Francis Ford Coppola believes he can stop time. It’s not just a quality of the protagonist of Coppola’s new film “Megalopolis,” a visionary architect named Cesar Catilina ( Adam Driver ) who, by barking “Time,

If anything is clear about “Megalopolis,” it’s that Francis Ford Coppola has a lot on his mind. The legendary filmmaker spent decades on this Roman-style epic, set in the present day, about a civilization on the brink of collapse.

There are two ways to look at "Megalopolis," the long-gestating passion project from master filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola that opens Friday. On the one hand, it's an ambitious, bold, bizarrely idiosyncratic vision,

Naive, decadent, sluggish, dazzling, touchingly sincere in its belief that “a vital conversation” about the state of our nation can save us, even with barbarians at the gates: There’s something to vex everyone in “Megalopolis.