Megalopolis

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★1/2Megalopolis

Rated: M

Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola

Written by: Francis Ford Coppola

Produced by: Francis Ford Coppola, Barry Hirsch, Fred Roos, Michael Bederman

Starring: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia Labeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Kathryn Hunter, Grace Vanderwall, Chloe Fineman and Dustin Hoffman.

‘I will not let time have dominion over me.’

Megalopolis begins.

At first, I thought Megalopolis was going to be about perspective.  With Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) opening a window to step out, onto a roof to look over the city before him, to walk to the edge while the clouds race across the sky.  He looks over the roofline, teetering, about to fall.  Then, he stops time.

It’s a new Rome.

A narrator, Funi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), shown later to be a historian, speaks of not wanting to make the same mistakes as Old Rome, mistakes that benefit a few at the expense of the many.

So the main underlying theme here is social change with A LOT of other ideas thrown in the mix creating an overly ambitious chaos full of lofty ideals used to intellectualise the storyline but instead comes across as pretentious and cliché; an example when Cesar Catilina starts spouting, ‘To be, or not to be,’ to sell his architectural utopia.

Writer, director and producer, Francis Ford Coppola states:

‘Step by step with these beginnings, I researched New York City’s most interesting cases from my scrapbooks: the Claude Von Bulow murder case, the Mary Cunningham/James Agee Bendix scandal, the emergence of Maria Bartiromo (a beautiful financial reporter nicknamed ‘The Money Honey’ coming from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange), the antics of Studio 54, and the city’s financial crisis itself (saved by Felix Rohatyn), so that everything in my story would be true and did happen either in modern New York or in Ancient Rome.

To that I added everything I had ever read or learned about.’

Cesar Catilina is a genius born into a mega rich Catilina family.

The Cesar has won a Nobel prize for inventing a new building material, Megalon.

His vision, to build a new city for all by tearing down the old and building Megalopolis.

The mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), disagrees.

Mayor Cicero thinks Cesar will destroy society before he has time to build a new one, to which Cesar replies, ‘Don’t let the now destroy the future.’

A neat summary of Cesar’s perspective and by the end of this chaotic saga, I wondered why bother with all the other madness thrown into the storyline, a madness that felt like an experiment that got out of control, then exploded.  Anyway.

Alongside this ongoing dispute with the mayor is the family dynamics of a jealous cousin, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), forever trying to take down Cesar, socialite-turned-visionary, daughter to the mayor, Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), and the complicated relationship of spurned lover and journalist, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), who ends up marrying Cesar’s uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight).

Not forgetting Cesar’s mother, Constance Crassus Catilina (Talia Shire) who pulls away her hand from Cesar after he kisses it because, ‘it hurts.’

Amongst the family dramas, love triangles and marriage – there’s a whole lot of silly.  Not funny.  Silly.

Like the ‘Dingbat News’.

Like a young girl famous and singing for donations in the Colosseum to remain a virgin until marriage.

Then flashes to undies for sale with her image on the front.

The chaotic that creates an unsettled feeling throughout the film is amplified by a soundtrack that shifts from court music with trumpets, to orchestral classical, to jazz, all within the same scene.

The first half of the film felt distant, like watching a performance instead of being absorbed into the film.

Coppola experiments, his vision shown by darkening the screen to a spotlight to pull the audience into a moment (well, that device drew the focus into the scene), splicing the screen, to using the cinema as part of the film, literally.  Someone in the audience set up a podium, facing the screen to then ask Cesar a question.

After this moment, the film conversely, felt more like a movie rather than a performance.

But for me, this fable, literary debacle didn’t sell – the silly and the pretentious just made the sometimes poignant moments weird:

‘You can see right through me’

Only those in a nightmare are capable of praising the moonlight.’

I found the film so ridiculous that if Cesar woke up at the end of a dream, a nightmare, that might have been a better ending.

Megalopolis – it’s as pretentious as it sounds.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Directed by: Terry GilliamThe Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Written by: Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni

Produced by: Mariela Besuievsky, Gerardo Herrero, Amy Gilliam, Grégoire Melin, Sébastien Delloye

Starring: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgärd, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Óscar Jaenada, Jason Watkins.

