Megalopolis review

 Having been released in 2024, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is too young to feature on the top 1000 films of all time. It is unlikely to feature on any future editions of this list either.

Cesar Cantilina (Adam Driver) is a famous and influential architect in New Rome - an alternate, futuristic New York City. His creation of the element Megalon has proven revolutionary in constructing buildings. It has also brought him fame and fortune. He has visions of building a new utopic city called Megalopolis, but these plans bring him into conflict with New Rome's mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito.) The huge supporting cast includes Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia Laboeuf, Jon Voight, Talia Shire, Grace Vanderwaal and Dustin Hoffman.

Megalopolis has long been Coppola's passion project. After decades in development hell, he finally raised the money to self-finance the film by selling off part of his wine-making business. Yet it was not smooth-sailing from here.

Megalopolis had a troubled production from filming delays caused by the pandemic to Coppola's experimental style where he encouraged his cast to improvise scenes in theatre-style workshops. The visual effects and arts departments were either fired or resigned during production too.

All of this had a negative knock-on effect on Megalopolis. It was a pretentious, bloated, incomprehensible jumble of scenes with little to no plot. Coppola certainly wasn't short of ambition, but he couldn't convert that into a cohesive film. 

Inspired by the Catilinarian Conspiracy and the transition of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire, Coppola tried modernising the story by transplanting it into a futuristic, science-fiction setting, but all this did was confuse things further. As well as being a trail-blazing architect, Cesar also had the power to stop time. Why? Because ... reasons.

I mentioned earlier that the visual effects and art departments were either fired or quit during the production. You could definitely see the end-result of that in the finished product, as the film looked incredibly inconsistent. Some parts like the cityscape from the top of Metropolis, but other parts looked like they were out of the worst acid trip ever. Did we really need to see Aubrey Plaza's face in a cup of tea? And as for the weird circus/gladitorial/Grace Vanderwaal show, that was just poor chaos. Not chaos in the good sense either. It was a confusing, overwhelming mess.

As for the acting, this matched the larger-than-life nature of the film. Driver, Esposito, Voight, Plaza and, especially, Laboeuf were dreadfully over-the-top. Granted the dialogue wasn't great - case-in-point, Voight talking about having a boner - but their performances were still so campy that it was difficult to take them seriously.

I really wanted to like Metropolis. The Godfather is one of my favourite films. Coppola is a titan of the film industry having also having also directed classics like Apocalypse Now. Yet he couldn't replicate that same success here. At eighty-years-old, this could very well be one of his last films. What a disappointing swansong. Never mind, Megalopolis. This was Megaflopolis.

The Nightmare Before Christmas review

 Number 292 on the top 1000 films of all time is Henry Selik's stop-motion animated musical-fantasy the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Produced by Tim Burton - often being more associated with him than Selik, the Nightmare before Christmas focusses on Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon) the king of Halloween Town. Becoming sick of the annual Halloween celebration, he is looking for a change. That change comes when he discovers Christmas and he aims to hijack the holiday for his own goals with disastrous consequences.

I was really looking forward to this film. Being well-versed with Burton's other work like Corpse Bride, with its trippy visuals, memorable songs and creative storyline, I had high hopes for a Nightmare Before Christmas, but the end result left me feeling more dead than alive.

While the actual labour that goes into stop-motion animation will always be impressive with the assorted animated characters being spooky and creative, it wasn't at the eye-popping level I was expecting. Instead of vivid colours, we were treated to a bland and lifeless colour palette. Rather the visuals were dull, even in Halloweenland. It made the trademark surrealism that we have come to expect from Burton fall flat. The visuals didn't contribute anything to the film from either a story or a visual perspective.

The musical numbers were lacking and uninspired. None of them were memorable. I watched this film only two nights ago and if I really scratch my head, I think I can remember the "this is Halloween" song and that's it. The songs were composed by frequent Burton collaborate Danny Elfman, but like the surreal animation, I'm not convinced the songs added much to the film. In some cases, it seemed to stray into song-musical territory like Sweeney Todd. The songs in that film were painfully mundane. The same can be said for the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Any storyline was buried underneath the lifeless visuals and banal songs. I'm not sure how well I can explain the narrative. This un-dead king is going through a mid-death crisis and falls through this trap door into some Christmas land where he decides to bring Christmas to his home, but, for some reason, also kidnaps Father Christmas and goes onto impersonate him. For some reason, there's a weird gambling monster made out of bugs and a  Dr Frankenstein-esque character who has created some Bride of Frankenstein who becomes Jack's love-interest.

I didn't care for this film too. I had high-hopes, but I was left disappointed.

Sling Blade review

 Number 288 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 1996 drama 'Sling Blade.'

*Spoilers to follow*

Karl Childers (Billy Bob Thornton) is a developmentally-disabled man who has just been released from a psychiatric institution where he has been held since he was twelve years old. His crime? Murdering his mother and her lover with a sling blade. Thoroughly institutionalised, Karl struggles to adapt to his new life in Arkansas. That is until he befriends the twelve-year-old Frank (Lucas Black) and his mother Linda (Natalie Canerday) But her abusive boyfriend Doyle (Dwight Yokam) soon takes a disliking to Karl. As well as starring, Billy Bob Thornton also wrote, produced and directed Sling Blade.

Billy Bob Thornton won an Osar for writing Sling Blade. However, he was only nominate for acting and not even considered for direction. I think that's a good summary of the film: the acting and direction didn't match up to the Oscar-winning writing.

This isn't to say that Thornton did a bad job, but it certainly wasn't Oscar-worthy. Karl's journey was a predictable one. While predictability isn't a bad thing, Thornton did fail to bring anything new to the medium. Karl - having been institutionalised for most of his life struggles in adapting to life on the outside. He quickly comes to loggerheads with Doyle resulting in Karl murdering him. 

Yes, this was predictable, but a predictable ending can still be good if it was executed well. But this ending was disappointing and anti-climatic. There was too much build-up leading to a damp squib instead of a bang. We get a seemingly-endless montage of Karl preparing to kill Doyle with the latter meekly accepting his fate. It was a sequence devoid of tension.

I also think Thornton's portrayal of Karl was over-simplified. It didn't have the same depth as portrayals of similar characters of the era e.g Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. whereas Gump was a living, breathing three-dimensional character, Karl was little more than a grunting cave man.

I can understand why Thornton won the Best Writing Oscar. Sling Blade certainly had a good story. It's just a shame that the direction and acting didn't match up to the writing.