MEGALOPOLIS
(2024)
Imagine you are suffering from a very high
fever after just spending a weekend in Las Vegas wrestling with the meaning of
life. After struggling for hours to fall asleep you finally slip off and begin
to dream. You are in the future, you don’t know why and nothing anyone says makes
sense, but every corner of this fever dream-nightmare looks incredible.
That’s how I would describe this
much-anticipated, self-financed Francis Ford Coppola sci-fi extravaganza; a
visual cacophony that spends little time lingering over plot details or
character motivations, instead reeling in the excesses of self-obsessed
powerbrokers in a near-future New York City. The 85-year-old Coppola, a
filmmaker responsible for four of the greatest American movies ever made along
with being one of the finest screenwriters of the last half-century, finally
put his dream project on film, seemingly sparing no detail and he deserves
applause for that. But, like some of Terrence Malick’s recent works, I regret
that few filmgoers will get much out of it.
Also messing with Cesar’s grand plans is
his former lover Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), who connives to marry Cesar’s
elderly uncle (Jon Voight) and works with Cesar’s rival Clodio (Shia LeBeouf).
But as I write this I realize that explaining the tale makes much more sense
than it does on the screen. The film lacks any sense of story continuity and
most of the dialogue might as well have been in Latin for the insight they
offered.
While the film seems to be about the
crumbling American Empire, chipped away by the corruption and excesses of the
wealthy, it also might be about an admired artist whose vision no longer has an
impact on the masses.
The interior cinematography by Mihai
Malaimare Jr. (“The Master”)---clearly much of the exteriors are CGI---is
stunning, creating a modern-day, absurdly opulant Roman Empire that signals
(like the names of the characters) that the end is near.
Driver and most of the other actors never
seem completely sure of what they are doing, lunging from spot to spot when not
stepping to a choreographed sequence. I’m not sure what Cesar’s constantly
flailing arms were all about. Not only does much of the dialogue seem
improvised and stiffly delivered but so does the blocking.
While I found most of the characters simply
annoying, it was nice to see Laurence Fishburne as Cesar’s chauffer, who also
narrates the film; as a teenager he was Clean in Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”
And the writer-director’s sister, Talia Shire has a small role as Cesar’s
long-ignored mother.
Coppola hasn’t made a mainstream film since
“The Rainmaker” (1997), but his three independent works made this century,
“Youth Without Youth” (2007), “Tetro” (2009), “Twixt” (2011) are all
interesting pictures worth seeking out. “Megalopolis” is cut from a different
cloth, audacious on a large canvas with plenty of crazy thrown in. There’s more
than a few high weeds to cut through to find the story’s path and while I went
in ready to do the hard work, I’m not sure it was worth the effort.
Imagine Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy”
merged with “Babylon” (2022) along with bits and pieces from a few Roger Corman
psychedelic flicks and you’ll have the starting point for this one-of-a-kind
cinematic journey.
SATURDAY
NIGHT (2024)
You
had to be somewhere between 18 and 30 years old in October 1975 to appreciate
the impact the debut of “Saturday Night Live” (then just called “Saturday
Night”) had on youth culture. With the first few shows, “SNL” established a new
cool, a new attitude, a new humor, a new way to look at the world.
My generation’s cellphone was television
and this show forever altered the tube, breaking it free from the post-WW II
conservatism that had ruled the networks for 30 years with cynical commentary
on politics and unfettered discussions of sex.
As the comedy skit show celebrates its 50th
season, its chaotic, unlikely and nearly disastrous opening night—at least in
the early years it was more like an off-Broadway production than a TV
show---has been stitched into a feature film. Writer-director Jason Reitman (“Juno,”
“Up in the Air”), with co-writer Gil Kenan, chronicles the backstage hysteria
of the 90 minutes prior to airing at 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 11, 1975 in a movie
that is both a nostalgic time capsule of the era and a hilarious re-enactment
of the arrogance and ambition of the cast and crew, focusing on 30-year-old
creator and producer Lorne Michaels.
The camera follows Michaels, whose been the
man in charge for all but five years of the show’s run, still the producer at
age 79, through the halls and dressing rooms of 30 Rockefeller Plaza as he
tries to keep tabs on the unruly cast, cut the number of skits down to 90
minutes, calm the guest performers (host George Carlin and puppeteer Jim
Henson) and convince NBC execs who are ready to spool up a repeat of “The
Tonight Show.”
