Apocalypse Now (viewed June 5th and 6th).
1979 American Zoetrope; distributed to DVD by Paramount.
Starring: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Laurence Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, Harrison Ford, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall, Joe Estevez (uncredited)
Produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Available from Amazon as part of Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier.
The story of the making of Apocalypse Now is probably just as well known as the film's story itself. Director Coppola had originally cast Harvey Keitel as Captain Benjamin Willard, but replaced him with Martin Sheen only a few days into filming, unsatisfied with Keitel's portrayal as the troubled veteran. Filming on location in the Philippines saw its share of troubles, ranging from Typhoon Olga striking the region in May of 1976, halting production for a month. In addition, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos agreed to let his army provide helicopers and pilots to help work on the film, but the government would sometimes recall them from the set to help battle bands of rebels nearby.
Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack during production (his brother, Joe Estevez, stood in for him and also provided voiceover work where needed in post-production), and when it was his time to appear, Marlon Brando showed up reportedly drunk, very overweight, and unfamiliar with the script, or the novella it was based on, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. A compromise was reached, and Brando was allowed to largely improvise while Coppola filmed him in shadows and using a taller stand-in to disguise the actor's weight gain. Coppola did not escape the filming unscathed either: he threatened to commit suicide several times.
As for the rest of the story...
Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Sheen) is a special operations veteran. He has returned to Saigon after finding it nearly impossible to adjust back to civilian life back in America. Willard is actually still battling his demons even after returning to the scene of the war. Despite all of his hardships, Willard is assigned by two intelligence officers to travel up the Nung River deep into Cambodia, and find the rogue officer Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Brando), who has assembled a large platoon of Montagnard troops who worship him like a god. Citing some very disturbing radio broadcasts and recordings made by Kurtz, Willard is assigned to terminate Kurtz's command "with extreme prejudice". Willard would prefer to make the trip alone, but he is assigned a crew comprising of the no-nonsense Chief Phillips (Hall), the chemically enhanced surfer dude Lance (Bottoms), the young South Bronx hepcat Clean (Fishburne), and Chef (Forrest), someone totally unprepared for what he's seeing away from his native New Orleans. Before the mission to find Kurtz begins, Willard and his men end up taking part in a mission led by the loud and boisterous Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Duvall), where they seize a Viet Cong village near a beachhead that seemingly is perfect for surfing. After the fighting stop, Kilgore cheerfully informs Willard that he "loves the smell of napalm in the morning" since you all know it smells like victory.
Willard, whose mission is classified, so his companions are pretty much in the dark as to why they're going so far up the river, spends much of the time reading up on Kurtz, becoming more obsessed with his target, even coming to understand Kurtz's motives. In due time, several crew members are killed, Lance goes insane, and after encountering a loopy American photojournalist (Hopper) upon arrival at the compound who seems to idolize Kurtz, it remains to be seen if Willard will complete his mission to terminate with extreme prejudice.
Highly, highly recommended movie.
Showing posts with label francis ford coppola. Show all posts
Showing posts with label francis ford coppola. Show all posts
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Thursday, April 23, 2009
THX 1138
THX 1138. 1970 Warner Bros. Pictures & American Zoetrope.
Starring: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie, Ian Wolfe, Marshall Efron, Sid Haig, James Wheaton
Executive Producer: Francis Ford Coppola
Director: George Lucas
Buy THX 1138, two-disc special edition, from Amazon.
This is the first feature length film directed by George Lucas, and it took some time before its DVD release in 2004. Lucas wanted to upgrade portions of the movie, not unlike what he did with the first three Star Wars films, but not as extensive in this case.
In a dystopian future, we are taken to an underground society where omnipresent, faceless, android police officers control the population, all human activity is monitored at all times, and special drugs to supress all emotion (that includes sexual desire) are mandatory to take. THX 1138 (Duvall) works on a nuclear production line. His roommate LUH 3417 (McOmie) has grown disillusioned, and consciously decides to stop taking her pills, breaking the law. She substitute inactive pills for THX's medications. As the drug's effect wears off, THX starts feeling genuine emotion and sexual desire for the first time, and he and LUH become lovers, planning to escape the "superstructure" where they can live in freedom. Before these plans go anywhere, they're both arrested and charged with having unauthorized sexual activity, and not taking the state-prescribed drugs.
THX is imprisoned in a white, limbo-like area along with notable inmates as technician SEN 5241 (Pleasence), who used his programming skills to try to replace LUH as THX's roommate, but ended up imprisoned after THX reported him. Eventually, THX and SEN decide to escape limbo, encountering a renegade hologram called SRT (Colley), who has also decided to escape. After leaving prison, THX tries to find LUH, only to find that her identity is now belonging to a fetus in a growth chamber, suggesting that she was considered "incurable" and killed. SEN breaks off to explore deeper into the city's underground, and is eventually captured, leaving THX and SRT to steal vehicles, and managing to elude capture by the android police officers (whose budget will dictate whether or not THX will be taken back into custody).
