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    ‘Megalopolis’ Review: The Fever Dreams of Francis Ford Coppola

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    The director’s latest is a great-man story about an architect, played by Adam Driver, driven by ideals and big plans. It’s a personal statement on an epic scale.Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is a bursting-at-the-seams hallucination of a movie — it’s wonderfully out-there. At once a melancholic lament and futuristic fantasy, it invokes different epochs and overflows with entrancing, at times confounding images and ideas that have been playing in my head since I first saw the movie in May at the Cannes Film Festival. There, it was both warmly received and glibly dismissed, a critical divide that’s nothing new for Coppola, a restlessly experimental filmmaker with a long habit of going off-Hollywood.Nothing if not au courant, “Megalopolis” is a vision of a moribund civilization, though also a great-man story about an architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who dreams of a better world. An enigmatic genius (he has a Nobel Prize) with an aristocratic mien and a flair for drama, Catilina lives in a city that resembles today’s New York by way of ancient Rome, though it mostly looks like an elaborate soundstage. As familiar as Fifth Avenue and as obscure as the far side of the moon, it is a world that mirrors its real counterpart as a playpen for the wealthy and a prison-house for the destitute. The city haunts Catilina; it also inspires him.What Catilina dreams of is a “perfect school-city,” in which people can achieve their better selves. It’s an exalted aspiration, as seemingly boundless but also as sheltering as the blue sky, and one that invokes a long line of lofty dreamers and master builders. There are predictable obstacles, mostly other people, small-minded types without vision, idealism or maybe just faith. Among these is the mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a consummate politician with no patience for fantasies or for Catilina. Their animosity runs through the story, which is narrated by Catilina’s aide, Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), dense with incident and populated by an array of noble souls and posturing fools.The fools prove better company in “Megalopolis” than most of the upright types, though with their all-too human comedy they’re not always distinguishable. They begin rushing in after the jolting opener, which finds Catilina dressed in inky black and uncertainly climbing out of a window in the crown of the Chrysler Building. Before long, he is standing with one foot firmly planted and the other shakily raised over the edge. He calls out “time stop” and everything — the clouds above, the cars below — freezes, only to restart at his command. He looks like a colossus, though also brings to mind the early-cinema clown Harold Lloyd hanging over a different abyss in “Safety Last!” (a title that could work for this audacious movie).It’s quite the to-be-or-not introduction. Given that filmmakers are in the business of stopping time, Catilina’s entrance also reads as an auteurist mission statement. So it’s a relief when Catilina gets off that precipice, even if Coppola never really does. The filmmaker has a thing for dreamers and their great, big dreams, and it’s easy to see “Megalopolis” — which he mentioned in interviews as early as 1983 — in autobiographical terms. Like Catilina, Coppola has endured and almost been consumed by catastrophic setbacks (most notably with his founding of a film studio that nearly ruined him), only to rise phoenixlike from the ashes. It’s one reason that “Megalopolis” feels like a personal statement on an epic scale.Giancarlo Esposito plays a consummate politician with no patience for the architect’s fantasies.LionsgateWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Killer’ Review: John Woo With a French Twist

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      Woo’s new version of his Hong Kong action movie “The Killer,” starring Nathalie Emmanuel and Omar Sy, may be a remake, but it’s not a retread.When he started a run of contemporary action movies in the early 1980s, the Hong Kong director John Woo forged a personal mode influenced by the stylized violence of American directors like Sam Peckinpah and Don Siegel (see the shootouts in “The Getaway” and “Dirty Harry”), and the mentholated cool of the French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (à la the existential assassin of “Le Samouraï”). Before taking up in Hong Kong again in 2008, Woo created some galvanizing work in the United States: “Face/Off” (1997) and “Mission: Impossible 2” (2000).It is exhilarating, then, to see him set his sights on Paris with a remake of his 1989 Hong Kong classic, “The Killer.” He depicts the City of Lights with a loving, romantic eye.Woo’s original starred the incredibly charismatic Chow Yun-fat as the title assassin, a hired killer with an ethos who makes some sacrifices on behalf of a young woman he accidentally blinded during a shootout. (Woo has more than a touch of Chaplin’s “City Lights” in him, too.) One challenge for a remake would be finding a younger lead actor to match Chow’s magnetism. There is none, and Woo knows it as well as we do; hence, the film’s rather delightful surprise of gender-switching the title character.The British actress Nathalie Emmanuel plays the soulful marauder Zee, and man, does she cause a ruckus. The film’s first big blowout, in a cabaret-bar, features quarts of spilled blood, a skyscraper’s worth of shattered glass and mirrors, slow-motion flying bullets and, yes, a mishap in which a cabaret singer named Jenn (Diana Silvers) is blinded. Zee is a little more coldblooded than Jeffrey was in 1989; at first she tries to get rid of the singer rather than help her.Zee’s contractor, Finn, played by Sam Worthington, isn’t pleased that the singer was allowed to live. Zee is confused — she always asks before taking a job whether her future victims deserve to die. Finn tells her that this one had it coming. But Zee