John Simon: Last News

Joe Leydon Film Critic Imagine an acerbic love child miraculously spawned by Addison DeWitt of “All About Eve” and Waldo Lydecker of “Laura,” with John Simon serving as midwife, and you will be prepared for Jimmy Erskine, the viciously witty and mercilessly demanding title character played with utterly delicious flamboyance by Ian McKellen in “The Critic.” Directed by Anand Tucker (“Shopgirl”) and written by Patrick Marber (“Notes on a Scandal”), the film is a heady brew of period thriller, compelling melodrama and jet-black comedy, and the second most remarkable thing about it is how seamlessly these diverse elements gel. Even more remarkable, however, is McKellen’s multifaceted portrayal of the man aptly known as “The Monster,” both behind his back and to his face, in the film’s world of 1930s London theater.

Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine,” two enormously expensive vanity projects from renowned directors have awkwardly limped along, provoking groans and shrugs across multiple continents: Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”What were those bozos thinking? The beloved artists have willingly allowed themselves to become punchlines over pricey boondoggles.Both debacles cost the famous directors as much as $100 million of their own money to make. And they’ve certainly made a splash — in the worst way possible.This week, 85-year-old Coppola released a new movie trailer for his epic “Megalopolis,” a $120 million indulgence about the turbulent rebirth of a city that critics politely despised when it premiered in Cannes.The clip includes quotes from reviews of his past work by the likes of Pauline Kael and John Simon to make the point that Coppola’s movies, like his wine, get better with age.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic This week, Lionsgate released — and then promptly recalled — an audacious trailer for “Megalopolis,” an ugly yet undeniably ambitious late-career monstrosity from Francis Ford Coppola. Normally, trailers come padded with hyperbolic quotes from less-than-credible critics — “quote whores,” we call them — plucked out of context and punched up with exclamation marks (a form of punctuation seldom if ever used by critics in print, but ubiquitous in movie advertising).

In a highly unusual move, Lionsgate is pulling its new trailer for Megalopolis, unveiled early this morning.

Katcy Stephan When Lionsgate released the second trailer for Francis Ford Coppola‘s epic film “Megalopolis” on Wednesday morning, it began with a litany of pans of his past work from several renowned critics. In quotes attributed to their reviews of “The Godfather,” the trailer cites The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael as calling it “diminished by its artsiness,” and Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris as criticizing the “sloppy self-indulgent movie.” Other quotes from critics such as Roger Ebert, John Simon, Stanley Kauffmann, Vincent Canby and Rex Reed similarly flash across the screen, offering harsh critiques of Coppola’s work on masterpieces such as “Apocalypse Now.” The idea being these movies stood the test of times — their initial reactions, not so much.