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Francis Ford Coppola is cinema's biggest gambler and Megalopolis represents his biggest roll of the dice to date. Self-financed to the tune of $120 million – Coppola sold of part of his winery to raise the funds – it's a hugely risky project but one that pays off handsomely.

The Telegraph calls it a "full-body sensory bath movie". IGN says it "shatters the screen in thrilling fashion". Megalopolis is a family saga like The Godfather and a wild eccentric spectacle like Apocalypse Now.

It is a film that thrives on grand ideas and dazzling imagery and it is played by one of the best casts of 2024.

The story is a fable inspired by Ancient Rome and set in an imagined future America, the vividly realised City Of New Rome. It centres on a titanic tussle between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a visionary artist with the ability to stop time, and the powerful but regressive Mayor Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) over the future of the city. Catilina envisions a bright, utopian future; Cicero is peddling division and hate. Complicating matters is that Cicero's socialite daughter Julia (Game Of Thrones' Nathalie Emmanuel) is in a passionate relationship with Cesar, testing the familial ties that bind to the limit.

Surrounding this central trio is a gallery of colourful characters who could carry a movie on their own. There's the fantastically named Wow Platinum (The White Lotus' Aubrey Plaza), the so-called "Money Honey", a shallow, narcissistic financial reporter who uses her wiles for social climbing; Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), Cesar's cunning cousin who is obsessed with Julia and schemes to bring Cesar down; Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), Cesar's uncle, the wealthiest man in New York who is capable of getting anything he wants; Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), Cesar's eagle-eyed right-hand man; Nush Berman (Dustin Hoffman), the city's go-to fix-it guy; and Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal), a virginal, viral pop singing sensation. All human life is here in its messy glory.

There are astonishing set pieces everywhere, from an indoor chariot race that out Ben-Hurs Ben-Hur to a Russian satellite crashing into the city. A mash-up of political satire, historical epic and science fiction (Cesar's control of time echoes Neo in The Matrix), it's also a film that has a lot on its mind, exploring ideas around power, control, the role of the artist and the ways the past can influence the present. It's a film that is at once topical and timeless – there will be a lot to talk about in the Picturehouse café afterwards.

At one point, Cesar tells Julia, "When we leap into the unknown, we prove that we are free." This perfectly sums up Megalopolis, a go-for-broke extravaganza that has no truck with the safe or conventional and confirms Coppola as a courageous talent with no equal in the risk-taking stakes.

A treat for the eye, brain and heart, it literally has to be seen to be believed.   Ian Freer