MEGALOPOLIS : Tuesday 15th October 2024

I finally got around to seeing the M Rated 'MEGALOPOLIS' this week, which was released here in Australia on 26th September. This American epic Sci-Fi film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, whose previous film making credits take in the classic 'The Godfather Parts I, II and III' in 1972, 1974 and 1990, 'The Conversation' in 1974, 'Apocalypse Now' in 1979, 'The Cotton Club' in 1984, 'Peggy Sue Got Married' in 1986, 'Gardens of Stone' in 1987, 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' in 1992, 'The Rainmaker' in 1997 with 'Twixt' in 2011 his most recent film before this one. Coppola spent US$120M off his own money to fund the production of this passion project which he first began considering in 1977 and for which he began script ideas in 1983. Production of the film has been on-again off-again over the years with him returning to the film in earnest in 2019. The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at this years Cannes Film Festival, where it Premiered in mid-May, and has proven divisive amongst critics with mixed or average reviews. Costing in the region of US$130M to produce, the film has so far grossed just over US$11M.

Set in an alternate USA, New Rome is dominated by an elite group of aristocratic families. Although the Roman elite professes to live by a strict moral code, these aristocrats decadently enjoy forbidden pleasures including wild parties, a lavish lifestyle and all the trappings of their wealth and social standing, while ordinary Romans live on the poverty line. Among this elite group is idealist and forward thinking architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) who wins the Nobel Prize for inventing the revolutionary building material Megalon. In addition, he secretly has the ability to stop time. He treats his superpower as a metaphor for his artistic workings - when Cesar stops time and space, everyone and everything else remains frozen.

Despite Cesar's success, he has fallen into bouts of alcoholism. Years earlier, his wife mysteriously disappeared, and District Attorney Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) prosecuted him for murdering her. Although Cesar was exonerated, he remains wracked by guilt, believing that his wife committed suicide because he was too wrapped up in his work. Cesar still longs for his wife, prompting his jealous mistress, TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), to leave him. 

Later at a live broadcast event, Cesar and Mayor Cicero offer different visions for the city's future. Cesar proposes using Megalon to build 'Megalopolis' - a utopian urbanist community, while Cicero argues that a casino will provide immediate tax revenue and jobs. During the event, Cesar meets Cicero's well educated, but directionless, daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel). They initially have a disliking for each other, but after showing her his vision for Megalopolis, Julia intrigues Cesar by showing that she is the only person who can still move when Cesar stops time. They become lovers.

Wow marries Cesar's uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) the world's richest man and the CEO and owner of the Crassus Bank. Although Crassus likes his nephew, his mind and health are in decline, and he is easily manipulated by individuals like his other nephew, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) who has his own designs on inheriting the Crassus Bank. At the lavish wedding reception of the happy couple, the headline musical act is pop star Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal). 

In an attempt to discredit Cesar, Pulcher leaks a paparazzi video of Cesar having sex with the alleged sixteen year old Vesta, prompting Cicero to condemn Cesar publicly. Although Cicero arrests Cesar for statutory rape, Julia vindicates Cesar by discovering that Vesta faked her age and is actually twenty-three years of age. 

After a redundant Russian satellite crashes to Earth and destroys large swathes of New Rome, Cesar begins construction of Megalopolis from the ruins, financing the project with his family fortune. However, the high cost of building Megalopolis contrasts with the level of poverty on the streets. Pulcher becomes a populist politician, encouraging ordinary Romans to oppose Megalopolis as an expensive folly. The draw of power leads Pulcher from populism to fascist agitator.

Julia, now pregnant, tries to broker a peace accord between Cesar and her father by taking her father to see the Megalopolis construction site. However, Cicero is unimpressed with Cesar's utopianism, although his wife Teresa (Kathryn Hunter) feels the opposite. Cicero begs Cesar to leave Julia - in exchange for which, he offers Cesar valuable blackmail material - a written confession that Cicero knew Cesar's wife committed suicide and maliciously prosecuted Cesar anyway. Cicero gives Cesar three days to decide, but needless to say Cesar declines.

