Aubrey Plaza: right breast and see-through
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Some great collages by Penman:
Chloe Fineman’s butt
Emily Berry as a topless corpse
Grace Vanderwaal – fake
Nathalie Emmanuel does a scene in a translucent nightie
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Francis Ford Coppola has been planning and promising this film for nearly 50 years. Why, exactly? Entertainment Weekly has a theory. In a scathing review summarized by the rare “F” grade, their reviewer basically theorized that Coppola now has the highest-rated film of all time in The Godfather, and wants to earn the lowest-rated as an appropriate bookend. Imagine being able to say, “I made the best film of all time, and the worst!”
This film won’t end up dead last at IMDb. The visuals are dazzling.
Megalopolis can be loosely described as a futuristic interpretation of the Catilinarian conspiracy, as filtered through Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. A more literal interpretation of that ancient Roman conspiracy would have been a (perhaps too obvious) metaphor for modern American politics. Cataline was a Roman who lost an election but refused to accept the results. He planned to send a mob of his angry supporters to overthrow the “deep state” in Rome, which was led by Cicero. Catiline basically planned a violent coup to place himself and his allies in charge.
Megalopolis uses the names of the characters involved in that historical episode, but makes Catiline no villain, nor Cicero a hero, choosing instead to position Catiline as a visionary agent of needed change, and Cicero as a defender of the corrupt status quo.
Coppola wraps that tale in theatricality, as if Tom Hooper or Baz Luhrman had decided to make a campy musical version of Julius Caesar. In homage to Metropolis, of course, it must be spiced with just a soupcon of German Expressionism.
If I understand where Coppola is going with his extended metaphor, it’s not about American politics at all, but American filmmaking. Catiline speaks for Coppola, the visionary genius who can see that things need to change, that film needs to be the art form of this century, as well as the public forum to express and discuss intelligent ideas. Cicero and Crassus represent the Hollywood moguls and bankers who just want to keep milking the old, tired formulas for some fast bucks.
Or not. What do I know?
At any rate, I have to give Coppola a tip o’ the hat for the audacity to make what is essentially an experimental art film, the sort of thing an NYU film student might create if he won a billion-dollar lottery, and not at all what one might expect from an 80-year-old establishment figure who occupies a central chair in the pantheon of film gods.
As demonstrated in the images and clips above, the film is filled with surreal images and situations, saturated colors, frenzied action, bizarre comedy, garish musical numbers, and exaggerated performances. Adam Driver, for example, goes full Cleese and silly-walks throughout the film. Now that I think about the way he glides, twirls and waves his cape, it’s not full Cleese. It’s half Cleese and half Lugosi.
Contrary to what I have hinted, Megalopolis is not actually a musical, but it plays out like one, so I still expected people to stop the action and burst into song at any moment. Instead, they stopped the action to deliver Shakespearean monologues – and I don’t mean that figuratively. At one point Driver actually, rather inexplicably, delivers Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy. Yes, Megalopolis can be highbrow – until the next instant when it turns lowbrow, as if Vince McMahon had suddenly commandeered a toney production from Masterpiece Theater.
Songs. Dances. Dali. Hamlet. Expressionism. Cicero. Romance. Spectacle. Slapstick. High tech. And yes, art. It’s a mix that makes the film nearly incoherent.
And I’m not sure that I need the word “nearly.”
Coppola supposedly financed the epic-length film with as much as $120 million from his own pocket. He is an old man with more money than he will ever need for his own pleasure or comfort, so he decided to use that wealth to check off the major item left on his bucket list, the project he has been discussing and dreaming about for four or five decades. Self-financing the film meant that there was nobody to hold the reins once he finally decided to gallop forward with the project, and there was nothing to prevent him from making his masterpiece exactly as he envisioned it.
Oh, dear.
Well, at least we got a look at Aubrey Plaza’s T&A.
“Well, at least we got a look at Aubrey Plaza’s ass.”
WORTH IT however long/bad the rest of it is.
This. Yeah, she had the leak a few years back, but I’ll take eventual 4k titty and ass. Anything from dear Aubrey.
Now I just wish I could hang out with her.
Personally consider “Chinatown” a better film than “Godfather.”
The Godfather isn’t even my favorite gangster pic, but it wins the consensus.
Unquestionably the greatest gangster film of all time is actually Angels with Filthy Souls.
“Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal”
I’m not sure if The Godfather is my favorite film or Prizzi’s Honor. “Just because she’s a thief and a hitter doesn’t mean she’s not a good woman in all the other departments.” I have watched The Godfather dozens of times. Anytime I was flipping around on my cable box, if I came across The Godfather, I would leave it on and watch it to the end of the film. I love that movie. Prizzi’s Honor, on the other hand, I’ve only seen once. But the ending of that movie provoked such an emotional reaction from me that I was too stunned to get up until long after the credits were over. It’s probably time for me to watch that film again. At least, I won’t be surprised at the ending.
Coppola hasn’t been brilliant since the 70’s, and it’s been a long time since he’s even been good. Greatness is so hard to sustain.
This movie has been panned. That ‘there was nothing to prevent him from making his masterpiece exactly as he envisioned it’ more or less sums up the problem with his filmmaking since the Godfather I and II. That said, I did like his ‘Dracula’, in a way, for its sheer campiness. Our family gets together to watch it about once a year and we laugh and laugh, accompanied by some wine, beer or other suitable beverages.
Indeed. The problems inherent in Megalopolis were already evident more than 40 years ago in his failed musical One From the Heart.
Francis Ford Coppola has been planning to give us a look at Aubrey Plaza’s ass for fifty years? Truly, the man is a visionary.
I enjoyed it as an experimental art film on a massive scale. There are genuinely great images and memorable performances, and it’s a film still strongly on my mind a week later, even if I don’t think all of it works. But it kind of is that way with experimental films, and your reaction has a lot to do with how you vibe with it, I suppose.
Like, a lot of people praise Godard’s Goodbye to Language to the moon, and I thought it was unwatchable garbage with a couple of mildly nifty usages of 3D that I’d like to see a real filmmaker use. But I don’t think the people who liked it were being disingenuous; they really were vibing with whatever the hell Godard was up to.
And that’s about where I was with Megalopolis; I totally get why many people will bounce off of this film, but I found it absolutely fascinating as an art piece to be grappled with. That has value, and seeing it done on this scale is a cool, unique experience.
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As for the question of biggest gap in filmography, it’s surprisingly tricky to come up with a counter to Schaffner – you need someone who directed at least one truly brilliant movie and one absolute garbage fire. Plenty of great directors have made a mediocre film, and so-so filmmakers latched onto the perfect project once, and so forth, but an actual classic-catastrophe extreme is hard to find!
The first possible counter I thought of to Schaffner was Boorman, but he’s only at a 3.9 gap — Deliverance (7.7) to Exorcist: the Heretic (3.8).
De Palma has a 3.8 gap from Scarface (8.3) to Domino (4.5) (which he’s disowned due to the producers taking it out of his hands and wrecking it, a solid way to get a high differential)
Zemeckis manages a 3.7 gap from Forrest Gump (8.8) to Pinocchio (5.1).
Showgirls used to be as low as 3.7, and would have given Verhoeven an incredible 4.0 with Black Book at 7.7, but enough people have embraced it over the years to bring it up to a 5.1!
I found various others in the high 3s, but nothing to quite scale the heights of Schaffner.
If we want to be totally objective, Michael Curtiz had a gap of 5.0, but it’s not fair to include those old studio directors since:
1. They didn’t choose their own projects.
2. They were assigned shit projects when they began their employment, then assigned prestige projects if they proved themselves, thereby assuring that the ones who lasted would have both very high and low scores in their careers. Curtiz directed 179 films, so there were bound to be stinkers in his early career that would be scored 4.3 or less (to contrast to 8.5 for Casablanca).
3. Some (like Curtiz) got low scores from silents and low-budget foreign films.
4. Some of the scores for those old films are based on very few votes, so it’s difficult to assess how good or bad they were.
Victor Fleming would be in the same boat as Curtiz. Maybe others as well.
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Once Curtiz was an established director, his low was 5.2 – leaving a gap of only 3.3. (It’s astounding to see how many great films he made – and how many damned good ones right behind them.)
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If we base it on writing rather than directing, Luc Besson has to be a contender. That guy has written some real dog shit. I have to look that one up.
Alan Smithee seems to have a very wide gap (2.1 to 9.2?) between his best and his worst, but a number of his things are shorts or music videos or tv specials, so I don’t know how he fits in here.
He doesn’t. There is no such person.
You would exclude Smithee from the rankings merely for the sin of being fictional?! For shame. Emma Thompson and Will Ferrell were in a movie where a character underwent the pain of being fictional in world dominated by non-fiction; it was called “Stranger than Fiction”. Perhaps it would open your eyes a crack, or are they welded shut by “reality”?
What 9.2 movie got attributed to Alan Smithee?
