‘Megalopolis’ Opens This Weekend. You Have to See for Yourself

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a preview of a bold, epic new film about a cantankerous and uncompromising architect and the narrow-minded forces arrayed against him: Butalist, Directed by Brady Corbet Adrien Brody Felicity Jones as a Bauhaus-trained Holocaust refugee genius and Joe Alwynand Guy Pearce’s career-redefining performance as the wealthy Pennsylvania businessman who becomes Brody’s boss. His Expert meets Çeşmebaşı, and it’s worth seeing on the biggest screen you can find when it opens, especially since Corbet went to the trouble of shooting it on VistaVision, a larger-format IMAX precursor from the 1950s that’s now mostly used for VFX shots. In late December.

of the year other A great architect movie, of course. Francis Ford Coppolapassion project decades in the making Megalopolis, with Adam Driver As a troubled visionary who wants to use time-bending sci-fi technology to rebuild a Manhattan-like city called New Rome in the zeitgeist. “Society if…” meme; Giancarlo Esposito as the narrow-minded mayor who prefers to satisfy the bread and circus crowd with casinos; and a huge, star-studded supporting cast. After a fascinatingly rocky pass (everywhere Cannes commentsExchange allegations against Coppola, annoying the crew by hanging out in her trailer smoking weed—let alone cooking—and more serious accusations of on-set misconduct, Coppola to sue Varietyplus An even stranger scandal involving AI-generated quotes from movie critics like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert), is coming to theaters this weekend and you should see it immediately. Don’t look at Tweets, don’t look at Letterboxd, don’t look at Rotten Tomatoes; just go to a theater and see for yourself.

To be clear, with all due respect to Coppola and her legacy, I’m not saying you have to see this right away. Or that you need to see it because by watching it you will somehow help finance and theatrically distribute other films like this. won’t happen to be Are there any other movies like this? Megalopolis It’s making $4 billion, which isn’t happening even if we all get together and rent shuttle buses to bring public school kids and seniors to the multiplex to send a message to Hollywood. The strange-more-even-more madness that permeates every frame of this film will vanish from the face of the earth the day Coppola’s eyes close. Sometimes Megalopolis When that sweet pineal DMT kicks in, it feels like the intoxicating cinematic fever dream that would have flashed through the auteur’s head just seconds before. This Why do you need to go see it?

brutalistIts perspective on power, dominance and abuse feels thoroughly contemporary, but the 36-year-old Corbet’s calm command of the medium is such that you might mistake his third film for a career-ending work by an old master, a lifelong master. experience; Megalopolis, On the other hand, a movie real It reads more like the work of an exciting millennial wunderkind, a galaxy-brained cinephile who has inhaled every Coppola film and believes he can beat the maestro at his own game, says the 85-year-old veteran. It’s so showy Thundering Fish (Francis’ favorite Coppola movie and also Sofia’s) but uses the visual language and world-building capabilities of the modern CGI blockbuster. With its angry mobs, anthropomorphic statues, and retro-futurist architecture, New Rome looks a lot like Gotham City; among many other things, Megalopolis The greatest audition imaginable for directing Batman movies from someone who probably had no desire to make it.

For a film inspired by classical antiquity that has been in the works for nearly 40 years, its references feel thoroughly modern; I found myself thinking this metropolis but also about Matrix, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and even Phantom Menace, Coppola’s quest for a personal technological vision was led by his old friend George Lucas, another filmmaker, whose search resulted in actors speaking harshly in fantastical digital environments; I thought this too Darkman, Southland Tales, and from the depraved Capitol The Hunger Games (Because of Rome, of all things, but also because of Jason Schwartzman); and perhaps inevitably, given what the film has to say about the battle between fearful and optimistic visions of the future, I thought of Donald Trump even before Shia LaBoeuf’s character entered politics and led an army of thugs (MEGA-chuds?). red hats.