Wow tries to force Cesar to leave Julia and marry her instead by saying that when she has inherited the vast Crassus fortune, she would give it all to him. When Cesar outright rejects her, she freezes his account at the Crassus Bank. She enlists Pulcher to manipulate Crassus into handing over control of the bank. When Crassus learns of Pulcher's duplicity, he has a stroke and collapses. Pulcher hires an assassin in the form of a nine year old boy to kill Cesar, who shoots Cesar in the head at point blank range, while he is signing an autograph for the seemingly innocent young lad. Cesar's doctors use Megalon to rebuild his skull, and repair his severely damaged tissue. 

Cesar and Cicero become allies after rioting Pulcher supporters attempt to storm Megalopolis and City Hall. Pulcher and Wow taunt the seemingly bedridden Crassus, but Crassus kills Wow and injures Pulcher with a hidden bow and arrow shooting a arrow directly into Wow's chest and firing off two arrows into Pulcher's arse. Cesar confronts the rioters, pleading with them to believe in his vision of a better future. His speech wins over the crowd, whose followers hang Pulcher and his right hand man Aram Kazanjian (Balthazar Getty) upside down from a scaffold.

With renewed financial support from Crassus, Cesar finally completes Megalopolis. Cicero, holding Julia and Cesar's baby daughter, Sunny Hope, promises to help Cesar build a better future. On New Year's Eve, as the clock counts down the seconds to midnight, Cesar turns to Julia and asks that she stop time. She does so, freezing them both and all around them leaving only Sunny Hope unaffected by the time stop . . . and she's way too young to click her fingers to resume normal service like her dad would have done!

The film also stars Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwatrzman, James Remar, D.B.Sweeney and Dustin Hoffman.  

The film opens up with the words 'Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis : A Fable' etched in stone. In other words it is a short story that tells a general truth or is only partly based on fact, and so it is here with references aplenty to real characters and their goings on from ancient Rome transplanted into a future world where those characters play out much as their ancestors might of done in the days of the Roman Empire. And in that respect I guess the film delivers showcasing the wild parties, the sex, the back stabbing, the murders and the political intrigue all wrapped up in a utopian vision of a future city where everyone lives in harmony and happily ever after. Visually the film is rewarding enough but that's just about where the positives end, as the cast of top notch A-list talent appear almost bewildered by what the Director is asking of them except for Shia LaBoeuf who chews up the scenery and his dialogue with reckless abandon, while others - Hoffman, Schwartzman, Shire and Fishburne are underutilised. As for the story - it goes around in circles and never seems to go anywhere leaving you with the feeling that after almost two-and-a-half hours of viewing it is seriously undercooked. It's a real shame because from Coppola I would have expected a whole lot more, but then perhaps his long gestating opus is his last hurrah, he ploughed his own hard earned cash into it, and he finally got to realise his passion project on the big screen, and all the naysayers be damned!

'Megalopolis' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

'WALL STREET : MONEY NEVER SLEEPS' : archive from 26th October 2010.

'WALL STREET : MONEY NEVER SLEEPS' - is the sequel to Oliver Stone's 1987 classic 'Wall Street' which was made for just US$15M, made US$44M, snagged its lead star Michael Douglas the Best Actor Academy Award, and co-starred a who's who of acting talent including Charlie Sheen, Martin Sheen, Daryl Hannah, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, Terence Stamp, Sean Young and John C. McGinley. It beautifully captured the excesses of the mid 80's finance power brokers, the traders, the movers and shakers up and down Wall Street and in particular one Gordon Gekko (Douglas) who muttered those immortal lines 'greed is good'.

Fast forward to 2010 and we now have a fitting follow up to that 1987 classic retaining many of the original elements - sharp dialogue, sharper suits and Gordon Gekko still at his razor sharpest and reprised by Michael Douglas. With Oliver Stone once again Directing, this film was made for US$70M and brought home US$135M but in the process divided audiences and the critics.