Hilariously enough., ol’ Al actually directed a short rated a perfect 10.0!
I do not know how it ranks on the numeric scale you are discussing, but Michael Cimino’s following up of The Deer Hunter with Heaven’s Gate must be one of the most immediate stark gaps ever recorded.
Heaven’s Gate is actually a good film, it was just expensive and attacked for losing a lot of money. Its rating currently is 6.7. I believe there may be a director’s cut and possibly the original release wasn’t as good. I watched it much later than its release so I probably saw the best version of it.
To make that case, you’d have to find a way to define the gap by the decline in the director’s reputation, rather than the decline in the quality of the film.
The main problems with Heaven’s Gate were: (1) Cimino spent a lot of money unnecessarily; (2) the film was not paced properly to appeal to general audiences, thereby assuring that it would lose almost all of that money.
The combination of low income and high expenses is not exactly a recipe for business success, so HG was a financial disaster. That, and the fact that Michael Cimino was not a diplomatic or humble man, sent the critical sharks into a feeding frenzy.
But many people feel that the movie itself is a masterpiece, albeit a flawed one.
Interesting. I was aware to some degree of a revisionist evaluation of Heaven’s Gate by a few critics, but not aware that it now ranks so highly as a matter of general assessment. I would have thought that its original assessment as a murky mess of epic proportions would still have sway. That said, I have never seen the director’s cut, and maybe I should do that. (BTW, as an aside, the soundtrack to the film is quite beautiful – I still have it in my LP collection after buying it all those years ago when the film came out, and listened to it again just recently.)
I Zipped through this, this movie sucked. Aubrey should stop accepting lame scripts.
Well, when Coppola, Scorsese or Spielberg are on the line, most actors take the call.
Even Christopher Nolan, right, today he is the all-powerful one in Hollywood. Every prestigious actor agrees to work with him, even if they have to reduce their salary to do so.
Despite never being the lead in anything that made a nickel and mostly being famous as a small role in a sitcom, she works on exactly what she wants to work on, film and TV, and doesn’t seem to give a fuck about what anyone thinks.
One could argue she’s the most successful actress in the business based on this: constant work, global game, zero pressure.
There’s an interesting continuity error in Plaza’s scene with Driver. She’s kneeling between his legs, then he stands and walks offscreen. When it cuts back to Plaza she’s pulling the straps of her gown up, even though they weren’t down in the previous shot. Maybe there’s an unused topless shot somewhere in the editing bay
It’s funny, my buddy worked as a production assistant for Coppola in the early 2000s, and he had a copy of the Meglopolis script even back then. I remember leafing through it, it was like the size of a phone book. But character names and locations certainly seem the same. Clearly he had been planning this for a long time.
As for Aubrey, she’s the queen of quick, fleeting nipple flashes it seems. Add it to the list.
Don’t forget Coppola’s 1962 movie “The Bellboy and the Playgirls” which you can watch for free on Youtube. This early nudie flick currently has a 2.7 rating on Imdb. In fairness, this film was not entirely made by Coppola, but he shot fifty minutes of color footage for it.
After reading reviews of it, my wife and I will definitely be going to see Megalopolis in the hope it will deliver the same very enjoyably bad, but undeniably cinematic, experience we get from Coppola’s Dracula. The reviews are giving me hope that it will!
I have to admit that I am considering going to see it in IMAX, even though I’ve already watched it. OK, it’s not a masterpiece, but I think it’s the kind of film that’s ideal for an immersive IMAX experience.
Yes, it sounds like it would be ideal for IMAX, like an LSD trip without the LSD. And for me, it does not hurt that Ms. Plaza is in it. Though she is maybe not conventionally a stunning beauty, something about her just works for me. Nathalie Emmanuel is wonderful as well.
Bob Clark directed both A Christmas Story (IMDB rating of 7.9) and Baby Geniuses (IMDB rating of 2.6). Gap of 5.3. He has got to be the winner.
Agree. I forgot about him! What an amazing career!
That’s not Van Der Waal in that scene. It’s a fairly poor deep fake of both her and Driver used to cause a scandal in the plot of the film. I haven’t seen the movie, but I watched a spoiler-heavy review on YouTube (Amanda the Jedi, she’s great) and she showed the close ups in that photo in freeze frame to point out how bad a job they did matching the faces to the bodies, yet everyone buys it in the plot.
Given that Grace is well of age now, I’d love to see her for real, but somehow I doubt that’s coming soon.
It’s no Southland Tales, but it is pretty goofy – not boring tho!