WLR #18

Megalopolis

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Genius. It can be brief, ask Michel Hazanavicius. Once upon a time ago he directed The Artist, a film that managed to both nostalgically resurrect Hollywood's silent era and feel fresh enough to dominate the Oscars, earning 10 nominations and winning him Best Director in the process. But fast forward fifteen years and I get no pleasure in saying Hazanavicius hasn’t made a good film since. In fact, the two I did see after the Artist, were outright oooof.

Genius also drifts, it ebbs and it flows, it comes and goes. Take Bob Dylan, whose run from the early '60s through Blood on the Tracks in 1975—remain an unbroken stretch of musical genius. For Dylan, genius lingered for over a decade, but his light faded. In 2004, on 60 minutes, when asked if he can still write songs as well as he once could, with a painful expression he answered, “You can’t do something forever. I did it once and I can do other things now, but I can’t do that.” It’s 2024, and we know Dylan proved himself wrong, gifting us numerous late career classics, such as Modern Times and Rough and Rowdy Ways, after a comparatively barren 80’s and 90’s. Bob Dylan is such a genius, that genius returned to him after 20 years.

Genius also corrupts, it strips away sanity. Kanye, Sylvia Plath, Brian Wilson, Azealia Banks (I said it), Van Gogh, Syd Barrett, Amy Winehouse—all devoured by it, brilliant but broken. For some, like Cobain, genius comes only to be taken too quickly, before we can tell which way it would’ve turned for him.

But genius endures. Centuries after his death, the name Michelangelo rolls off the tongue of any child over the age of five no matter where that child is born. But for every Michelangelo, there’s a million Hazanavicius’, and even he is lucky to have struck genius once.

Francis Ford Coppola is one of few who’ve touched genius more than once—three and a half times, if you ask Wendy Lee. His run in the 1970s can't be overstated in its influence on everything good that’s come since. With The Godfather I&II, Coppola not only redefined what a sequel could achieve but also gave cinema an entire generation of complex, morally ambiguous leading men. The franchise itself became a blueprint for character-driven epics, a note to directors everywhere that corrupt could captivate audiences. And Apocalypse Now, for my money, is the greatest war film ever made. It’s less a film than a drug the way you trip off it.

It’s the very thing, the fickle nature of genius, that makes Megalopolis such a fascinating catastrophe. When genius left Francis Ford Coppola, sometime around 1984, it left for good. It must have been maddening. Imagine being the man responsible for The Godfather, now reduced to ushering people in to see the premier of Jack. The film is so far removed from his former brilliance it’s almost cruel. Megalopolis was cruel, to him and audiences alike. That brings me no joy.

He conceived Megalopolis back in 1977, when he still had “it”—the genius. But over the decades, the forty plus years, as the mediocrity piled up and the magic of the 1970s slipped further away, Coppola became convinced that this was his Rough and Rowdy Ways, his late-career masterpiece. He clung to this idea because the film was born in the era of his greatest achievements. He thought because he conceived it then, he could manifest it now. And watching him try, watching that final, valiant attempt to recapture what was lost, turned out to be one of the most heartbreaking cinematic experiences of the year. About 11 minutes in, Adam Driver delivers a piece of dialogue so bad it’s being mocked in online meme cinema circles. It’s hard not to laugh. It was the moment my heart broke for him. Apocalypse now, quite literally I suppose….

Idevenk... One-and-a-half?

The Substance

Directed by Coralie Fargeat

Nothing can prepare you for The Substance. If you're craving the kind of “feel like your old self again” movie experience (pun intended)—a communal, electric theater atmosphere with gasp inducing gross outs, laughter, and eye-covering moments—then you should grab a friend and head to your nearest theater immediately.

The plot is simple: a successful woman who owed a lot of that success to her good looks and well-maintained body has finally, according to the films Harvey Weinstein caricature, (a bonkers Denis Quaid, someone who was a great choice because I really don’t care for him personally), turned 50! Which is basically like dying.

She gets fired. She then pursues youth at any cost. And I do mean any cost. And here is where The Substance could have fallen into the usual pitfalls one does when commenting on unattainable beauty standards. One pitfall is it’s not exactly new, art has been commenting on unattainable beauty since the publication of Dorian Gray, but the Substance transcends all that with its sheer audacity to be so gross, so over the top, while still commenting on a bit on modern life.

Demi Moore is in rare form. Her performance walks the line between tragedy and farce, with every wrinkle, every sag of skin, and she ups her performance to match the madness of the movie each time the stakes are raised. And props to the makeup team. They deserve serious award season credit for making the human body look…not so human.

This is not a film for the faint of heart. My screening had three walkouts with the rest of us loving it. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a roller coaster that’s less about thrills and more about forcing you to confront the limits of your own comfort. There are moments that are downright nauseating, and yet Wendy Lee was unable to look away, fascinated by the extremity of it all. And you’ll laugh, because there’s simply no other way to process what you’re seeing. You’ll leave the theater in a kind of daze, the images (of the last 20 minutes especially) forever burned into your memory. Forever. You can’t unsee this movie.

Four Stars because it’s fun

Lee

Directed by Ellen Kuras

I've had a crush on Kate Winslet ever since Titanic. Even back then, I wasn’t entirely sure who I was supposed to be attracted to, Jack or Rose? Since then, I must report, Wendy Lee is still every bit confused. I’ve followed both Leo and Winslet’s careers closely and still have no clarity at all :( But it’s been an interesting ride that’s for sure.

Lee, the new biopic starring Winslet, feels like a small, well-made piece of medium ugly furniture you find at a thrift store. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a film so fiercely named after its subject. The film charts the life of Lee Miller, a fashion model-turned-war photographer-turned-cultural enigma. Winslet’s Miller is complicated and fearless like most memorable women—a gal who knows exactly what the world expects from her and finds ways to outmaneuver them. Her performance is unflashy and quietly devastating.

Oh, there’s other actors too. Marion Cotillard, Josh O’Connor, yet again, even Andy Samberg makes it work, leaning into his charm without derailing the film’s seriousness. Alexander Skarsgård is in it too.

Lee doesn’t overstay its welcome or try too hard to make a grand statement. It’s a portrait of a woman who lived on her own terms, told with a conviction Miller herself might have admired. A 116 minutes well spent

Three Stars