SYNOPSIS: “Megalopolis,” a new fable from legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, now playing in theatres, is a mix of Ancient Roman politics, sci fi, and even a little bit of mime.
Visionary artist Cesar (Adam Driver) has plans to build a utopian city to inspire hope within the rotting framework of New Rome. “When we leap into the unknown,” he says, “we prove that we are free.” He’s up against the corrupt Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), agent of chaos Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) and the threat of partisan warfare.
CAST: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D. B. Sweeney, and Dustin Hoffman. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
REVIEW: As idiosyncratic a movie as we’re likely to see this year, “Megalopolis,” the forty-years-in-the-making passion project from Francis Ford Coppola, is equal parts hammy and hopeful, dense and dazzling. It’s the work of a filmmaker with nothing left to prove, and brims with imagination, ambition and, unfortunately, self-indulgence.
Coppola, who says he rewrote the script for “Megalopolis” at least 300 times, empties out the idea drawer, producing a script that overflows with his thoughts on legacy, survival and hope for the future. Using lessons learned from the intrigue of Roman history, he throws in a dollop of sci- fi—Cesar Catalina (Driver) can stop time with a flourish of his hands—to tell a story of utopian values pitted against city hall.
It’s a mix of Ayn Rand and Marcus Aurelius, and not unfamiliar ground for the director. He has essayed the effects of power, political paranoia and the bloom of love in previous films like “The Godfather,” “The Conversation” and “One from the Heart.” The difference is, those movies, while often epic in scope, didn’t take a kitchen sink approach to the storytelling.
“Metropolis” is overstuffed to the point of bursting. The grand vision of warring billionaires and politicians is rendered almost incomprehensible by scenes that never lift off or, worse, feel randomly inserted into the narrative.
Coppola sets his story against a city in a fall of the Roman Empire decline, which should bring along with it very high stakes, but there is never a sense of danger or tension.
Instead, head-scratching line readings, spontaneous Shakespearean monologuing, and unintentionally funny, heightened performances distract from the actual story. “Megalopolis” is operatic in its ambition, experimental in its execution and rather baffling in its intentions.
Perhaps the film’s most telling line is a quote from Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority.”
And so it goes with “Metropolis.” Despite the presence of big-name talent like Adam Driver and Aubrey Plaza, this is a deliberating non-commercial film. Coppola’s vision is experimental, difficult to penetrate, impossible to pigeonhole, and occasionally thrilling, but mostly a slog.
Everything about “Fast X,” the latest entry in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, is big. Really big.
The a-lister cast list is a laundry list, including returning stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Charlize Theron along with the addition of Marvel superheroes Jason Momoa and Brie Larson. The villain is faster and more furious than ever before and the action can only be described as bigly. There’s even a surprise cameo from one of the world’s biggest movie stars.
But is bigger always better?
A jumble of the usual mix of family, friends, fast cars and flashbacks, “Fast X” begins with relative calm in the world of former criminal and professional street racer Dominic Toretto (Diesel). The patriarch of the “F&F” gang, he has left the fast life behind, and retired with wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), and his son Brian. “We used to live our lives a quarter mile at a time,” he says. “But things change.”
Not so fast, there Dom.
Dom’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of flamboyant villain Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), the sadistic, revenge fueled son of drug lord Hernan Reyes. “I’m Dante,” he says by way of introduction. “Enchanté.”
Way back in “Fast Five” Dom and Co. were responsible for the loss of the Reyes family fortune. “The great Dominic Toretto,” Dante snarls. “If you never would’ve gotten behind that wheel, I’d never be the man I am today. And now, I’m the man who’s going to break your family, piece by piece.”
Cue the set-up to the second part of the franchise’s three-part finale. It is, as they say on the movie poster, just the beginning of the end.
In the “Fast & Furious” world the word “ludicrous” is not just the name of prominent cast member Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges, it’s also the name of the game. Since the franchise’s humble 2001 debut, the movies have grown bigger and sillier with each entry. “If it can violate the laws of God and gravity,” says Agent Aimes (Alan Ritchson) in “FX,” “they do it twice.”
The latest one redefines ridiculousness.
