Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis – 2024 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 3

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Winner of two Palme d’Ors, Francis Ford Coppola‘s makes a huge return to Cannes with a film that will not go unnoticed in Megalopolis. With the price tag of about 120 Sean Baker features, this Julius Caesar salad (forgive the pun) dishes out a lot of ideas with a mega cast of Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Kathryn Hunter, Grace VanderWaal, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, D.B. Sweeney, Isabelle Kusman, Bailey Ives, Madeleine Gardella, Balthazar Getty, Romy Mars, Haley Sims, Dustin Hoffman.

Gist: A project decades in the making, Megalopolis is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.

Current temperature: A film with full of ideas (including an actual actor playing a reporter going up on the mini Bazin stage for the screening I was at), the reactions for this one are all over the map from stinker to one critic calling this a masterwork. From brilliant to incoherent, almost all over critics have weighed in with an average score of 2.6.

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Cannes Grid Day 3

Eric Lavallée
Eric Lavalléehttps://www.ericlavallee.com
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist, and critic at IONCINEMA.com, established in 2000. A regular at Sundance, Cannes, and Venice, Eric holds a BFA in film studies from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013, he served on the narrative competition jury at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson’s "This Teacher" (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). He is a Golden Globes Voter, member of the ICS (International Cinephile Society) and AQCC (Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma).

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