You want a story? Look at the front page of your local paper. I'm here for the picture show.

With all the nurses making moves on the suicidal old codger's renovated physique, Coppola's Youth Without Youth comes across as somewhere between The Godfather On Viagra and Apocalypse Then, Redux.

Though not an easy film to grasp or possibly enjoy, it's nevertheless a mindblowing acid-like excursion into the secret world of Orientalism.

This pretentious, impenetrable and deadly dull film never resonates as anything more than an aging filmmaker's feeble grasp at his own lost youth.

Coppola was more efficiently mystical when he wasn't trying so hard.

This is the perfect example of what can happen when a producer/director/writer doesn't have to answer to anyone. Coppola makes an artistic mess.

So much of Youth Without Youth is impenetrable, and not in a way that makes you want to solve the puzzle, but in a way that makes you want to knock the puzzle pieces off the table and flee the room.

It would be easier to sit back and rest on his legend rather than press on as an average filmmaker, which is what Coppola has become.

A classic example of the “what-was-he-thinking?” movie, Youth Without Youth unfolds in a sort of formal dream state devoid of day-to-day normalcy.

Youth Without Youth is so beautiful, in fact, that it almost transcends the epic bunkum of Coppola's script. But almost doesn't count, even when it is uttered in ancient tongues.