Apocalypse Now

Powerful, seminal, and life-changing film. Taps into the real heart of what’s going on. So real and true, like Hemingway in aspirations and underlying aesthete (aesthetics). Great cool songs, Rolling Stones and Doors and stuff, but super power and affecting score, like nothing I’ve ever heard. I admit I thought the narration was cheesy and a vestigial remnant from HoD but after the Kilgore sequence was over, I really came to appreciate it. I mean, for most of the movie, the events are crazy and absurd and engaging, and so the narration serves as a real wet blanket to bring you back to reality and remind you shit ain’t sweet. Willard is a great character, for this reason and because he’s very fleshed out for what could have been your run-of-the-mill pov character. That first scene in the hotel room is a great introduction, and the way he develops is great. Martin Sheen really sells it, he’s got a great look; in some scenes he looks like the devil himself, and in others he looks just like his son Emilio Estevez. The side characters are great, Robert Duvall, Larry Fishburne. Marlon Brando freaking kills it, unbelievable. That whole last half hour had me on the edge of my seat, I was seriously scared. Dennis Hopper brings some levity to that part too, he’s worth the wait as well. Alfred Michael Caine Colonel Kurtz is the scariest guy I’ve seen in my entire life. So funny how much everyone was into the surfer, that trading boat scene is so tragic, flare attack had me tense, my dream, ever since I was a little boy, before I’d heard of the movie, was to become a Kurtz-like jungle god-king warrior-poet through military prowess and magnetic personality. Did they really kill that cow?