Lucas would subsequently insert references, and some not subtle at all, to this movie in every one of his subsequent projects. Recommended cult movie.
Starring: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, Maggie McOmie, Ian Wolfe, Marshall Efron, Sid Haig, James Wheaton
Executive Producer: Francis Ford Coppola
Director: George Lucas
Buy THX 1138, two-disc special edition, from Amazon.
This is the first feature length film directed by George Lucas, and it took some time before its DVD release in 2004. Lucas wanted to upgrade portions of the movie, not unlike what he did with the first three Star Wars films, but not as extensive in this case.
In a dystopian future, we are taken to an underground society where omnipresent, faceless, android police officers control the population, all human activity is monitored at all times, and special drugs to supress all emotion (that includes sexual desire) are mandatory to take. THX 1138 (Duvall) works on a nuclear production line. His roommate LUH 3417 (McOmie) has grown disillusioned, and consciously decides to stop taking her pills, breaking the law. She substitute inactive pills for THX's medications. As the drug's effect wears off, THX starts feeling genuine emotion and sexual desire for the first time, and he and LUH become lovers, planning to escape the "superstructure" where they can live in freedom. Before these plans go anywhere, they're both arrested and charged with having unauthorized sexual activity, and not taking the state-prescribed drugs.
THX is imprisoned in a white, limbo-like area along with notable inmates as technician SEN 5241 (Pleasence), who used his programming skills to try to replace LUH as THX's roommate, but ended up imprisoned after THX reported him. Eventually, THX and SEN decide to escape limbo, encountering a renegade hologram called SRT (Colley), who has also decided to escape. After leaving prison, THX tries to find LUH, only to find that her identity is now belonging to a fetus in a growth chamber, suggesting that she was considered "incurable" and killed. SEN breaks off to explore deeper into the city's underground, and is eventually captured, leaving THX and SRT to steal vehicles, and managing to elude capture by the android police officers (whose budget will dictate whether or not THX will be taken back into custody).
Lucas would subsequently insert references, and some not subtle at all, to this movie in every one of his subsequent projects. Recommended cult movie.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Conversation
The Conversation. 1974 Paramount Pictures.
Starring: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall (uncredited)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Buy The Conversation from Amazon.
Francis Ford Coppola directed this film, a partial homage to Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, in between the first two Godfather movies.
A paranoid surveillance expert named Harry Caul (Hackman) runs his own San Francisco based company, and is highly respected in his profession. He is also obsessed with his own privacy, living in a bare apartment behind a triple-locked door, using pay phones to make calls while claiming to not have a home one, and enclosing his office in wire mesh in a corner of an enormous warehouse. Harry is completely professional at work, but finds personal conflict very difficult.
Harry also agonizes over the content of the conversations he records, and the uses to which his clients put his surveillance activities, even if he insists his professional code absolves him of everything. His current assignment is monitoring the conversation of a couple (Williams & Forrest) as they walk through Union Square in San Francisco, and one key phrase ("He'd kill us if he got the chance") drives him mad, and he interprets it as a plot by the "Director" who hired him to murder the couple. Earlier in his career, one of Harry's assignments resulted in three people dying, and he is not keen on repeating that if he can help it.
Increasingly paranoid, Harry refuses to hand over the tapes, but loses them after he is seduced by a call girl who takes them after the fact. It turns out that the conversation he recorded was not a murder plot, but there is another tragedy that happens. The movie ends with Harry discovering that his own home is bugged, and after he destroys the place, he finds no listening device.
The Conversation was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Highly recommended.
Starring: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Cindy Williams, Frederic Forrest, Teri Garr, Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall (uncredited)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Buy The Conversation from Amazon.
Francis Ford Coppola directed this film, a partial homage to Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, in between the first two Godfather movies.
A paranoid surveillance expert named Harry Caul (Hackman) runs his own San Francisco based company, and is highly respected in his profession. He is also obsessed with his own privacy, living in a bare apartment behind a triple-locked door, using pay phones to make calls while claiming to not have a home one, and enclosing his office in wire mesh in a corner of an enormous warehouse. Harry is completely professional at work, but finds personal conflict very difficult.
Harry also agonizes over the content of the conversations he records, and the uses to which his clients put his surveillance activities, even if he insists his professional code absolves him of everything. His current assignment is monitoring the conversation of a couple (Williams & Forrest) as they walk through Union Square in San Francisco, and one key phrase ("He'd kill us if he got the chance") drives him mad, and he interprets it as a plot by the "Director" who hired him to murder the couple. Earlier in his career, one of Harry's assignments resulted in three people dying, and he is not keen on repeating that if he can help it.
Increasingly paranoid, Harry refuses to hand over the tapes, but loses them after he is seduced by a call girl who takes them after the fact. It turns out that the conversation he recorded was not a murder plot, but there is another tragedy that happens. The movie ends with Harry discovering that his own home is bugged, and after he destroys the place, he finds no listening device.
The Conversation was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Highly recommended.
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