Overrated

As much as I think this is good and interesting film. I have to say, this has to be the most overrated film on MUBI. What do think is the most overrated film on MUBI and the most underated?

i saw this film 4 the first time a few weeks ago because they re-released it at the cinemas nationwide in england and i could see why because it really is a great film especially when these days a lot of explosions etc are done digitally it was a real movie experience the only part i didn’t like was the unnecessary animal cruelty

That animal cruelty was a ritual performed by the natives. Coppola merely filmed it.

The “animal cruelty” I liked it was as you say Ben authentic. Yes “Likes2sleep” it was great cinematic experience & looks great up on the big screen. But it seems to me uneven, & the wonderful cinematic sweep up the river is let down by Brando & co, talking shit. Also the voice over is dreadful, just as bad as the Blade Runner voice over. So guy’s which film is your underated film? I’m going to stick with Coppola and say Tetro!

How cruel exactly was the slaughter of that animal? It looks like they sever its spinal cord with one stroke, did it really suffer much? I always find the treatment of a specific horse in ANDREI RUBLEV to be far more appalling.

Did you see the original cut or the redux version? The original cut is much better, as it moves things faster and does not have the french colonial scene. While I’m not a fan of the Brando act, the rest of the film has such a poetic aura, at least to me. Maybe is uneven, but the high parts are absolutely wonderful.

Overrated – Donnie Darko. That movies is only good if you are a teenager.
Underrated – Yana’s Friends. A little movie about living in a foreign land with no family.

I saw the original. But remember owning a copy Apocalypse Now on VHS in the mid 90’s, which there was a French colonial scene. Could this be possible?
Yes I agree with Donnie Darko, I could never understand why people think this is a good movie. I’ll need to check out Yana’s Friends, thanks Erwin.

disagree. great film. one of my favorites.

I have seen both the original and redux. I know the redux cut is heavily maligned but I liked the French colonial home scene included although I am still trying to make sense of the extended Playboy Bunny subplot. It is one of my favorite films of all-time regardless. But it is a pretty polarizing film. I saw this when I was 9 and completely enthralled by the experience and then I remember it was shown to us (the original cut) at school as a companion piece to Heart of Darkness when I was 17 and maybe one other person in the class openly enjoyed. Everybody else was bored.

I also disagree about the voice-over. The voice-over serves its purpose and it was part of the original source material, Heart of Darkness. Not sure about Blade Runner, or if it’s source material had voice-over, but I can think the film’s neo-noir nature could have made voice-over look attractive but Ford was not the right actor. Cannot say the same about Martin Sheen.

The slaughter scene was indeed filmed as it happened with the villagers having the authority and later added in to build up a allegorical comparison but how it was edited reminded me of Eisenstein’s cow slaughter in the final section of Strike. I believe Coppola was asked about this and said it was merely coincidental regarding the rather uncanny similarities to Strike.

It’s the original non-extended version that remains definitive for me. Some of what was left out was cool, but none was essential. The French plantation scene was a problem because it disrupted the flow of the film. In the original, the boat progressively leaves civilization behind as the savagery around them builds. The French scene interrupts that pattern. For me, the voice over is actually one of its pluses and far from a detriment. Not at all an overrated film, especially in its original cut.

So tell me Brad, which version did see in circa 1996 on VHS. The Platation scene was in it. But that was several years before Redux version was released. As I said before this a very interesting film with some outstanding cinematic moments, & it’s truly a treat to see on the big screen. But the film as a whole is uneven, though very watchable. Saw Martin Sheen in Badlands tonight. I think both films complement each over, RE individuals braking away from the social norms society, only for that society to catch up and destroyed them.

Garry, I am unaware of the French scene being available prior to the Redux cut. I hadn’t seen it until then. Of course, there’s a lot I haven’t seen, so it seems you’ve gotten a hold of something. I would have thought a ’96 VHS version would be sans French scene.

There was a bootleg video of a workprint of the film (including the plantation footage) that circulated for years before Redux was released. That may have been what you saw, Garry.

I bought it from a retailer, it was a genuine CIC video. I think, but I’m not sure, that the play boy bunny scene was different on the 1996 VHS. Wish I know were it was now :(

You wouldn’t mistake the 4+ hour workprint for a legit copy. I have it and the sound and image are bad enough that it’s virtually unwatchable. Die hard fans would want to see it, though. You can watch it on YouTube if you just gotta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxgCD_RNMo

Roscoe, I’ll sever your spinal cord and see if you don’t suffer much.