The out-of-control car stunts that crowd the screen have no touchstone in reality, other than the cars have four wheels and drive along streets when they aren’t bursting into flames or flying through the air. It’s as if the wild car chases were dreamed up by fourteen-year-olds playing with their Hot Wheels sets as images of canon cars danced in their heads. Anything goes, and no idea is too big or too ludicrous.
When the tires aren’t squealing, Dom is whinging on about the importance of family with a straight face and a serious tone that makes Leslie Nielsen’s “Naked Gun” deadpan look positively flamboyant. Only Momoa seems to understand how colossally silly the whole thing is, and has fun pulling faces, doing a Grand Jeté or two and peacocking around as he rolls a neutron bomb through the streets of Rome. It’s a ludicrous performance in a completely ludicrous movie and it fits.
The bombastic “Fast X” is overstuffed with characters—it seems like every actor in Hollywood has a cameo—plot and, if this is possible, it is overstuffed with excess. The very definition of “go big or go home,” it is for “F&F” fans who have been along for the ride for more than two decades everyone else may want to take a detour.
Everybody needs somebody to love. I mean, c’mon, even Dracula had a girlfriend. The Count’s bloodsucking “brides” provide the inspiration for a contemporary horror film called “The Invitation,” now playing in theatres. It’s the story of vampires and a wedding invite the main character Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel) should have declined.
When we first meet Evie, she is a struggling New York City artist and cater waiter mourning the loss of her mother. “It was always just my mom and me,” she says. “To have a family, that’s what I really want.” To that end she does a DNA test to see if she can shake any long-lost relatives out of the family tree. To her surprise she discovers Oliver (Hugh Skinner), an English cousin, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s going to be in New York the following week.
Over dinner she tells him that her mother always wanted to take her to England to learn about their family history.
“There’s a wedding coming up. You should come. Everyone is dying to meet you,” he says in a funny bit of foreshadowing.
Turns out the extended family lives in a house that makes Downton Abbey look like a dump. Presided over by the aristocratic “Rockefeller rich” Walter (Thomas Doherty), it is the picture of lavish English countryside life. “Welcome to the new Carfax Abbey,” says cousin Oliver.
Underneath the perfectly manicured lawns, and the starched suits of the maids and footmen, however, are deadly secrets. As the wedding day approaches, Evie’s questions about the whereabouts of the bride and groom are brushed off with vague responses. “The groom and the bride will make their grand entrance tomorrow,” she is told.
On the day, Evie learns too late that she isn’t just a guest at the wedding.
“To Evie,” says Walter proposing a toast on the wedding night, “my new bride.”
Set amid the Abbey’s gothic architecture, what begins as a fish out of water story quickly turns sinister as the things that go bump in the night start bumping but don’t expect much more than a few carefully crafted jump scares. Director Jessica M. Thompson keeps the horror strictly for folks who thought “Twilight” was the best vampire movie ever.
That’s not to say there isn’t a well-staged scene or two in “The Invitation,” but when the best scene in a vampire romance is a sequence where the lead gets a clumsy manicure, it suggests deficits in the horror department.
Perhaps it’s because the trailer for “The Invitation” gives away very major plot point, or perhaps it’s because there are no real surprises in the story, but, either way, this is one bloodless vampire tale.
“Army of Thieves,” a new heist film now streaming on Netflix, is a prequel to Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” from earlier this year but do not expect the same kind of blood and guts zombiefied action.
The new film takes place six years before the zombie outbreak that brought Las Vegas to its knees in “Army of the Dead.” Both are heist movies, but the only brain eaters on display in this European-set flick are on the news and in the main character, Ludwig Dieter’s (Matthias Schweighöfer, who also directs) dreams. This is a standalone movie, the origin story of the safecracker who provided most of the lighter moments in Snyder’s film.
When we first meet Ludwig he’s a safecracker nerd, making YouTube video (that nobody watches) about the art of breaking into safes. He’s a skilled practitioner of the craft, but he’s an innocent and has never stolen anything from anyone. His job at a bank is unsatisfying in the extreme, so when a YouTube commenter invites him a safecracking competition, he readily accepts.
There, he proves his mettle and is recruited by bank robber Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel) to join her gang of criminals, Korina (Ruby O. Fee), hacker Rolph (Guz Khan) and the muscle with the action hero name, Brad Cage (Stuart Martin). The gang has ambitious plans to rob three next-to-impossible safes, the kind that only Ludwig can crack, while the zombie outbreak in the United States is causing instability.