This film opens in 2001 and Gordon Gekko is being released from prison having served eight years for insider trading and fraud. Fast forward to 2008 and Gekko releases his book 'Is Greed Good' which foretells of a global economic downturn, which as we all know hit in October of that year. When the brown sticky smelly stuff hits the fan a number of top finance institutions go into meltdown - including the one where Louis Zabel (Frank Langella) is MD, who promptly throws himself in front of a train. At this same company works Jacob Moore (Shia LaBeouf) who is a successful trader, and he just happens to be dating the estranged daughter of Gordon Gekko  - Winnie (Carey Mulligan), and financially supporting his mothers (Susan Sarandon) fledgling Real Estate business. Meanwhile Bretton James (Josh Brolin) who heads up another rival Wall Street institution is up to no good profiting from the mis-fortunes of his rivals and who now find themselves in strife, or have done so in  the past . . . including Louis Zabel.

From here paths cross and double cross, deals rise and fall and huge sums of money change hands as each seek to get the upper hand and discredit the other. Charlie Sheen makes a reappearance as Bud Fox from the original film, and Josh Brolin chews up the screen as the uber successful & evil man of Wall Street. Michael Douglas recaptures his cut & thrust, his wheeling & dealing and his smooth suited & booted smiling financial assassin who comes good in the end, and ends up back on top having fallen from grace 15 or so years earlier.

I enjoyed this slice of Oliver Stone Wall Street nostalgia, and whilst hardly an essential sequel it was/is a good watch nonetheless with once again a strong cast that includes too Eli Wallach in his final role before his passing in 2014, Jason Clarke and Oliver Stone himself in his usual cameo appearance. Rent it on DVD or BluRay or download it, but catch the 1987 first instalment before you do so that you grasp the origin story and the continuity . . . as well as the wide lapels, fat ties and big hair!

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

TRANSFORMERS : DARK OF THE MOON - archive from 8th July 2011.

Saw 'TRANSFORMERS : DARK OF THE MOON' shortly after its Australian release, and whatever you think of Michael Bay he sure knows how to blow shit up and put on a spectacle, and, he has proved it time after time! So much so that for its US$195M production budget it raked in a staggering US$1.13B at the global Box Office putting it squarely in the Top 10 biggest Box Office movies of all time . . . go figure! But hey, ask any 13 year old lad and they'll tell just how awesome this movie is/was!

This film sets off three years or so after the previous instalment that was 'Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen' and largely reunites the crew form those previous films. Shia LaBeouf is back as our young world saving hero Sam Witwicky, and this time his nubile young love interest is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as Carly Spencer. Add to the mix his former stablemates John Turturro (as Seymour Simmons), Josh Duhamel (as Will Lennox), Tyrese Gibson (as Master Sergeant Rob Epps), Hugo Weaving (as the voice of Megatron), Peter Cullen (as the voice of Optimus Prime) and throw in a bunch of new A-listers including the late Leonard Nimoy (as the voice of Sentinel Prime) and then Patrick Dempsey, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and even Buzz Aldrin himself. 

So, back in 1961 'The Ark' a Cybertronian spaceship crash lands on the dark side of the Moon. Carrying a cargo of a device capable of ending the war between the Autobots and Decepticons, the crash landing is detected back on Earth and so NASA under instruction from President JFK, sends a mission to the moon which landed in the shape of Apollo 11 in 1969 (I always knew there was conspiracy theory in there somewhere!) to investigate the events further.

Fast forward to the present day and the Autobots are among us keeping peace on earth and goodwill to men, but on a mission to Chernobyl, Optimus Prime discovers an engine part from The Ark and realises that it must have survived its journey from Cybertron. So the Autobots travel to the Moon where they discover Sentinel Prime still out for the count, and the Pillars he created to form a space bridge between two places in space along which to transport matter.

