The 584th film I have seen in theaters…

Spoilers below

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New Rome City, The pinnacle of civilization! Witness the struggle of several ambitious citizens vying for control of the Republic and its future.

Enter:

• Caesar – genius architect who dreams of remaking New Rome into Megalopolis.
• Cicero – mayor of the city and believer in tradition and pragmatism. His daughter is Julia, love interest of Caesar.
• Crassus – the wealthiest man in New Rome and Caesar’s uncle. His nephew is Clodio Pulcher, a ambitious populist who craves chaos and power.
• Wow Platinum – TV host, lover of Caesar and Crassus. She craves money and power.

This is the tale of their struggle for dominance.

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This is a film stacked with heavyweight actors. Adam Driver is Caesar. Giancarlo Esposito is Cicero. Jon Voight is Crassus. They all turn in terrific and terrible performances, except Esposito who was great.

Nathalie Emmanuel is Julia. Aubrey Plaza is Wow, Shia LaBeof is Clodio. They all turn in terrific and terrible performances, except Emmanuel who was terrible.

Lawrence Fishburne is Fundi, Caesar’s chauffeur and the narrator of the film. Dustin Hoffman plays Nush Berman, Cicero’s “fixer”. These guys cannot turn in a bad performance if they tried. They were fine. We also had Jason Schwartman and, of course, Talia Shire in supporting roles.

I’m not even sure where to begin with this one. It is the biggest swing of Coppola’s career. He’s spent 40 years developing this film. It has gone through various stages of development, casting, etc. In the end, he had to sell a stake in his vineyard to self-finance it. This is his movie, he owns it.

I’ve been anxious to see this movie for 20 years. It is TRULY shocking how much of a misfire this is. I have since read that the actors were allowed a bit of improvisation on set; this shows but not in a good way. Not even 15 minutes in I was checking my watch.

Caesar can apparently stop time, like actually freeze time, for reasons never relevant to the plot. Driver completely lets loose in this, and it was very hard to watch. He needed a director. Some wonderful moments of acting punctuated by nonsense creates a situation where I have NO IDEA who this guy is as a character. This is problematic as he is the lead. Emmanuel was horrid. Her “Excuse me” scene was remarkably bad. This might be career ending, seriously. The mocking is strong online. Esposito is a great actor who does little wrong here. The same can be said of Jon Voight. I liked his Crassus although his “boner” scene was preposterous, but in a “Room” way. If anything saves this movie for posterity, aside from the collapse of American democracy, it will be the over the top performances of Aubrey Plaza and Shia LaBeouf. They work well together. Plaza wasn’t too bizarre, her reputation aside, but Shia let loose. This might be his best work in years.

The effects were both beautiful, indulgent, and terrible. The music was ok. The editing bizarre. The imagery was terrific and poignant but also incredibly stupid. This is a movie that will be remembered decades from now. There will be “The Room” style watch parties for this thing. While it is better than that film, it treads too close to it for such a prestige production. If American civilization actually collapses into dictatorship this thing will be well remembered. I hope it is not.

My apologies Francis, it is time to hang it up.

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2/10

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