But what will bring the gang down first, zombies, sexual tension, Interpol or in-fighting?
The only real connection “Army of Thieves” has with “Army of the Dead” is Ludwig. It’s his introduction to the Snyderverse and dovetails into the zombie movie. Other than that, they are two separate things.
This one has a lighter touch, there’s some romance and no brain eating.
It plays like a riff on “Ocean’s Eleven.” At two hours it feels slightly long but Schweighöfer is an agreeable presence, adept at the character’s slapstick as well as the conveying the passion for his love interest (no spoilers here!). The result is an unexpectedly fun, action-packed movie gives new life to “Army of the Dead’s” most interesting character.
I wonder if the number in the titles of the “Fast & Furious” movies is a scale of how implausible the movie will be. Do the producers think, “Well, it’s the ninth movie so it has to be nine times wilder than the last one.” I mean, why simply have a Pontiac Fiero when you can have a Pontiac Fiero with a rocket engine strapped to the roof?
Trust me, I’m on to something here.
I was not a fan of the first batch of “F&F” films but as they’ve incrementally amped up the action, shifting into a higher gear each and every time, with no regard for sentient storytelling or the laws of gravity, I’ve developed a soft spot for Dom and the Gang.
The movies stopped making sense some time ago. How is it, exactly, that a group of gearheads became a highly trained squad of international warriors, equally at home with ignition coils and international intrigue? These movies redefine the word excessive, and yet the franchise’s commitment to auto anarchy and Vin Diesel’s raspy way with a catchphrase has caught me in its speed trap.
The latest entry, “F9,” now playing in theatres and Drive-Ins, is less a movie and more a spectacle. A loud-and-proud exercise in far-fetchery, cliches and twisted metal, it uses on the usual “F&F” staples —family, friends, fast cars and flashbacks—as a backdrop to the over-the-top action to tell a story of international espionage, an evil mastermind named Cipher (Charlize Theron) and the broken relationship between brothers Dom (Diesel) and Jakob (John Cena).
There’s more, but fans don’t go to these movies for the storytelling. They go because director Justin Lin has eliminated most of the boring bits—i.e. when the characters speak—to distill the movie down to its sweaty essence. When the characters do talk, they don’t converse exactly, they exchange clichés, and when they aren’t speaking in a low rumble, they yell.
The result is a Kabuki car show, the latest entry in a franchise that knows no speed limit.
In March 2016, production was shut down on Maze Runner: The Death Cure when star Dylan O’Brien was hurt filming an elaborate stunt. O’Brien, who rose to fame as the resident heartthrob on Teen Wolf, was strapped in a harness on top of a moving vehicle when he was suddenly thrown and struck by another car. WorkSafeBC reported his injuries included “concussion, facial fracture and lacerations.”
With production postponed, O’Brien’s publicist Jennifer Allen said, “His injuries are very serious and he needs more time to recover.”
Director Wes Ball tweeted, “Well, it’s been a whirlwind of emotions these past few days. I’ve been overwhelmed with feelings of anger and sadness and guilt. But, ultimately I find myself left with just a deep love and respect for Dylan. He is one tough cookie.”
The film, originally scheduled for release on Feb. 17, 2017, was delayed until this weekend.
O’Brien says he was “in a really fragile, vulnerable state,” and during the early days of his recuperation thought he may never act again. “I’ve gotten to a place where I’m OK with it,” he told People, “but it was definitely a rough year.”
The 26-year-old isn’t the first actor to be hurt performing a dangerous deed. Jackie Chan is famous for doing all of his own stunts — and breaking almost every bone in his body in the process — while Mission: Impossible 6 was recently put on hold after Tom Cruise broke his ankle attempting a jump across a building gap.
Sylvester Stallone broke ribs on the First Blood set and Charlize Theron herniated a disc in her spine while shooting Aeon Flux. Jason Statham joked about almost being drowned during the making of The Expendables 3, but it is serious business. How far should filmmakers go in the search for realism in stunts?
Industry insiders say the best way to keep everyone safe is to let the professionals do their jobs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, no stranger to films with wild action scenes, said, “With stunts, we have a rule that if you can get injured or killed, you let a stunt guy do it, because they are much more skilled in how to do the falls, being on fire, how to deal with all those things.”