insists on keeping Jenn alive, despite the shadowy forces trying to wipe her out.Omar Sy plays Sey, a French cop who will, of course, form an uneasy alliance with Zee. (Woo’s world is like the one Mick Jagger’s devil envisions: Every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints. Sort of.) Sy projects assuredness and vulnerability in almost equal measure.Emmanuel, best known as Missandei, the trusted adviser to Daenerys in “Game of Thrones,” conveys a smooth, chameleonic expertise. As in the first film, the killer spends a lot of time in a moody, deconsecrated church, which is, of course, kitted out with a complement of doves — Woo’s favorite symbolic animals. The direction is energetic, incorporating frantic flashbacks and resourceful split-screen perspectives, and the plot adds several new twists not found in the first movie. Rest assured, this may be a remake, but it’s not a retread.The KillerRated R for — guess — violence. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Peacock. More

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      ‘Arthur the King’ Review: Dog Days With Mark Wahlberg

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      Wahlberg stars in this drama directed by Simon Cellan Jones, based on the true story of a Swedish adventure racer and his beloved adopted dog.“Arthur the King” — part gooey dog drama, part survivalist joyride — stars Mark Wahlberg as Michael, an American version of the Swedish adventure racer Mikael Lindnord.In 2014, Lindnord was competing in the Adventure Racing World Championships in Ecuador when a stray dog, whom he named Arthur, decided to tag along. That meant trekking through the jungle, up mountains, and across rivers, surviving on rationed meatballs and gulps of water.The film, directed by Simon Cellan Jones, is a Wahlberg production through and through: Expect some brawny athleticism and a hotheaded family man on a quest for redemption.The movie begins with Michael acting like a hypercompetitive jerk; his arrogance costs his team a big race. Three years later, Michael’s gone domestic — but a “racer’s gotta race,” he tells his wife and former teammate, Helena (Juliet Rylance). The motto inadvertently recalls the satire of “Talladega Nights,” but “Arthur” plays it mostly straight, with his teammate Leo (Simu Liu), an Instagram celebrity, as the movie’s source of comic charisma.As Michael continues to recruit the members of his new team for another big race — the expert climber Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), the seasoned navigator Chik (Ali Suliman) — we see Arthur roaming the streets of Santo Domingo (the film was shot in the Dominican Republic), fending off bullies, and generally looking miserable. The dog and his future master don’t join forces until nearly halfway through the film, at which point Michael and his team have already braved several obstacles, including a bracing zip-line malfunction that leaves Olivia, and two bikes, dangling from Michael’s harness.Sure, the film plays like a tourism ad for the Dominican Republic, but at least the action is palpable. And the story is typical paint-by-numbers inspirational — some bids at emotion feel awfully forced. Still, Wahlberg and company manage to hold your attention, and not just because there’s a cute dog in the frame.Arthur the KingRated PG-13 for athletic suspense and dog injuries. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Invitation’ Review: Nathalie Emmanuel Brings Down the Haunted House

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      Nathalie Emmanuel stars as the unwitting belle of an English manor in this middling gothic horror movie that leaves her blind to the blood-red flags waving at every turn.“The Invitation,” a brittle, droning excursion into gothic horror, primarily takes place at a manor in the English countryside. The setting is admissible, if unimaginative: the exterior of the estate appears constructed of Playmobil; coated in cobwebs, its dingy indoors most closely resemble a dungeon.Outside of the cinema, an invitation to such an abode would ring a cacophony of alarm bells and leave a guest clambering for the door. Not so for Evie (Nathalie Emmanuel), a jaded ceramist in New York who unwittingly becomes the belle of the dwelling after a long-lost cousin, Oliver (Hugh Skinner), invites her to a wedding on its grounds. An only child who recently lost her mother, Evie is tickled by the prospect of extended family, even if the stuffy brood are uniformly white and ominously keen for her company.But soon, Oliver and his vast array of blond brothers and uncles hardly figure into the equation. Once Evie arrives on the property, she takes a shine to the lord of the residence, Walter (Thomas Doherty), a smirking bachelor dripping in wealth and vampiric good looks.What follows is an escalating sequence of creaky-freaky jump scares interspersed with beats from a budding romance between Walter and Evie. Dressed to the nines, the pair drink champagne and smooch under a flurry of fireworks. At the same time, the estate’s maids are sucked into a menacing string of set pieces that invariably end in shrieks over a black screen.The juxtaposition of these events might be exciting — or even mischievously funny — if each scene wasn’t so tedious. For a fright-fest as broad as this one, there’s an awful lot of banal dialogue, and the scare patterns are repetitive enough that even the easiest startlers (I count myself among them) grow immune early on.Directed by Jessica M. Thompson, “The Invitation” makes feeble gestures at issues of class and race, but its efforts are as diffuse as the whooshing specters haunting Walter’s estate. Emmanuel, for her part, admirably endeavors to imbue Evie with smarts and sass, but confined within a story that leaves her blind to the blood-red flags waving at every turn, her scrappy heroine is hard to cheer on. Had the movie emerged as a friskier game of eat the rich, it might have had a fighting chance of survival. Instead, it’s middling, morbid pap.The InvitationNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Wait, Who’s Fast, Who’s Furious?