A down on his luck Sam Witwicky happens to land upon some useful intergalactic intelligence that shows the Decepticons had hatched a plan to lure the Autobots into a trap on the Moon. Sentinel only can activate the Pillars but only the Autobots can revive him from his slumber, so the Decepticons need both to establish a base on Earth using the Space Bridge, and Sentinel has jumped the fence and is now siding with his sworn enemy to secure the survival of the Cybertron race. 

When a battle ensues it is the Decepticons who rise victorious but although the battle may be won, the war is not yet over, and with Chicago taken over as the hub from which to lay the Pillars around the world, and girlfriend Carly captured by the Decepticons, in comes Sam on his silver steed like the proverbial knight in shining armour to rescue his damsel in distress, spray a can of whoop ass on those pesky Decepticons and save the day . . . and the world . . . again!

You just know the Autobots will win against almost impossible odds as Uncle Sam with the help of 'Bumblebee', 'Ratchet' and 'Optimus' go head to head with 'Laserbeak', 'Starscream', 'Soundwave', 'Barricade', 'Shockwave', and the 'Driller' and trash downtown Chicago in the process, and the Pillars and therefore the Space Bridge are destroyed forever. Down but not out 'Optimus' will take out 'Megatron' and 'Sentinel' too and come to realise that Cybertron is now gone once and for all, and as such Earth is very much now the home for the Autobots.

Bay has resurrected the franchise after a far from satisfying second instalment, and jump started the action all over again in this thrilling relentless ride that is teen fodder for the masses but bloody good fun! Since then of course, we have seen the fourth film in this franchise 'Transformers : Age of Extinction' released in 2014 which on a US$210M Budget bought in US$1.09B, with 'Transformers 5' now slated for release in 2016 . . . and on the numbers this franchise has so far garnered (US$3.76B), why not!

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

FURY - Tuesday 28th October 2014.

This week I saw the new Brad Pitt World War II actioner 'FURY', with a couple of movie buddies at my local multiplex. Written and Directed by David Ayer we are taken back to the closing weeks of WWII with the rapidly advancing Allied Forces making their way to Berlin as Hitler puts just about every man, woman and child on the front line to defend the last vestiges of 'The Fatherland'. It is no easy trek across the German countryside though for the Allies as they are confronted with still heavily armed and at times superior fire powered German troops standing in their way at every turn, on every hilltop, in every village and town, and behind every stand of trees. What David Ayer has delivered is a cold, bleak, grim, violent, and raw account of the bloody battles between German troops and a small American tank command that has travelled more than three years and many thousands of miles to get to this point in our story.

'Fury' is the Sherman Tank commanded by Brad Pitt's Sergeant Don 'Wardaddy' Collier with a crew of four others. As the film opens we see on a muddy bare horizon a lone horseman partially cloaked in mist advancing to a battle scene - the image is surreal - corpses are littered everywhere, still burning armoured cars, destroyed tanks, overturned artillery as the glorious looking white steed and its German Officer rider gradually make their way through the mud and carnage of the battlefield. When you least expect it a soldier hurls himself off the back of a tank at the advancing lone horseman, brings him to the ground and inflicts several deadly knife blows to the chest, and then through the eye socket. And so we are introduced to 'Wardaddy', to his Sherman Tank, 'Fury', and his four other crew. One of them however is dead, having had his face blown off in the heat of battle. The dead crew member is still inside the tank, and with Wardaddy, the three survivors must make their way out of the battlefield to the next camp.

Arriving at camp, we learn that 'Fury' is all that remains of that last campaign having seen many casualties at the hands of the well fortified and armoured German troops. Outwardly Wardaddy is battle hardened, cold, calculating, scarred, war weary and a tightly coiled spring who will inflict violence on any German soldier, civilian, or officer to protect himself, his crew, his tank and to support the American and Allied Forces war effort. Inwardly however, he is fighting his own demons having seen more human atrocities, lost more friends and comrades, and been on the road for more than three years. At camp he is introduced to replacement Assistant Gunner Norman Ellison (Logan Lerman) who was drafted only seven months ago, has never seen battle let alone a dead body and has been punching on a type writer for the last three months at sixty words per minute. Ellison is clueless, believes a terrible mistake has been made and pleads to be discharged from this duty. Unfortunately for Ellison these are desperate times, and his initiation is to clean out the tank of the remains of his predecessor - which includes scraping up his face from the floor of the tank and mopping up all the blood . . . Welcome to Fury!