Stunt driver Richard Lippert asserts that, stunt-wise, actors only have to know how to do three things: first, how to convincingly fake a punch; second, how to drive on and off a mark; and finally, how to credibly handle a weapon. Other than that, he says, “actors shouldn’t plan to do their own stunts no matter how ‘cool’ or exciting it may seem.”
Other than personal danger for the actor, one wrong move can shut down a set costing everyone their livelihoods. “Taking a job away from someone to stroke your ego is not a good way to become popular,” says Lippert.
CGI is another option, although many top directors prefer real action. After years of “following the CG evolution,” using computer-generated images to create beautiful animated films like Happy Feet and Babe: A Pig in the City, director George Miller used actual stunts performed by stunt men and women in his action epic Mad Max: Fury Road. “It was like going back to your old hometown and looking at it anew,” he said.
You may be forgiven if you, like me, thought about going to see “The Maze Runner: The Death Cure” to catch up on what happened to Shailene Woodley’s character Tris Prior.
Please be advised you have the wrong franchise.
Back in the day of the young-adult-in-peril dystopian trilogies screens were filled with good looking young actors fighting for survival in movies like “The Maze Runner” and “The Divergent Series.” Of the bunch of them only “The Hunger Games” distinguished itself as a go-to movie. The others kind of blended together to form one long post apocalyptic action series that resembled an anti-utopian Guess ad with automatic weapons and artfully tousled hair.
Since the new film, “Maze Runner: The Death Cure,” assumes you’re up to speed with the story I’ll save you the trouble of having to binge watch the first two movies.
Here’s the catch-up:
Based on a series of wildly popular YA books, 2014s “The Maze Runner” sees Thomas, played by “Teen Wolf’s” Dylan O’Brien, plopped into a community of young men surrounded by a labyrinth. The rebellious Thomas wants to see if there is a way to navigate through the ever-changing maze that stands between the boys and whatever is happening in the outside world.
The following year “The Scorch Trials” saw the virtuous Thomas and his gang take on the worst people in the world, W.C.K.D., a group of evildoers that appear to use an Instagram acronym as their name.
After a three-year wait Thomas is back with his stylishly dishevelled hair and chiselled face to break into The Last City, a fortified town where doctors work to find a cure for a plague that turns people into snarling zombies. The good doctors, including Thomas’s former flame Teresa (Kaya Scodelario), are experimenting on the Maze Runners who are immune to the disease. In particular Thomas wants to rescue Minho (Ki Hong Lee), a pal being mercilessly poked with needles in search of a cure.
“Maze Runner: The Death Cure” features lots of ominous music, attractive stars in motion, dusty dystopian landscapes and something gets blown up or shot at every 10 minutes or so. What’s missing is the emotional content that might make you care about Thomas and Company. The movie really wants you to love the characters. The camera endlessly caresses their determined and often tearstained faces but the ham fisted big emotional moments are as empty as the jars of gel thrown in the trash after being used to poof up the cast’s hair. The characters are mannequins mouthing generic dialogue—speeches begin with, “I knew I know you have no reason to trust me,” and every few minutes someone says, “We have to get out of here!”—for two hours and twenty minutes. Think what else you could do with that time!
A movie star is someone who can carry a movie, a person audiences will line up to see no matter what the film. There’s no formula, just equal parts talent, charisma and staying power.
For years Tom Cruise and Will Smith ruled the Hollywood roost, but Cruise’s couch jumping tarnished his star (unless he’s headlining a movie with the words Mission Impossible in the title) and Smith has hit a box office rough patch.
These days Hollywood’s biggest movie star—both physically and metaphysically—is a former wrestler who made his acting debut playing his own father on an episode of That ’70s Show. Since then Dwayne Johnson’s paycheques have blossomed along with his popularity and in 2016 he was the world’s highest-paid actor, in part due to his reputation as “franchise Viagra.”
It’s a simple formula. Take a flagging franchise; add Johnson and flaccid box office numbers suddenly grow. Case in point, the Fast and Furious series. Johnson signed on for the fifth instalment, playing Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs, helping that movie make north of six-hundred million dollars. His over-the-top presence—who else could remove a cast from his broken arm simply by flexing his oversized biceps?—drove the grosses of the next two F&F movies to the stratosphere. This weekend’s The Fate of the Furious is poised to shatter even more records.
