Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by petew (A) on December 17, 2001 at 12:57:45

In Reply to: Hey 'Philander, thanks for great rec for "Almost Famous: Untitled"! posted by TAFKA Steve on December 14, 2001 at 16:20:17:

as great as Apocolypse Now was....it's like a completely different film with these crutial scenes restored--I can see the how and why of removing them for theatrical release--except for the scenes with Brando, which are essential--oh so essential

brilliant, inspired, psychadelic....lacking superlatives here...

i couldn't wait to see the scenes that were cut from the origional theatrical release, so i just skipped ahead and watched them all, but you can't, you just can't...the film is so good you just get sucked in

and in the end

Brando is worth every penny

at first, you feel like Brando is so horribly miscast--so pathetically unprepaired--so completely out of touch with Conrad's story and the sickness of the jungle and the insanity of command

at first, you see him as an affected, self-impressed high school kid in the senior class play--he's so casual, so removed, so ordinary, so incompetent...he's not in character...he's nothing at all...like he's not even there

and the juxtaposition of this absence of personality with Coppola's recreation of the heat, the stench, the filth, the soddeness, the cordite smoke and the forboding doom --the jungle closing in--smothering all the light

terrifing (Brando is McNamarra)

how could Coppola have known?

six stars

highest recommendation