What soon follows after an intense tank battle sequence across an open field is Ellison's Baptism by blood as he is forced to shoot a captive German soldier in the back. As the story progresses Ellison has no choice but to engage in the heat of battle and gun down advancing German troops to protect himself, his crew, his tank and his fellow infantrymen. Under the watchful eye of Wardaddy, Ellison develops a taste for killing Nazi's and in doing so gains acceptance from the remaining crew. We learn nothing of the crew of 'Fury' or their back stories other than the present moment through open dialogue between them during brief moments of quiet. We learn that there is Boyd 'Bible' Swan (Shia LaBeouf) a God fearing, bible preaching good Samaritan who takes his daily prayers inside the tank and is the religious anchor of the crew - he however, thinks nothing of gunning down the enemy because it is Gods work and he is chosen to carry it out. Then there is Trini 'Gordo' Garcia (Michael Pena) the Mexican tank driver who is battle weary too, burnt out and on the edge. The tanks mechanic and loader is Grady 'Coon-Ass' Travis (Jon Bernthal) who has a very short fuse, is bad tempered, almost permanently angry, swears a lot and is an Italian thug - he is one can short of a six pack - but, in a fire fight he would be the guy you want to be standing next to!

We also learn that the crew, aside from Ellison, have been together for more than three years - longer than any other, and which they all acknowledge is thanks to Wardaddy's skill, wits and fortitude in battle and inside 'Fury'. As Wardaddy says - he started killing Germans in North Africa and now he is killing Germans in Germany. En route they have been through Spain, France, and Belgium to bring them to this point. Further battles ensue as the tank advances with an ever depleted battalion of soldiers in tow. There are scenes of close quarter combat in a small village where much carnage is inflicted on both sides. When they move out four tanks including 'Fury' go head to head in an open field with a far superior Tiger Tank, and in the closing sequence 'Fury' must go it alone with its five occupants against a battalion of three hundred or so SS Troops - needless to say it doesn't end well for anyone!

Brad Pitt plays it well as grizzled war hardened 'Wardaddy'. Shia LaBeouf is convincing too as the bible bashing righteous soldier of God 'Bible'. 'Gordo' has a lesser role, but nonetheless is convincing as a knock-about weary Mexican, but Bernthal as 'Coon-Ass' overplays his role too much and there is nothing likable or redeeming about his hooligan character. Logan Lerman wins his 'war name' toward the end as a sign of acceptance from the crew and 'Machine' comes of age inside the tank when all hell breaks loose outside.

David Ayer as Writer and Director has delivered a story in which really little happens except for tanks and infantrymen doing battle, and we probably could have seen more of this and less of the drawn out sequences seemingly filling screen time in between. There is plenty of expected war time violence, dismemberment of limbs and heads in the heat of cross-fire and the ferociousness and tenacity of battle between heavily armed foes. There is no real sense either of the sheer claustrophobia of five men being confined for prolonged periods inside an armoured tin can, and without any sense of their back stories it is hard to relate to the crew as individuals or a close knit team.

'Saving Private Ryan' rewrote the rule book by which all others are so far judged, and this film doesn't match that one on many levels. 'Enemy at the Gates' did a good job subsequently, but 'Fury' is not genre defining by any means. All that said, it is worth a look, and filmed in the English countryside with a US$68M budget it is entertaining enough, when the action comes it is well handled but it won't leave you pondering after the credits have rolled like the two aforementioned films did, or others for that matter depicting the conflict in Vietnam.

  
-Steve, at Odeon Online-