What is the WOPR?

looks like Street Trash got remade.

Write When You Get Work is a 2018 American comedy drama film written and directed by Stacy Cochran and starring Finn Wittrock, Rachel Keller, Scott Cohen, Jessica Hecht and Emily Mortimer. The film follows Ruth, a South Brooklyn native working at a Manhattan private school for girls, who becomes involved in a plot to help out the daughter of a less privileged family.

His vampire movie Vamps is also very good

'Megalopolis' is a piece of s—t

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary begs you not to see Francis Ford Coppola's new film

This is not a review. This is a warning. If I gave Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” a standard movie review and told you that it was an incoherent mess on par with “Rebel Moon” (which it is), your fanboy reflexes would kick and you’d write me off. You’d take me as just another pair of glasses dead set on panning a movie just to bolster their art cred. I hate critics like that, and so do you.

So I’m telling you this not as a reviewer, but as a friend: Do not see this movie. It is a piece of s—t.

You’ve been warned various times already. You were warned when the Guardian reported this spring that crew members on “Megalopolis” described its making, paid for entirely by Coppola thanks to his fortune in winemaking, as a “train wreck.” You were warned when that same article leveled allegations that the old man would sexually harass female crew members (barf) and burn hours of shooting time just hanging out and smoking weed instead of working (OK I respect it). Coppola has denied the allegations, and has sued Variety for its own investigation into his reported wrongdoing. In its introduction, the written complaint in that suit includes the sentence, “Some people are jealous and resentful of genius.” Go ahead and take that sentence as a warning, too.

Because Coppola has been running defense for this film basically ever since it wrapped. Lionsgate, the only studio willing to distribute Coppola’s vanity project, tried to get ahead of the damage by releasing a trailer larded with critical barbs that had been levied against Coppola’s old masterpieces, quotes that turned out to be fabricated.

But perhaps those warnings haven’t been enough. Perhaps, like me, you keep a soft spot in your heart for Coppola, a member of the auteur revolution who made a string of masterpieces through the ’70s and ’80s, but has made none since. Perhaps, like me, you were drawn in by a cast that includes Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, the god Giancarlo Esposito and other luminaries. And perhaps, like me, you’re so worn out by corporate filmmaking that you’re down with any movie that showcases pure artistic ambition, even if the end result is a misfire. Maybe this thing is a disaster, but maybe that’s the fun of it, yeah? Like gawking at a car wreck?

Wrong. This movie is unwatchable. It deserves to live in infamy, with its title acting as shorthand for any multimillion-dollar flop borne out of monstrous ego. I took a bullet watching “Megalopolis” for you. An actual bullet would have been kinder.

I’ll give you the details as best as I can manage. “Megalopolis” — oh I’m sorry, “Megalopolis: A Fable” — is Coppola’s attempt to portray near-future America as Ancient Rome. And brother, he is NOT subtle about it. He renames New York as New Rome. He gives every male actor a Caesar cut. He throws in engraved title cards throughout the movie that look like the menu of an SNES game. He turns Madison Square Garden into the Coliseum and uses it for an extended bacchanalia scene that goes on longer than a Catholic wedding. And he dresses up Shia LaBeouf, a talented actor whose face I never want to see again, in toga drag. Why is Shia in drag? What’s his character up to? Please don’t expect answers to any of that.

Here is the plot, as best as I can divine it. Driver plays Cesar Catilina, who runs the Design Authority of New Rome, which has its own police force for some reason. We know that Cesar is an architect, because the posters for “Megalopolis” all show Driver holding a magic T-square. We do not actually see him use that T-square in this movie. In fact, we don’t see him doing any nuts-and-bolts design work of any kind. This is because Cesar’s real occupation is Godfather of New Rome. He somehow has more influence in New Rome than the city’s mayor (Esposito), ANDhe has the power to stop time. How he acquired this ability is never explained. In fact, the movie gives Cesar this power for virtually zero narrative purpose.

Cesar is tortured. His wife has died, and Cesar is mourning her by doing lots of blow and sleeping with salacious TV reporter Wow Platinum, played by Aubrey Plaza. Turning Aubrey Plaza blonde is one of many crimes that Coppola perpetrates in this film. Now, Wow Platinum has some skeezy motives of her own (she’s a gold digger), so Cesar is wary.

He also has beef with Mayor Cicero, who apparently tried to implicate Cesar in his wife’s death, and who is working to prevent Cesar’s Design Authority from building Megalopolis, the architect’s vision of a future city. None of this is explained with any clarity. More important, it’s boring.

