Francis Ford Coppola | Wanderings and ... wonderings.

Oct 13 2025

The Conversation (1974).

With the films of Alan J. Pakula, The Conversation (1974) sits right in the middle of Watergate as a dark inspiration, and you couldn’t get a more clinical, claustrophobic portrait of paranoia.

Hackman is masterful. His character’s job and the perfectionism he demands is his entire life, and once he makes mistakes, succumbing to emotions that compromise his skills, he is at a loss, a petrified wreck, playing his saxophone in a torn-to-pieces-apartment.

It’s one of Coppola’s few original scripts and one wonders at the output if he did more of that. There is so much going on in this film, from the moody low-key jazz score to the extraordinary sound design, and it’s a movie obsessed with the peculiarities of its era.

The twist ending is just shocking and I must confess I never saw it coming.

And Harrison Ford is in it.

Tagged Cinema, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman, Images, Movie, Sound, The Conversation, Thriller, Walter Murch, Watergate

Jun 04 2025

Megalopolis (2024).

A barely cobbled together assortment of various grandiose ideas and sketchy performances, the acting is baroque, the standard mental stuff you get in a Baz Luhrmann film, except he generally makes interesting cinema. Some of the images here catch the eye, but they never coalesce into anything resembling a coherent narrative.

The characters have arguments you can’t even connect with or understand; they bicker for the director’s benefit, in a story based on the Catilinarian conspiracy but without any intrigue, political element, or a Cicero. If ever a movie needed an editor, or someone to just tell the director to grow up a wee bit, it’s this one.

I tried to give it a go as the lad has made some classics, but I was compelled to turn it off at 56 minutes.

Life is too short for this shite.

I’m off to watch Jack (1996) with a Blue WKD.

Tagged Cinema, Film, Francis Ford Coppola, Images, Megalopolis, Movie

May 14 2024

Megalopolis (2024). Please, PLEASE, be good.

This teaser trailer is bonkers. Here’s hoping this, legendary in its gestation period, movie is more of the same:

Tagged Cinema, Film, Francis Ford Coppola, Images, Megalopolis, Movie

Dec 04 2020

4 Comments

Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Why can’t they just leave their own films alone?

These lads of course have every right to fiddle to their hearts’ content with pictures they’ve made, but it’s getting out of control now. I don’t even know how many different versions of Blade Runner (1982) there are (I’ve only seen one), I hear there is now another edition of Apocalypse Now (1979), and I was yesterday informed that The Godfather Part III (1990) is now being re-released this month but with a completely different structure and with an alternate title. What is going on?

For me, the art that was produced at a specific stage is what it is (for lack of a better phrase) and all it will ever be. I have no time for tweaking, chopping, changing, re-editing, and periodic revisionism. Stop trying to fix what was at that moment your best or worst effort, move on, come up with a new idea. It’s got something to do with grasping for perfection, but the problem is that the films I’ve mentioned are far from perfect. Even the films I rate as ‘transcendental’ (The Third Man, Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia) have giant flaws but that just adds to the appeal; I hate to appropriate an Oasis song, but true perfection has to be imperfect.

Dear directors, just STOP IT.

Give us something else.

Tagged Apocalypse Now, Blade Runner, Cinema, Film, Francis Ford Coppola, Godfather III, Movie, Ridley Scott

Jul 09 2020

3 Comments

Art, Cinema, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) should be essential. But it isn’t.

17757-97_1

This is the last good Coppola movie, the last in his oeuvre made on a grand scale with sumptuous visuals.

It was always one of those films that popped up at least once a year on British terrestrial TV, and I until recently (Netflix) last viewed it in Slovenia on a hotel TV whilst dribbling over beers and multipack crisps in another failed attempt to ingratiate myself with the local culture. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the movie is everywhere, as omniscient as Lidl.

I have never given much thought for anything in the Dracula canon but I see the potential in the source material. This film could have been an absolute belter were it not for the unnecessary campiness, the ludicrous casting, and the frankly appalling screenplay replete with cringe dialogue and baffling character decisions. Anthony Hopkins is playing it all for laughs, Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder both appear bored shitless, and Keanu Reeves once again proves that an American should not under any circumstances attempt a British accent. It is high comedy whenever he speaks.

For all of that, however, it is a delight at times from a purely visual standpoint. It just looks so lovely, every special effect and bit of camera trickery a throwback to early cinema. Indeed, the movie is better viewed on mute. What a wasted opportunity.

And I never even knew this SNES game existed until yesterday:

DraculaSNES_boxart

Wanderings and … wonderings.

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