By Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent
“Imagine today’s Society as a branch of civilization about to reach a dead end.” You want to defend and explain Francis Ford Coppola’s MEGALOPOLIS just as much as narrator Laurence Fishburne , who tries to make the case during the movie that this oddball gorgeous landscape of mildly psychotic imagery is historic. You want to love Adam Driver and his maniacal urban hive-builder genius as someone amazing and heretofore unseen. “Don’t let the now destroy the forever.” But Ancient Rome intrudes along with a gaudy talent show of predictable human vices. Yet the embodiment of said worn vices is in the amazingly talented forms of wicked Shia LaBeouf, bitchy Aubrey Plaza, witchy Kathryn Hunter, even rejuvenated Dustin Hoffman. And then you realize what you are looking at, and this is big…
Francis Ford Coppola is the first cinematic director to reach his creative singularity, the point at which artistic growth has become unsustainable with unforeseen effects on future moviegoers.
Coppola’s Artistic Singularity, that’s reason enough to set your Clockwork Orange eye-openers for this lush and unruly fable of the patriarchy’s last glimpse of a familiar universe. The place where Game of Thrones’ Nathalie Emmanuel is still carrying out someone else’s agenda. And even the dailed-up sanpaku eyes of Aubrey Plaza fail to wink out in irony at the audience at any time. “One, two, three yippee-yee.”
MEGALOPOLIS from Lionsgate opened last week, and stars Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, and Dustin Hoffman.
Stare at the trailer here.
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