I watched it totally alone on Saturday night, never been in a theater alone! I’ve heard there were a lot of walk outs - which I don’t get, theres no accounting for taste of course, but I didn’t think it was leave early bad.

I loved the spectacle and the aesthetic and the fashion, the characters were sorta eh - this is a story where the characters aren’t grounded in realism but are supposed to be stand ins for ideas or movements. Aubrey Plaza was great in it, I actually kinda liked Shia LaBeouf as well. Adam Driver was so-so, but I think that was down to directing. Music choices were odd but I kinda dug it.

I really had a hard time following the plot. Lots of things happened and were resolved in the next scene - felt like about an hour was cut haphazardly. I didn’t have a theatre were an actor was hired to interview Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) breaking the 4th walll butterfly aspect ratio and frame changed enough to keep some semblance of the effect. ::: spoiler spoiler Cesar can control time, which is interesting but I think is literally just a literalization of him being an Artist able to freeze time (it’s said as much in the movie) ::: - not really a spoiler it’s like the first scene.

Kind of a bizarre trip, glad Coppola got to make his Moby Dick of a movie. It’s way funnier than I was expecting something as pretentious as I figured it’d be - reminded me of Shakespeare style blending of High Art and Low Art, a comparison I’m sure Coppola would love. I bet I’ll watch this again on streaming or Blu Ray or something years later and see a bunch of stuff that didn’t make sense the first go.