Hello dear readers, I know it’s been a bit since my last streaming column.
I’ve been devoting my energy to longer film writeups like this one, and then I decided to go on vacation for my birthday. It was a much-needed reset. How are you? What did I miss?
Summer is all but dead now that I’m back in Seattle, and I couldn’t be happier about that 😁 I thrive in a climate of 50 to 69-degree days.
Though we aren’t in the full throes of Fall just yet, that is when most of the big awards contenders are dumped at festivals and in theaters. These movies vary in quality just as much as summer tentpoles, which is to say that many of them are shit and a couple of them are pretty good or even great.
What you don’t see a lot of when it comes to these kinds of movies, whether it’s a biopic or a social issue drama, is risk.
To that end, we are a couple of weeks away from what is probably my most anticipated film for the rest of the year: Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating, self-financed passion project Megalopolis.
When studios refused to foot the bill, Coppola cobbled together $120 million from his wine empire to finally shoot a script that has been in various stages of development for decades. (Not to brag, but a few hundred dollars of Megalopolis’ budget comes from me buying the Diamond Collection Appellation Series Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon from local grocers over the last 8-10 years).
The shoot was chaotic and controversial, and the reaction to the finished film at festivals has been divisive. To that latter part: I wouldn’t have it any other way. What the movie world needs is a great debate about the future. Consensus is boring.
When I say Megalopolis is my most anticipated film of the year, it’s because I have no idea what to expect. Despite directing a few of the greatest films ever made, Coppola can be wildly inconsistent. (For more comprehensive Coppola coverage, I’ll turn it over to my friend Ben at Movies, regrettably. He wrote 1,400 words about Coppola’s Jack).
No matter the finished product, Megalopolis is undeniably a Big Swing. It’s not the first that Coppola has done throughout his over 50-year filmmaking career, but he has said it may very well be his last. That, to me, is moving.
So, in anticipation of this self-financed passion project, I thought I’d spend this week (and maybe next) looking at other cinematic Big Swings of various shapes and sizes.
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