Aarcflick

As personal and selfless as you might expect from a $120 million self-portrait that also serves as a fable about the fall of Ancient Rome, Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis" is the story of an ingenious eccentric who dares to gamble his fortune in a more optimistic vision for the future, not because he believes he can realize that vision alone, but because history has taught him that questioning the current condition of a civilization is the only reliable hope for avoiding its ruin. Needless to say, the movie won't arrive a minute sooner. After more than 40 years of idly fantasizing about the project (and more than 20 years of actively trying to finance it), Coppola is bringing "Megalopolis" to screens at a time when his chosen medium is struggling to find a way forward, and the world around him seems to teeter on the brink of collapse. Just as in 63 BC, when an evil patrician named Catiline appealed to a coalition of malcontents in an attempt to overthrow...