Without Hope” is a respectful and impactful dramatic interpretation that feels true to the real-life events.