Gabriel LaBelle, who played the young
Steve Spielberg character in “The Fabelmans” (2022), gives a superb performance
as Michaels, doing his best to keep the train on schedule as everything that
can go wrong does—lighting, sound, disruptive crew, a brooding John Belushi (a
spot-on Matt Wood) and a network VP (Willem Dafoe) who hopes the show fails. Of
course, we known who wins this battle and that the show goes on to become one
of the most important in the industry’s history, but experiencing the trip is
wildly entertaining.
With all these types of films, the open
question is how much of it is true. Reitman has told reporters that he spoke
with surviving cast and crew members, but there was obviously some condensing
and hyperbole—it is a comedy.
The entire cast, mostly unknowns, are
uniformly excellent starting with Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, head writer
who was married to Michaels; Cory Michael Smith as the acerbic, egoistical
Chevy Chase; Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, who here seems more a collection of
his “SNL” characters than a real person; Ella Hunt as Earth-mother Gilda
Radner; and Lamorne Morris (no relation) as Garrett Morris, the only Black
member of the original cast.
A special nod must be given to Nicholas
Braun, who plays both the unorthodox comedian Andy Kaufman (whose mime of the
“Might Mouse” theme was the highlight of the first show) and the overly
orthodox Jim Henson; and J.K. Simmons, who adds another gem to his character
collection playing Milton Berle, the giant of early TV who shows up backstage
thinking these young performers admire him.
There are literally dozens of performances,
some lasting but a minute or so, that add to both the authenticity of the
film’s setting and the magic of staging a live performance.
After seeing the film, I rewatched that
first episode of “Saturday Night.” It’s pretty much a mess, with four short
sets by Carlin that fail to mesh with the freshness of the skit work, two sets each
by musical performers Billy Preston and Janis Ian and an overlong skit with the
Muppets. The Not Ready for Prime Time Players barely register; even Chase’s
Weekend Update only lasts a few minutes.
The show improved quickly as Michaels’
reduced the host’s role and soon Chase, Belushi, Aykroyd, Radner, Morris,
Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin were setting the stage for a new generation of
comedians and helping to shape a generation of American viewers. Yet even these
early, off-stage moments captured in this film signal that important changes
lie ahead.
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969) and
THE MILLIONAIRESS (1972)
Acting is a tricky business: Even the
best of the best gives unconvincing or dull performances because of a poor
screenplay or the lack of strong direction. Seemingly immune from this truth,
Maggie Smith, who died last month at the age of 89, had the ability to turn
even the most mundane dialogue into a memorable line, inevitably biting,
insightful and tinged in humor.
Give her a first-rate role, of which she
had many on film, television and the stage, and she ranks as one of the finest
performers of the past 70 years. Especially impressive was her ability to
maintain her fame and skills in the final years of her life, turning her
character as the Dowager of an esteemed family in the British TV series
“Downton Abbey” into a national treasure—on both sides of the Atlantic.
I rewatched a pair of performances by a
much-younger, redheaded Maggie Smith in which she plays headstrong women who
are so self-involved that they barely recognize the rest of the world.
Smith won the Oscar for playing Jean Brodie, an iconoclastic history teacher at an Edinburgh girls’ school in the 1930s determined to turn “her girls” into liberated women. Defying the administration, Brodie’s classroom lectures are more like personal essays on the glories of living life to its fullest than history lessons. But her downfall results from her inexplicable admiration for Mussolini and Franco, which she preaches during class. Her passion for these fascists makes little sense, plot wise or character wise.
Only Smith’s brilliantly delivered
strident monologues, some dreamily romantic, others assailing the conservative
headmaster, hold this episodical movie together. Based on Jay Presson Allen’s
play from Muriel Spark’s novel, feels disjointed and contains a few morally
dated plot turns, including depicting another teacher, who never faces any
consequences, involved in an affair with a student.
“The Millionairess,” a BBC-produced George
Bernard Shaw satire about the self-indulgent rich, offers the perfect role for
Smith. Epifania Fitzfassenden (the names in the play say it all) is an
outrageously wealthy woman who, in the first, and most hilarious, act, visits a
lawyer seeking to adjust her will before she kills herself. It’s all comically
dramatic as she recites her complaints about her marriage and her husband’s
dalliances. Halfway through the act, she’s joined in the solicitor’s office by her
husband (James Villiers), his girlfriend (Priscilla Morgan) and Epifania’s
admirer Adrian Blenderbland (Charles Gray).