The rivalry between Cesar and Cicero grows more heated when the former falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, Julia. Julia is played by Nathalie Emmanuel, whose only direction from Coppola appears to have been, “act like you’re the love interest in a Michael Bay film.” Julia is a reporter (I think?) who’s loyal to her father but enchanted by this brooding, wide-chested rival. Is this love? Does the fate of Driver’s new “city,” which we know is the city of the future because it has moving walkways that glow, depend on them staying away from one another? Do I care about ANY of this s—t?

I don’t.

The plot I described above is barely discernible through the excruciating 138-minute running time of “Megalopolis.” I had to piece the story together myself while enduring things that no paying moviegoer should ever have to sit through. There’s that endless Coliseum scene, featuring a musical interlude from the city’s “virgin sweetheart,” who turns out to be older than she claimed (no!) and not a virgin at all (ZOMG!). In fact, she f—ked Cesar! On camera! Is nothing pure?

It gets dumber. There’s a scene where Julia, with the film’s incoherent score blasting in the background, solemnly reads not one, but THREE quotes from Marcus Aurelius in a row, giving the Roman emperor attribution after each one of them. There is Dustin Hoffman looking lost. There is Jon Voight looking even MORE lost. Driver is just about the only person here who does his best with the material he’s given. He acts so, so hard. Admirably so. Everyone else, with great justification, looks like they’re already embarrassed to be here. They know this thing is going to be a lemon, and act accordingly.

That includes Laurence Fishburne, in full “Matrix 2” mode playing both a chauffeur and an occasional narrator. That also includes Jason Schwartzman, who gets almost no lines in the film but shows up mostly because he’s related to Coppola. And it includes Plaza, who will absolutely be the best interviewee from this cast whenever Werner Herzog films a documentary about how awful the production was.

Oh hey, did I mention that there’s an Elvis impersonator singing the national anthem? That was random. There are also still photos of 9/11 (Rome falling alert!), plus an “interactive element” where a live performer in the auditorium asks questions of the on-screen Cesar as part of a press conference scene. It adds nothing.

There’s a jarring sequence where a little kid walks up to Driver’s car and shoots him in the face (credit where it’s due, Coppola still knows how to film a murder), but the bullet turns Driver’s right eye into a miniature galaxy before the wound magically heals altogether.

And, most importantly, there is Voight in a Robin Hood outfit, asking Plaza, “What do you think of this boner I got?” before shooting her in the chest with an arrow. That one’ll be a meme.

Save for Voight’s erect midnight cowboy, nothing else about “Megalopolis” will last. The dialogue is terrible. The color palette is nearly as incongruent as the music. The overdubbing sometimes doesn’t match the actors’ lips at all. The visual effects are terrible, featuring virtual sets that look like early design mockups Coppola never bothered to flesh out. Even the PROPS are terrible. Every physical prop in “Megalopolis” looks like Coppola either found it in his garage or asked his grandkids to make it for him. This movie cost the old man $120 million. He sold one of his wineries off to finance it. You could have shot a better looking movie with your phone.

And that’s really all there is to it. The only reason this film was released was because Coppola made it, and the only reason that Coppola made it was because he’s a centimillionaire. This is very much the work of a bored old stoner. I knew it five minutes into “Megalopolis.” I also knew that I was stuck.

Don’t let that happen to you. Don’t be tempted by Coppola, or by the cast, or by any contrarian review that attempts to kick off a reassessment of this disaster that it will never deserve. This movie is garbage. It doesn’t work as “so bad it’s good” camp. It doesn’t work as a “fable.” It doesn’t work as a noble attempt at a Big Statement. It doesn’t work at all. I’m sorry I watched it, and I will genuinely think less of anyone who finds it redeemable. There are plenty of directing legends, Martin Scorsese chief among them, who have great stories left to tell. “Megalopolis” proves that Coppola is not one of them. This man doesn’t know how to make good movies anymore. In fact, he doesn’t appear to know how to make any movie anymore. 

Before my screening, the studio hosted a livestreamed Q&A with Coppola, Spike Lee and Robert De Niro. Toward the end of that Q&A, De Niro, an outspoken liberal, looked out at the audience and said to them, “Just imagine Trump directing this movie.” Bobby, I don’t have to.

If you're tired of watching the mismanagement of a pandemic in real time watch the mismanagement of one in hindsight And the band played on