Apocalypse Now Review

When Apocalypse Now was released in 1979, it set the benchmark for what all Vietnam War era films would hope to aspire to. Unfortunately, films such as Casualties of War would mistake this benchmark for a tree after a long night of drinking and piss all over it. When you have Marty McFly and Jeff Spicoli together in a movie about Vietnam, it had better be a comedy...or at least a buddy cop movie.

For the uninitiated, Apocalypse Now was originally based on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness, and set in the African Congo. It was later re-made into a musical, then into a short lived Disney on Ice show. Martin Scorscese updated the film to make it socially relevant, set it in Vietnam rather than the African Congo, and started out the movie with a close up of green-beret-gone-apeshit Martin Sheen’s ass-crack—and it doesn’t let up from there. This was a brave move on Scorscese’s part, due to the immense popularity of the war (and Martin Sheen’s ass-crack), and how unfavorable it was looked upon to question the rationale behind both of them. The movie was later re-made for television, set in the middle of the Korean War conflict, and featured wisecracking Alan Alda.

Sheen’s mission is simple: go up the Vietcong river into Cambodia and dispatch of Colonel Kurtz "with extreme prejudice." Sheen somehow interprets this order as "saunter up the river taking your sweet-ass time and fall in love with the guy we want you to kill" then proceeds to spend the better part of the next two hours hanging out on a boat, stopping occasionally to shoot peasants and smoke pot. When he finally reaches Kurtz (an old, bald, sweaty Marlon Brando) he finds he cannot bring himself to kill, and instead promptly gets thrown into a prison cell.

With the homoerotic tension between Sheen and Brando reaching a boiling point, Sheen somehow sweet-talks his way out, and hacks Kurtz to into bite-size pieces with a machete. The pieces, however, don’t stay apart long. The pull themselves back together and form Mecha-Kurtz! Luckily, Sheen is able to knock him into a vat of molten steel, which it turns out is the only way to defeat Mecha-Kurtz.

I give this movie a 38AAA.

March of the Penguins Review

I recently watched March of the Penguins and have to say it's probably the second best penguin movie I've ever seen. You might assume that Happy Feet is the first, but you'd be wrong.

I heard somewhere that it's not real penguins they use, but midgets dressed up like penguins. Either way, it doesn't really ruin the experience for me.

For those of you who have not seen the movie, let me summarize: The penguins are upset about how global warming is affecting their environment, and decide to organize a political march in protest, to send a message to the politicians "Stop killing our planet!" Or something like that. Morgan Freeman narrates (he's the black guy who does the voice of Darth Vader) and he's wonderful. The penguins all have little baby penguins of their own, and then they go off and leave them to freeze to death. It's really a miracle that there are any penguins left in the world at all, what with their parenting skills and global warming and all.

It's a fun little movie, filled with all sorts of interesting facts about what penguins eat (snow), what they do for fun (slide on their tummies), and how they identify their mates (infrared).

Watching this film definitely taught me some things about penguins. First, I don't think I would want one as a pet. They just kind of waddle around and would get in the way alot. Second, penguins are actually mammals (like the crocodile) and may actually be descended from dinosaurs, who evolved into birds. Third, if you did have one as a pet, they'd probably always be in your swimming pool when you wanted to get in it, and the water would be all penguiny.

I highly recommend this film if you want to learn more about penguins or just want to hear Morgan Freeman's voice as you drift off to sleep. I give it a 26.