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      A guide to the characters and the melodramas in the sprawling, surprisingly complicated “Fast & Furious” franchise.At one point, rather a long time ago now, the “Fast & Furious” movies were about street racing. They do still involve cars moving at breakneck speeds, but only as one component in a blockbuster machine that also routinely includes high-stakes espionage, military-grade shootouts, multimillion-dollar bank heists and villainous schemes for global annihilation. They lately have more in common with James Bond or “Mission: Impossible” than with “Gone in 60 Seconds.”As the movies have gotten bigger and more spectacular, so too has their ensemble swelled and broadened, and with the latest installment, “F9,” the list of marquee names makes “Game of Thrones” look like “Waiting for Godot.” This is made more complicated by the franchise’s tendency to shuffle characters in and out of the troupe without warning or explanation — actors are frequently being written out and then written back in, or killed off, then suddenly resuscitated. It can be very, very hard to keep track of who’s who and what their deal is.With “F9” nitrous-boosting its way into theaters this weekend, here’s a handy cast explainer to get you up to speed.Vin Diesel in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesDominic Toretto (Vin Diesel)The heart of the series, Dom’s a world-weary, Corona-drinking street racer and car hijacker with an obsessive devotion to his family and a fraught relationship to the law. He first appeared in “The Fast and the Furious” (2001, the movie that started it all) as a small-time Los Angeles crook with a heart of gold, and has gradually evolved to become a sort of freelance secret agent and globe-trotting supercop. In “The Fate of the Furious” (2017), it was revealed that he had an infant son.Paul Walker in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesBrian O’Conner (Paul Walker)The original series hero, Brian was a cop going undercover as a street racer to bust Dom and his crew of hijackers. When it came time to make the arrest, Brian chose to let Dom get away, and the two have been like brothers ever since. Paul Walker died in an automobile accident in 2013, but rather than kill him off, the films wrote Brian into peaceful retirement. He was last seen in the closing moments of “Furious 7” (2015) literally riding off into the sunset.Michelle Rodriguez in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesLetty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez)Dom’s wife and partner in crime, Letty was killed at the beginning of the fourth film, “Fast & Furious” (2009), after she ran afoul of a master criminal. In “Fast & Furious 6” (2013), however, she was revealed to have survived the murder attempt after all — though with a serious case of mind-wiping amnesia, which caused her, temporarily, to team up with the bad guys. She saw the error of her ways at the end of that movie, and she’s been back with Dom and company ever since.Tyrese Gibson in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesRoman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson)One of Brian’s childhood friends, Roman was introduced in “2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003, the first sequel) as a silver-tongued Lothario who is sensational behind the wheel. Since being called upon for help with a bank heist in “Fast Five” (2011), he’s been a mainstay of Dom’s crew, usually serving as the comic relief.Ludacris in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesTej Parker (Ludacris)Like Roman, Tej first appeared in “2 Fast 2 Furious” and has been a series regular since “Fast Five.” He’s the crew’s gifted computer hacker, handling comms, tech and surveillance, although when necessary, he’s willing to drive or fight. Tej and Roman have a friendly rivalry and tease each other constantly.Dwayne Johnson in “Furious 7.”Scott Garfield/Universal picturesLuke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson)Dwayne Johnson made his debut in “Fast Five” as the brawny Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs, the antagonist striving to foil Dom and his crew’s heist plans. Eventually, Dom and friends won him over to their side, and since “Fast & Furious 6” he’s been their frequent teammate and friend. He most recently appeared in the series spinoff “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” (2019).Jordana Brewster in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesMia Toretto (Jordana Brewster)Dom’s sister, Mia, was Brian’s