[ad_1]
Few recent films scratch an itch like MEGADOC. Whatever the cinematic value of Mike Figgis’ documentary––and accounting for cheap-looking title cards with obvious typos, low-energy music, maybe not enough done with interview subject George Lucas while cutting out the participating Spike Lee entirely, etc––bestowing that now-too-rare behind-the-scenes treatment upon one of the more fascinating films in recent memory (something I both kind of loved and can’t entirely defend against most criticism) left me, frankly, like a pig at the trough. This feature-length look at Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis––spanning circa-2001 table reads with Robert De Niro and Uma Thurman, early acting exercises with the final cast, the director working (and often struggling) to achieve his vision, and its eventual Cannes premiere––opens on September 19 from Utopia, who have uneveiled the first trailer.
As David Katz said in our Venice review, “With greater parallels to Apocalypse Now in its self-funded genesis than in his studio-backed career highlights (extending up to Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the early ‘90s), clearly a documentary enshrining the events on the ground had to be made. Up steps Mike Figgis, no stranger to iconoclastic, independent-working, and Hollywood-revenge narratives. Watching MEGADOC, the 107-minute result premiering this week at the Venice Film Festival, we wonder what Figgis wasn’t legally permitted to show, yet his project is key to understanding what Megalopolis is and what hamstrung it, and maybe, also, that greatness wasn’t its destiny.”
Watch the preview:
[ad_2]