Thirty years in the making (and unmaking), director and writer, Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) was determined that, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote would be made.

Based on the famous classic novel, Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha) written by Miguel de Cervantes (in two parts in 1605 and 1615), the film echoes the metafiction view, where the fiction both creates and lays bare that illusion.

Lead Toby (Adam Driver), the director of the film, ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ (that’s just one of many circles within circles here in this film of the same name), wipes the English subtitles literally from the screen, announcing they’re not required – there’s that laying bare the illusion.

Here, we have a film about making a movie about Don Quixote while combining elements of the classic novel in Tody’s present.

No wonder the script was written and re-written for thirty years.

There’s even a documentary about the difficulties of making this film, ‘This hellish adventure […] captured in great detail in the documentary feature film, Lost in La Mancha (2002),’ if you’d like to explore further.

I myself was dubious setting out on this adventure, thankful the flashbacks weren’t an attempt to hark back to the 1600s.  That would have felt pat.  Instead we have a man driven insane by Tody’s college film, yep, ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’, casting an old shoe-maker, Javier, (Jonathan Pryce), working in the small Spanish village, Los Sueños (Gallipienzo), where Toby decides to film his college project using real villages to avoid being cliché.

When Toby returns, years later, as a famous slick director, he finds the people of Los Sueños damaged after his last visit; the young and beautiful fifteen-year-old Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) broken while searching for the promise to be made a movie star, the shoe-maker cast as Don Quixote mad, with the belief he is the real, Don Quixote.

With events that range from amusing to the ridiculous (hence my initial dubious take of the film), Tody ends up in the unfortunate position of becoming the present day’s Don Quixote’s (AKA the shoe-maker) loyal squire, Sancho Panza.

This is where the movie starts to get somewhere: the slick director sitting atop a donkey, commanded by a crazy old man not afraid to hit him with a stick turns the ridiculous and amusing into outright funny.

Adam Driver as Toby bouncing off Jonathan Pryce as the mad pseudo Don Quixote make for some hilarious moments.  Only Jonathan Pryce could have pulled-off such a character, his theatre background pronouncing itself in the twinkle of a cheeky eye.

Then, as Tody gets more absorbed into his role as Sancho, the more dramatic and romantic the story as Angelica returns as the beautiful girl who needs saving from a Russian oligarch, Alexei Mishkin (Jordi Mollá) who ends up hosting a spectacular costume party in an ancient castle to celebrate Holy Week.

The setting of the film was shot in locations from Spain, Portugal and the Canary Island of Fuerteventura; ruins and castles including the Castillo de Oreja, Almonacid de Toledo and Monasterio de Piedra giving that Spanish flavour of Cervantes’ classic.

There’s also the addition of the Spanish guitar in the soundtrack and flamenco dancing with costuming that lift the film beyond the ridiculous into something more fantasy then drama or even comedy.  It’s all of it, rolled into an interpretation of the novel that mirrors Cervantes’ introduction of metafiction into the literary world, giving us that extra layer where the fiction is able to take a look at itself from the outside.

Not that the film dwells in this extra layer – this is more, a circle within a circle storyline that if you can get through the awkward moments at the beginning (Adam Driver helps here), then the reward is a film that successfully pushes the boundaries of cinematic perspective.

BlacKkKlansman

Rated: MA15+BlacKkKlansman

Director: Spike Lee

Written by: Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, Spike Lee

Based on the Novel by: Ron Stallworth

Produced by:  Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Ray Mansflied, Jordan Peele, Spike Lee, Shaun Redick

Music by: Terence Blanchard

Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold, Jaspar Pääkkönen, Ashlie Atkinson.

Winner of the Grand Prix Award (Cannes Film Festival 2018)

Based on the true story written by Ron Stallworth, BlacKkKlansman is set in 70s America where the Civil Rights movement of African-Americans’ fight against oppression.

Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) has just landed a job at the Colorado Springs Police Department as the first African-American detective where he has to tolerate fellow cops calling African-Americans’, Toads.  To his face.

Asked to work undercover, Ron infiltrates The Black Student Alliance (AKA the Black Panthers), to bear witness to the words of Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins) – a hint of the undercurrent and message of the film that unfolds under the careful direction of Spike Lee.