love interest in “The Fast and the Furious,” and she has continued to accompany him on his adventures. After she gave birth to her first child, in “Furious 7,” she and Brian have been in retirement, and is back for “F9” after being sidelined in “The Fate of the Furious.”Sung Kang in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesHan Lue (Sung Kang)Han, a Korean street racer living in Japan, co-starred in the third film in the series, “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006), and was killed in a car crash during the finale. He appeared alive and well in the next three sequels, however, because they evidently took place before the third film chronologically. To add to the confusion, his accidental death was rewritten as a murder in “Furious 7,” using a mix of archival and new footage. And now he is back, alive again, in “F9,” for reasons that are as yet unclear.Gal Gadot in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesGisele Yashar (Gal Gadot)A femme fatale in “Fast & Furious,” Gisele was inducted into the crew in “Fast Five,” when she started a romantic relationship with Han. She died in “Fast & Furious 6,” sacrificing herself to save Han during the action-packed climax. She has not been brought back to life — yet.Nathalie Emmanuel in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesMegan Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel)A world-renowned super-hacker rescued by Dom and his crew from kidnapping in the middle of “Furious 7,” Ramsey has since become a series regular who helps the team with computer-related problems. Tej and Roman have been steadily competing to win her affections.Lucas Black in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.”John Johnson/Universal PicturesSean Boswell (Lucas Black)The hero of “Tokyo Drift,” Sean is a ne’er-do-well young street racer who hopes to avoid a stint in juvenile detention by shipping out to live with his father in Japan. Other than a brief cameo in “Furious 7,” he hadn’t appeared in a “Fast” movie since, but surprisingly enough, he’s back for “F9.”Kurt Russell in “The Fate of the Furious.”Matt Kennedy/Universal PicturesMr. Nobody (Kurt Russell)A top-secret government agent with seemingly limitless resources, Mr. Nobody hired Dom and his crew to help save the world in “Furious 7” and again in “Fate of the Furious.” Think of him as the M to Dom’s James Bond.2017 FATE OF THE FURIOUSUniversal PicturesDeckard Shaw (Jason Statham)Another villain turned hero, Shaw tried to wipe out Dom’s crew in “Furious 7” before teaming up with them in “The Fate of the Furious.” He last co-starred in the series spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw” and only has a small cameo in “F9.”Helen Mirren in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesMagdalene Shaw (Helen Mirren)Deckard’s cockney-accented mother, Magdalene, turned up in “The Fate of the Furious” to lend a hand to Dom. She was last seen in “Hobbs & Shaw,” serving time in prison.Luke Evans in “Fast & Furious 6.”Universal PicturesOwen Shaw (Luke Evans)Deckard’s brother, Owen, meanwhile, was the villain terrorizing the crew in “Fast & Furious 6,” hounding them across London before being thrown out of an airplane in mid-takeoff. He survived that fall and came to Deckard’s (and Dom’s) aid in “The Fate of the Furious.”Charlize Theron in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesCipher (Charlize Theron)Cipher is reputedly the world’s most gifted and terrifying hacker, so much so that even the notorious Anonymous collective is afraid to mess with her. She tries to bring about nuclear war in “The Fate of the Furious,” holding Dom’s baby son hostage and killing the baby’s mother in the process. She returns — apparently as a villain again — in “F9.”John Cena in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesJakob Toretto (John Cena)A newcomer to the saga. Jakob is Dom’s never-before-mentioned brother, and of course the primary antagonist of “F9.”Elsa Pataky in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesElena Neves (Elsa Pataky)Dom’s love interest when Letty was presumed dead, Elena was a cop in Rio tapped by Hobbs for assistance in “Fast Five.” She had Dom’s baby, unbeknown to him, and was killed by Cipher shortly after revealing the news to him in “The Fate of the Furious.”Tego Calderon and Don Omar in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesTego and Rico (Tego Calderon and Don Omar)Perennial comic sidekicks Tego and Rico have tagged along on several of Dom’s jobs, and usually turn up once or twice per movie for some pratfalls. More