His is a varied filmography—a resume containing everything from the hi brow, abstract sci fi of Southland Tales and the bloody b-movie Walking Tall to the family friendly Tooth Fairy and the pedal-to-the-metal Fast & Furious flicks—bound together by one thing, his innate star power.
Haters, like a recent commenter at Variety.com, who complained that Johnson, “has never done a compelling complex character, only mindless good vs evil roles,” miss his populist appeal. Despite his Greek God physique, he’s an everyman, a charismatic crowd-pleaser with a cocked eyebrow.
His appeal continues off screen as well. He’s a big deal now but that wasn’t always the case and he’s positioned himself as an inspirational figure, a muscle bound Tony Robbins. “I started w/ $7 bucks. If I can overcome, so can you,” he tweeted when he was crowned the World’s Highest-Paid Actor.
“I have enjoyed a good amount of success and I’m very grateful for everything I have,” the bulky actor told me a few years ago.
“I’m very grateful for being who I am. I make sure to approach every project and everything I do as if it is going to be my last.
“There was a time when I was in Canada, playing for the CFL and sleeping on a mattress that I got from the garbage of a sex motel. I’ll never forget it. True story. So, for me, those times are kind of in the forefront of my mind. The wolf is always scratching at the door. It’s good to remember that. It’s important.”
Johnson is Hollywood’s biggest earner but a recent viral video shows his core connection to his fans. Dressed as mascots of themselves Jimmy Fallon and the artist formerly known as The Rock photobombed folks at Universal Studios in Orlando. One man, with a tattoo of Johnson on his leg, was brought to tears when meeting the hulking actor. “Stuff like this will always be the best part of fame,” said Johnson.
Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly.
Perhaps it was the wild train heist in “Fast Five,” or the entirety of “Tokyo Drift” or the skyscraper-to-skyscraper jump from “Fast and Furious 7.” What ever it was, at some point in the sixteen years someone decided more is really more. Bigger stunts, more stars and more pedal-to-the-metal action, which leads us to “The Fate of the Furious.”
This latest slab of preposterous bombastity begins in Havana. Dom (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) are honeymooning when, surprise, surprise and unexpected car race breaks out. Although clearly out gunned (SPOILER ALERT ONLY IF THE OUTCOME WASN’T SO PREDICTABLE) Dom wins, his car speeding backwards and engulfed in flames.
As if that wouldn’t be enough for most movies, we’re then introduced to criminal mastermind Ciper (Charlize Theron). As her name implies, she’s a tricky one, and soon Dom has turned his back on his crew—Letty, Roman (Tyrese Gibson), ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Tej (Ludacris)—to work for her. Why? Not sure. She shows him something on a mobile phone screen that changes his once unbending loyalty to his peeps. “You’re going to abandon your crew and shatter your family,” Cipher snarls. “Your team is about to go against the only thing they can’t handle—you.” She has highfalutin ideas about holding the world accountable for it’s sins ands who better to help her than a grease monkey with a raspy voice and a can-do attitude?
In another part of the story covert ops team leader, the excellently named Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) convinces Dom’s old crew to work for him again. The plan this time involves tossing Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in prison to aid the escape of assassin Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham).
Throw in a series of exotic locations—he movie zips from Cuba to New York City to Russia and every where in between as Hobbs and crew try to understand Dom’s defection while at the same time stop him from amassing an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. That’s right, a series once satisfied with fast cars and socket wrenches now concerns itself with WMDs.
“The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mashup of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
The love of family is the subtext that that bonds the all the movies together is given lip service but little else. Despite aspiring to be “The Brothers Karamazov” with muscle cars, the movie is little more than a preposterous demolition derby that values vehicular wham bam thank you ma’am over anything else.
In the classic sense it does prove the old theory that for every action there’s a reaction… and a one liner. “They’re going to flank us!” “No they ain’t,” yelps Hobbs as he punts a military vehicle into outerspace. It’s a catchphrase-a-looza where the characters don’t actually talk to one another, they trade quips.
SYNOPSIS: “Megalopolis,” a new fable from legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, now playing in theatres, is a mix of Ancient Roman politics, sci fi, and even a little bit of mime.