From the beginning, from the effect of showing words of film projected across the face of a Ku Klux Klan member (Alec Baldwin) as he’s making a propaganda film like so much red paint, like the words leave a curse of blood on his face; to the warmth of faces turned upwards in admiration of the words spoken by Kwame Ture at the Blank Panther rally, who wants the power to be fair and equal, to say black is beautiful; to say fuck the po-lice; to say, Boomshakalaka.

The audience is left in no doubt of the clear division between the white supremacists/KKK/general public and the African-Americans.

This is a political film. 

Yet the depth of the divide leaves plenty for the ridiculous and funny.

I couldn’t help but be tickled by the idea of a black cop pretending to be a white supremacist, asking to join the KKK over the phone.  To watch as the Klan’s Grand Wizard, David Duke (Topher Grace), is only too happy to help another member of the Klan, no not the Klan, the Organisation – and of course he’d be able to tell the difference if he was talking to a black man because they can’t pronounce their, ‘r’s’ properly?!

You can’t make this stuff up!

BlacKkKlansman

And there’s a cool vibe kicking with the funky-soul disco soundtrack (Terence Blanchard) and 70s red and orange outfits; the film embracing the times of the Mercury marauder, 70 Chrysler 300 and a well-shaped afro.

But there’s a strong undercurrent and message beneath the humour of this film; the rhetoric spewed by members of the Klan sounding all too familiar.

Ron’s partner in the infiltration of the Klan, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), is forced to deny being a Jew over and over when undercover.  He admits to Ron his heritage is something he’s never thought about before.  He’s always been just a white kid.   And then to deny, deny, deny, he’s forced to lie under threat of death by the KKK – it’s all he can think about. 

One could draw comparisons with the Denial of Peter.

The more I think about this film, the more there’s to be understood.

And the way Spike Lee has shown this layered true story, with eyes shining with warmth and conviction and others reflecting the hate of a burning cross, adds a distinctive visual layer drawing you in further.

Setting the film in the 70s lulls the mind into thinking all this hatred is something in our past, only to powerfully highlight this is a terror that continues in our present.

There’s a unique perspective and voice I feel like I haven’t heard before.  Sure, we all know history: the lynching’s, the slavery, the segregation.  But do we?  Really?

Being born in Australia, I can see we have our own history to face.  And our own present.

All I can ask is, are we going to let it happen again?

Re-counting the past from the lips of a survivor in the context of our present makes a powerful and thought-provoking film.

I feel like my eyes have been opened with a new understanding – the way the behaviour of racism looks on screen is so ridiculous it’s funny.  And very, very scary.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Rated: MStar Wars: The Last Jedi

Directed by: Rian Johnson

Written by: Rian Johnson

Based on Characters Created by: George Lucas

Music by: John Williams

Cinematography by: Steve Yedlin

Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Kelly Marie Tran, Laura Dern, Benicio Del Toro, Frank Oz, Billie Laurd, Joonas Suotamo, Amanda Lawrence, Jimmy Vee, Brian Herring and Dave Chapman.  

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was the best episode of Star Wars made to date…

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Episode VIII) is epic people!

This film has everything: fantasy, drama and conflict and betrayal and action with lightsaber fights that last just long enough…

And I was surprisingly emotional through-out the film with General (Princess) Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) filmed and thankfully not animated so she looked so real and so there.

It was such a pleasure to see Carrie Fisher up on the big screen for the final time… See what I mean about emotional?!Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Director and writer, Rian Johnson has spent a lot of time getting the detail of the story right.  There’s new characters mixed with old that keep the story interesting with the familiar and the excitement of seeing new critters adding to the lightness and wonder of this visual story.

Rian Johnson also wrote and directed, Looper (2012) and has brought that same attention to the script here, revealing layer upon layer of story to take the audience on a journey totally unexpected.

And I liked how the film was set both in space and on land – the effects of space fantastic on the big screen and the grounding of seeing the ocean crash into rocks and the salty sand of the desert kicking up red dust visually surprising.Star Wars: The Last Jedi

The island where the previous episode, The Force Awakens, leaves us with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is expanded upon, the thought put into the vastness of the landscape impressive with new sea creatures and those cute Porgs (that look like a cross between a penguin and a puffin) alongside old favourites like Chewbacca.