What you don’t seem to understand Roscoe is that animals have emotions, as do humans. Pain is not the only consideration here. An animal has the right to live for the sake of enjoying life. Hey, I could smother you with a pillow while you sleep, then shrug it off and say “Meh, Roscoe didn’t suffer at all, he was asleep.” But to murder someone is to deny that someone the freedom to enjoy life. Plus I’d hazard a guess that the poor bovine was crapping itself with all those foul tribal people jumping around like idiots, whooping and hollering to their pagan deities, as the beast was caught helpless in tight restraints. It never ceases to amaze me how human beings, supposedly enlightened souls, can just say “Meh, the beast didn’t suffer much” but throw a hissy fit when their own “civil rights” are abused.

(Just quickly, even with the spinal cord cut in half, Roscoe, there is no doubt that the animal would still feel intense pain from the neck up).

The slaughter of the animal was not only cruel— it really was superficial and redundant to the film. I know Francis Ford Coppola just filmed it, but let me ask you this: if he were in Nigeria for example and filmed the stoning of a woman or the hanging of a gay man that was “going to happen anyway” according to “local customs”, then spliced the footage with his film, would people be so blase? I know I’m stringing onto numerous tangents here, I just think that the scene where Willard confronts Kurtz is intense enough without Coppola inserting the ritual sacrifice into the mix.

The first time I experienced “Apocalypse Now Redux” (note that I saw the longer version) at the cinema, I thought it was worthy but maybe not QUITE so brilliant as I’d hoped, but still I had to see it again. I must say, it DOES improve with subsequent viewings. It took a few viewings until I was willing to say it’s a favourite of mine. Yes, the closing scene with the bovine sacrifice is repulsive, but the technical brilliance of the film and its POWERFUL anti-war message (war is hell) cannot be ignored.

I’d love to see a version of the film sans the sacrifice scene—maybe others would like to have the voiceover removed (by the way, I like the voiceover, but that’s just me). I must say, this is one film that if you are going to immerse yourself in it, you must do so on the big screen. A television set cannot do justice to it.

I can name countless films superior to “Donnie Darko”. I think the problem is kids from every generation want a “great” film to “define” their generation. That and they love said film to have a funky “iconic” figure (in this case, the guy in the rabbit suit). But a film like “Donnie Darko” is the type of film people shall soon get over. It can’t match a film like “Save The Tiger” which shall always have an audience because everyone who lives long enough shall get old and nostalgic (a film you may “grow into” rather than “grow out of” which is the problem for fad films like “D.D.”—folks grow out of them). But even as a young man I love “Save The Tiger”—a truly underrated film. To paraphrase Harry Stoner (Jack Lemmon), I think you ought to see it just once.

So true Mark. Those foul tribal people should have known that animals should be taken care of, then left to die of natural causes in a nursing home, as that is the true way of nature.

Get off the soapbox, Mark. Its not like I’m advocating animal abuse or anything.

Lighten up Mark. Its not like I’m advocating animal abuse here.

I have three words to say on Apocalypse Now: flawed but brilliant.

Actually, I have more than 3 words to say on it. I agree that the original version is better paced than the Redux and that the voice over is crucial. Also, coming at the film as an adaptation of a literary text, Coppola has done what I think is the most masterful type of adaptation: where the core ideas remain at the heart of the film but are re-worked in new ways that speak back to the original text. Shifting the context from colonial Africa to the Vietnam War works very well, capturing the bizarreness of the US presence in Vietnam (all drugs, sex & rock n roll of it) in different yet similar ways to the surreal presence of the nattily dressed but perspiring Europeans waiting for rivets along the banks of the Congo River. Martin Sheen, heart attack and all, does a great job showing the almost-but-not-quite disintegration of the American psyche, etc… – too much to say. The narration and the images & camera work make it one of the best anti-war films ever. Although of course Conrad’s othering of the African people is exactly replicated in Coppola’s othering of the Vietnamese people – unintentionally, I suspect… – hence flawed masterpiece.

A great movie – was my first and still my only exposure to Coppola. However, I would stop short of calling it one of the best movies ever, as it is typically bandied about. It is not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination. In this regard, it definitely constitutes “overrated.”