Shaw’s flamboyant dexterity with the
English language has never been put to better use or handled with such subtlety
and wit as Smith delivers. She’s mesmerizing.
The rest of the play grows a bit heavy
handed as Epifania, on a bet, turns a struggling mom-and-pop business into a
money maker and then refurbishes a decaying old inn, where the final act takes
place. As usual, Shaw is intent on showing the foolishness of both the poorest
of poor and the richest of the rich.
Smith’s late career renaissance as a
snarky observant elder began when she was just 50, with “A Room with a View”
(1985), as the chaperone to a young woman (Helena Bonham Carter) on an Italian
vacation. But 2001 was the watershed year for the actress as she appeared in
Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park,” written by Julian Fellows, who went on to
create “Downton Abbey,” and in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the
first of seven “Harry Potters” she appeared in.
In “Downton,” as Violet Crawley, the
long-widowed mother of the proprietor of her family’s estate, she observes and
comments on the changes in her family and the pre- and post-World War I world.
Her wry asides and understated wisdom served as the heart of the long-running
series, elevating her status as maybe the most beloved British actress of our
time.
For those seeking out lesser-known
performances by Smith, here’s three of my favorites: In “The Pumpkin Eater”
(1964), one of the finest acted films of the ‘60s, she plays a classic Harold
Pinter character, a talkative houseguest who never leaves; as a spinster
falling for a younger man in a boarding house in “The Lonely Passion of Judith
Hearne” (1987); and, more recently, in “The Lady in the Van” (2015), as an
irritating homeless woman who camps out in front of a man’s house (based on
writer Alan Bennett’s actual experience).
BOLERO
(1934) and RUMBA (1935)
It’s hard to ignore the irony of the film
career of George Raft: He came to prominence as a dazzling nightclub dancer yet
was the most wooden actor among stars of the 1930s and ‘40s.
If Raft is remembered at all today, it’s
for his rumored connection to gamblers and mobsters (he was childhood friends
with Bugsy Siegel), a belief that caused him to both lose and gain movie roles.
It certainly wasn’t his acting skills. But in the early years of sound, he was
a popular romantic figure, a more modern Valentino, a more street-wise Grant.
The key film in his career was Howard Hawks’ mob classic “Scarface” (1932), in
which he played Rinaldo, the righthand man to Paul Muni’s mob boss. But before
that, in the mid-1920s he was a well-known dancer, famous for his tango and
often cited as the fastest Charleston dancer on the New York nightclub circuit.
I recently watched a handful of Raft films
and most interesting are these two pictures in which he’s cast as an up-and-coming
dancer, both co-starring Carole Lombard.
In “Bolero,” Raft plays egotistical hoofer
Raoul De Baere, who even when he’s nothing more than a club taxi dancer,
earning tips from middle-aged women, he’s convinced he’s going to be famous.
Even his brother, also his manager, played by William Frawley (later Fred in “I
Love Lucy”) grows tired of his arrogance. Eventually, he partners with
no-nonsense dancer Helen Hathaway (Lombard), who is willing to deal with Raoul.
Even 90 years ago, the plot was tired and
obvious, but it’s the dancing that wins the day, especially an elaborate dance
number done to Ravel’s famous composition. Director Wesley Ruggles (1930-31
best picture winner “Cimarron”) doesn’t waste too much time away from the
stage, giving Raft plenty of room to show off his fancy footwork.
An added attraction is real-life nightclub
performer Sally Rand, who does her infamous fan dance as an opening act for
Raoul and Helen.
“Rumba” focuses on another famous dance,
this one from Cuba, that Raft’s character Joe Martin introduces to New York
audiences. His partner is another performer known for her dancing, Mexican
actress Margo. Lombard plays a wealthy woman who goes in and out of Joe’s life.
Raft continued as a leading man, almost
always dressed to the nines, for Paramount through the 1930s but was constantly
fighting with the studio bosses and getting suspended. Even his friends took
the heat for his reputation: well-known baseball player (and later manager) Leo
Durocher, who roomed with him in the offseason and copied the actor’s flashy attire,
was finally ordered by the game’s commissioner to end his association with the
actor.