This episode sees the story unfold around the never ceasing Resistance as they fight The First Order led by Supreme Leader, Snoke (Andy Serkis) as he takes hold of the universe.  The final threads of the Resistance making that final last stand with Rey (Daisy Ridley) seeking the return of the equally resistant Luke Skywalker hiding on his island after losing all faith when his student and best friend and sister’s son, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) turns to the Dark Side.Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Adam Driver has really grown into his role as Kylo Ren (the highlight for me) – the film taking time to explore this new character, making him as deep and fascinating as Darth Vader.

But like life, there’s dark and there’s light.  There’s good and bad in everyone – the conflict of the Force in Luke and Rey and Kylo adding to an otherwise action and suspenseful film.

And, for me, the most suspenseful Star Wars so far.

The Last Jedi is a further exploration into the Dark Side giving this episode a sharper edge and depth – the fantasy element making the story more griping and thought-provoking than the usual Sci-Fi weight of the previous instalments.

And the timing of the story was perfect.  The twists in the tale, many.

Prepare for an epic experience: it’s a long one (2h 33m) but well worth the journey.

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Logan Lucky

Rated: MLogan Lucky

Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Written by: Rebecca Blunt

Produced by: Gregory Jacobs, Mark Johnson, Channing Tatum, Reid Carolin

Starring: Farrah Mackenzie, Channing Tatum, Jim O’Heir, Riley Keough, Katie Holmes, Boden Johnston, Sutton Johnston, David Denman, Charles Halford, Adam Driver, Seth MacFarlane, Mark McCullough, Daniel Craig and Jack Quaid.

Logan Lucky is about the not-so-lucky Logan Brothers who put together a heist to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race – one brother, Clyde Logan (Adam Driver), with one arm, I mean, one hand missing after being blown off on the way to the airport in Iraq, about to come home after fighting in the war.  And the other brother, Jimmy (Channing Tatum) with a limp, just fired from his truck driving job because of said limp – not that the limp would’ve affected his driving.

The Logan brothers enlist the help of demolition expert, Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) (ha, ha, Joe Bang), currently incarcerated; sister and hairdresser, Mellie (Riley Keough) and Joe Bang’s younger brothers, Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson).  Add these characters together and you’ve got a motley crew of robbers attempting a complicated job: the release of a prisoner, accessing the cash at the raceway, extracting and removing the cash from the site and the re-insertion of an escaped convict.Logan Lucky

After the introduction of these slow talking, seemingly thick-headed hillbillies, the film just kinda fumbled its way through the motion of the heist while expressing all those white trash clichés like child beauty pageants, John Deer trucker caps, long painted nails, big hair, NASCAR and energy drinks.  Well, the energy drinks were a bit different, as was the poodle-haired, race-car owner, Max Chilblain (Seth MacFarland) who owned the stuff and was forever trying to promote the drink by forcing it down his driver’s throat.

So, you can see there’s a parody here, of the backward North Carolina culture – but there’s also a paradox with smarts here too, like a tasteful martini made with one hand; a bomb made from bleach and gummy bears on the other…

I admit the dry humour eventually got me tickled and once tickled it was easier to laugh.  But the humour didn’t always hit the mark.

The stand-out for me was the one-armed Adam Driver as Clyde Logan.  Maybe I find amputee humour ticklish?  But, yes, his quiet take on the world was the highlight for me.Logan Lucky

There were some sweet moments, particularly between Jimmy Logan and his daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie) – passing the flat-head screwdriver or the wrench or singing a heart-felt country and western song.  And there was a coming around and twist here and there with the story but I was too far gone on the hillbilly nature of the characters.

I got bored with the clichéd and any twists in the story felt cheap, like an Ocean’s Eleven (2001) (of which Soderbergh also directed) re-make, but starring hillbillies… without action…

So, it was a weird mix of: intelligent plan with backward characters.

The film outsmarted itself by building the hillbilly nature of the characters at the loss of story, so Logan Lucky ended up being kinda funny and kinda smart.

I wanted to like the film more, but didn’t quite get there.

PS. What was the deal with the Hillary Swank FBI character, Sarah Grayson? Brought so late into the film the character felt tacked on, a little like this PS.

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