Megalopolis (2024) review

Architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is a talented and complex figure - he possesses the ability to stop time, won the Nobel Prize for discovering a mysterious building material named Megalon, his wife went missing and he's having an affair with financial reporter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) - who goes up against crooked mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) to revitalize New Rome (which eventually gets smashed apart by a falling Russian satellite), is falsely accused of rape (and is beaten and thrown prison), but falls in love with Cicero's inquisitive daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who "saves" him.  This is Coppola's first feature in thirteen years (Twixt was released in 2011) and he shelled out over $120m of his own cash to make it, which is admirable in a DIY sense, although it winds up being this baffling - and often laughable - combination of Ayn Rand, Shakespeare and some incredibly tipsy Roman scholar, with a script that could have been cooked up by an over-zealous film school graduate (with a healthy endowment) who skimmed a couple articles on ancient history, hand-picked a few "philosophical" quotes to spread throughout and came to the trite realization that the world is run by power-mad individuals.  It's easy to surmise Driver's character is intended to be a "stand-in" for the filmmaker himself - the gift of the artist is to "freeze time," he has a problem with multiple vices (drugs, alcohol and sleeping around) and the movie itself is dedicated to Francis' late spouse Eleanor - yet Coppola, unlike Cesar, never truly got his "power" back from success in the 1970's ... and instead passed it on to Sofia (hence the baby at the conclusion).  Maybe he should have stuck to growing grapes....