Eventually Raft moved to Warner Bros.
where he damned his own career by turning down “High Sierra” and “The Maltese
Falcon,” roles that catapulted Humphrey Bogart to stardom. It was long rumored
that he also passed on the lead in “Casablanca,” but that’s been disclaimed
over the years. Though he apparently did turn down “Double Indemnity.”
He found fewer and fewer good roles after
WW II and later in his career mostly played parodies of his tough-guy image.
But for two decades, Raft was one of the most notoriously famous entertainers
in America.
ANOTHER
WOMAN (1988) and THE BETTY FORD STORY (1987)
It was a sad sign of the times that the
tributes that appeared following Gena Rowlands’ death in August, no one
mentioned her brilliant performance in “Another Woman.”
Best known for her emotional work with
husband-director John Cassavetes, the actress had relatively few outstanding
appearances for other film directors, yet critics were loath to write about
this one she made for persona non grata Woody Allen. This study of a crumbling
marriage not only stars Rowlands as a philosophy professor but her character’s
thoughts serve as the picture’s narration.
Rowlands’ Marion, comfortably married to
Ken (Ian Holm) takes an office in New York to work on her latest book, but gets
little work done when she overhears a therapist’s session through the
connecting air vent. She later puts a face to the voice—a very pregnant Hope
(Mia Farrow), who, despite her ironic name, expresses her deep depression and
thoughts of suicide to the psychologist.
The words of Hope resonate, prompting
Marion to reexamine her relationships after she runs into a blunt-speaking old
friend and then dreams she’s part of a stage play re-enacting her darkest
feelings about her marriage. This is screenwriter Allen at his most Chekhovian,
reflecting the regret that life hasn’t lived up to romantic notions of youth.
By the late 1980s, Rowlands, then nearing
60, was almost exclusively working in television movies, many produced to be
uplifting rather than reality-based. At her best, like in this intense,
heartbreaking film, Rowlands’ characters were unquestionably real people. What
makes this performance stand out is her ability to make you see what she thinks
as she listens to other actors, to understand the anguish on her face—it’s the
kind of subtle but emotionally complex performance that would have earned the actress
critical acclaim if it was a Broadway production.
Of course, Rowlands’ greatest performance
came 15 years earlier in Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under the Influence,” in which
she plays a construction contractor’s (Peter Falk) distressed wife. A quirky,
free spirit whose mental state grows shakier by the day, her Mabel is one of
the most poignant female roles of the 20th Century.
After some conventional work in the late
1950s and early ‘60s, Rowlands earned critical praise with her memorable role
as a prostitute bouncing from one drunk to another in her husband’s “Faces”
(1968). The picture, lauded at the time for redefining film acting, is hard to
watch today with its long scenes of misogynistic shouting and reliance on
extreme closeups.
She soon settled into a career as a TV
Movie of the Week star, earning eight Emmy nominations and three wins, most
memorably as First Lady Betty Ford, who very publicly battled drug and alcohol
addiction.
Just named vice president by Richard Nixon,
while entangled in the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford tells his wife he will
retire when his term ends in 1977. Then history intervenes; not only does Ford
become president but he runs for reelection.
But for Betty, especially after surviving
breast cancer, the stress and the pain sends her into a downward spiral of
overuse of prescription drugs and nonstop cocktails. Though the movie was
approved by the Ford family (the real Betty Ford speaks before the credits), it
doesn’t pull any punches in chronicling her addictions and reluctance to seek
help.
Rowlands makes you understand how one
can slip into addiction and the embarrassment when confronted about it. Like in
all her roles, Rowlands face says more than a page of dialogue can. She won
both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her performance.
I’m not sure why Rowlands, certainly
among the most talented actresses of her generation, didn’t appear in more
feature film roles; in addition to “A Woman Under the Influence,” she was
nominated for “Gloria” (1980), as a mobster’s moll on the run. She should have
been competing every year with Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway and Julie Christie for
Oscar gold.
JOKER:
FOLIE á DEUX (2024)
For all the excesses of the 2019 original,
one of the best films of that year, director Todd Phillips took Arthur Fleck’s
story seriously. The sequel, which picks up with “Joker” in a brutal prison for
the mentally disturbed awaiting trial, spends much of its running time
indulging in the musical daydreams of Fleck, all featuring classic songs
performed by Joaquin Phoenix, back as Joker/Fleck, and Lady Gaga, playing his
love interest Lee Quinzel.
