You know that sinking feeling that America is in a “fall of Rome” kind of phase? You know how that was a clever joke to make a few years ago, and then not so jokey after that, and then dead serious now?
Yeah, that’s what legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s talking about with his new film Megalopolis, premiering Sept. 27. An especially ambitious sci-fi epic, the film tells the story of a visionary architect named Cesar (Adam Driver) trying to rebuild a future metropolis called New Rome, which is in terminal decline. Opposing him are crypto-fascist forces that want to preserve the status quo for corporations and billionaires. On the plus side, Cesar has the ability to stop time.
This is a movie with serious themes in play, and it isn’t just another Trump-era panic attack, either. Coppola started working on the script in 1983 and he’s interested in a more fundamental decay. Among the film’s inspirations: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, and Godfrey Reggio’s fever-dream documentary Koyaanisqatsi.
It’s intriguing is what it is. Coppola is one of the last grandmasters still standing from the New Hollywood era of the 1970s. These are treacherous times, and we desperately need our artists to provide thoughtful (and ideally hopeful) speculative visions. “The future is being determined today, by the interests that are vying for control,” Coppola said in a recent interview. “We already know what happened to Rome.”
Megalopolis is the movie to see this fall season, in my book. Plus, Aubrey Plaza stars as a character called Wow Platinum, and no one should be deprived of that.
For a different kind of big-swing-type movie experience, consider the documentary Eno, which screened earlier this year at the Full Frame festival in Durham. Veteran indie filmmaker Gary Hustwit profiles British musician Brian Eno, a tireless innovator across multiple music genres for the last 50 years.
Eno is also beloved by artists of all stripes for his dedication to tinkering with the mechanics of the creative process itself. (Look up the phrase “Oblique Strategies” sometime.) Director Hustwit pays tribute to this with the experimental form of his new film. He developed digital exhibition technology that assembles a different edit of the film every time it’s screened. As such, each viewing of the documentary is unique.
If you’re in the mood for a final summer fling, the documentary The Catskills is a love letter to the upstate New York resort area that served as a summer playground for America’s upwardly mobile from the 1920s to the 1980s. Enthusiasts of showbiz history will want to make time for this one. The art of standup comedy was more or less invented in the Catskills and a glorious parade of golden-age entertainers cut their teeth on the Borscht Belt circuit.
The film also digs into the fascinating sociological aspects of this unique American community. The Catskills area was built up by and for the East Coast Jewish community that was otherwise banned from resort hotels for decades. Many of these tireless pioneers were one generation removed from European pogroms, and they created their own kind of paradise in the hills.
Quick Picks
Halloween scary movie season is descending and at least one early-bird release looks like fun. The body-horror freakout The Substance, with Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, concerns an aging celebrity who tries an experimental serum that produces a younger replicant version of herself. There are consequences, turns out.
For the kids, the animated sci-fi adventure The Wild Robot follows a resourceful little bot, shipwrecked on a pristine natural island world, who learns to live in harmony with nature. Eco-fiction is taking all kinds of interesting forms just now and this must be counted as a good thing. Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal lead an all-star ensemble voice cast.
For more traditional arthouse fare, the Italian import The Shadow of the Day is a period melodrama set in small-town Italy circa 1938. If you’re hoping to get lucky, Italian-language love stories are a historically powerful date night option.
If you must, the sequel Joker: Folie à Deux brings back Gotham’s most tenacious villain, yet again—this time with Lady Gaga as eternal love interest Harley Quinn. How many times do we have to watch this movie?
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