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‘Megalopolis’ Review: Francis Ford Coppola’s Bold, Ungainly Epic Crams in Half a Dozen Stars and Decades’ Worth of Ideas
In 'Megalopolis' with Adam Driver, Francis Ford Coppola constructs a deeply personal, high-concept allegory on his relationship to art.
Here, backed by an estimated $120 million of the “Godfather” director’s own money, is the sort of big swing audiences and critics have come to adore him for: a recklessly ambitious, ginormous epic in which humanity’s eternal themes — greed, corruption, loyalty and power — threaten to suffocate a more intimate personal crisis. The two first have it out at a high-concept press conference, where most of the film’s key figures — including Jon Voight as obscenely rich oligarch Hamilton Crassus III and Plaza as manipulative TV personality Wow Platinum — navigate catwalks dangling amid a scale model of the city. Plaza and LaBeouf bring a satirical edge to their scenes, which recalls a previous Cannes debacle, “Southland Tales,” in which Richard Kelly cast comic actors and outside-the-box celebrities (like Dwayne Johnson and Justin Timberlake) to heighten the absurdity.
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