The first half of the movie takes place in
the prison, where guard Jackie (Brendan Gleeson) has a soft spot for Fleck and
offers him occasional perks (between beatings) that include him meeting Lee.
She encourages Fleck to open up and embrace his Joker persona.
While she’s creating a ground swell of
support for the Joker, his lawyer (Catherine Keener in a thankless role) tries
to prepare him for his murder trial where she’s claiming he has a split
personality.
The second half of the story, in the
courtroom, moves at a glacier’s place, revealing nothing new about Fleck or his
murders. By that point, one realizes that the musical interludes—in one Fleck
and Lee have a “Sonny and Cher”-style TV show---were the only way the
filmmakers could pad out this story into a feature. Though I kept waiting for a
Bruce Wayne reference that never came.
I’m not sure what Phillips and co-writer
Scott Silver were hoping to accomplish by adding the music: imagine a film
about Charles Manson in which his character sings “That’s Life” (reprised from
the first film), “When You’re Smiling” and “That’s Entertainment,” among others
from the Great American Songbook.
But
even without the intrusive songs, was there anything more that needed to be
said about Fleck and the state of violence in American than the scene near the
end of the first film with him dancing on top of a crashed police car for a
crowd of rioting Joker imitators? All “Folie á Deux” does is tarnish the memory
of the really good first film about a classic comic-book villain.
ASSIGNED
TO DANGER (1948)
Before he became one of the leading
directors of Westerns in the mid-1950s, Budd Boetticher made a couple dozen
B-movies, mostly crime thrillers, starting in 1944.
After spending time in Mexico as a
matador, he moved to Los Angeles, working in small industry jobs before
becoming an advisor on “Blood and Sand” (1941), a big-budget bullfighting
picture starring Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth.
His first credit as director (using his
actual first name Oscar) was “One Mysterious Night” (1944), a fast-paced Boston
Blackie movie, starring Chester Morris as the one-time thief who helps police
solve high-profile crimes. In this one, he’s in search of a legendary diamond
with the exotic nickname of the Blue Star of the Nile. It’s as corny as it
sounds.
After a payroll holdup leaves the gang’s
leader (Robert Bice) badly hurt, they hide out at a rural hotel run by his wife
Bonnie (Noreen Nash). But the insurance company is one step ahead, having
already sent to the hotel its chief investigator Dan Sullivan, played by Gene
Raymond, a top supporting player in the 1930s who downgraded to low-budget
pictures by the 1940s.
In just 66 minutes, he falls for the bad
guy’s wife and, mistaken for a doctor, is forced to remove a bullet from
Frankie’s arm and then care for him. One of the strangest and most interesting
aspects of the film is the hotel’s handyman, a scary looking man who is deaf
and unable to speak but devoted to Bonnie. As played by future familiar face
Gene Evans, in just his second credited role, he serves as a more sympathetic
Frankenstein’s monster.
Boetticher elicits the most out of
Raymond, Nash and Bice and keeps the action moving even though it’s mostly set
within the hotel.
The director’s career should have taken a
huge leap with his 1951 psychological study of an American matador,
“Bullfighter and the Lady,” well played by Robert Stack and Gilbert Roland as
his mentor. Based on Boetticher’s experiences in Mexico, this picture would
have been one of the best films of the year if it hadn’t been chopped down by
John Wayne’s production company from 124 minutes to 87 (reportedly edited by
John Ford).
Not until 1987 was Boetticher’s cut
restored and it was universally acclaimed as a great film, at least allowing him
to bask in some glory before his death in 2001. But back in the 1950s the
director continued his path helming low-budget pictures until “Seven Men from
Now” (1956), the first of his series of spare, literate horse operas starring
Randolph Scott and mostly written by Burt Kennedy. Even those films—including
“The Tall T” (1958) and “Ride Lonesome” (1959)—were not appreciated until years
later.
His last feature of note was “The Rise and
Fall of Legs Diamond,” the 1960 bio of the legendary high-living 1920s mobster,
played by bland TV star Ray Danton.
PHOTOS:
Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel in “Megalopolis.” (Lionsgate)
Pamela Franklin and Maggie Smith in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” (20th Century Fox)
George Raft
Gena Rowlands and Gene Hackman in “Another Woman.” (Orion Pictures)
Noreen Nash and Gene Raymond in “Assigned to Danger.” (Eagle-Lion Films)
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