MEGALOPOLIS may or may not be the best movie of the year, but it is undeniably the most MOVIE movie of the year. An octogenarian master filmmaker is celebrating over sixty years of being part of and even creating film history. It's being raked over the coals by an industry that really doesn't like the fact Francis Ford Coppola funded the movie out of his own money without having a single micromanaging studio executive to stand over film shoot telling them not to make half the creative decisions Coppola & co. make for the movie.

Sure, there are flaws in the movie; some scenes have painfully symbolic dialogue that even the actors have issues with, and there might be one drug trip too many, but Coppola wants to talk about the Big Themes for humanity of Art vs. Commerce. Idealism vs. Pragmatism, and how Art and Ideals can be corrupted through greed and compromise into Fascism. It does so in ways that are opposite the current self-snarking house style that big Hollywood blockbusters specialize in.

Despite all this, it has so many bravura sequences, including an assassination executed as well as any featured in Coppola's Godfather films, the aforementioned drug trip/dream sequences, huge play-to-the-rafters performances, and a genuine, touching appreciation of humanity from someone who has seen culture turn from celebration to condemnation to celebration again.

Suppose you like Bram Stoker's Dracula from the Man. In that case, this film is closer to that than the Godfathers and Apocalypse Now, but with more emotional power (it most obviously resembles Juliet Taymor's Titus).

Is it the best movie of the year? Maybe, maybe not.

Is it the must-see movie of the year? Absolutely.