Years and years from now, when Coppola’s budget and his problems have long been forgotten, “Apocalypse” will still stand, I think, as a grand and grave and insanely inspired gesture of filmmaking.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 23, 2024

It's precisely in the last 25 minutes that Apocalypse Now dissolves into gibberish. I've seen the film three times with two different endings, and neither ending has been satisfactory. That's because the problem with the picture isn't at its very end.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 23, 2024

Some critics fault Coppola for not delivering a seamless, flawless film. But this is to misperceive and misread the film in a crucial way. The film by definition couldn't be flawless. It attempts too much.

| Sep 23, 2024

Coppola has used the Hollywood genius, which is for films of action and adventure, and built into it something for which Hollywood usually has small talent, namely a philosophical meditation.

| Sep 23, 2024

Some ultimate and flawless perfection may have been missed. But as a noble use of the medium and as a timeless expression of a national anguish, it towers over anything that has been attempted by an American film maker in a very long time.

| Sep 23, 2024

Apocalypse Now is emotionally obtuse and intellectually empty. It is not so much an epic account of a grueling war as an incongruous, extravagant monument to artistic self-defeat.

| Sep 23, 2024

A sour, sad muddle. The battle scenes are arresting, if you're into battle scenes. But oh, that dreary philosophy that wrecks the final 30 minutes.

| Sep 23, 2024

One of the very few must-see movies of 1979. It's brilliant, beautiful, thought-provoking and superbly acted, a horror movie and an adventure story, an important Vietnam War document.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 23, 2024

Although he is far too fond pink smoke and fire, Mr. Coppola's control of actors and scene, finely photographed by Vittorio Storaro and backed by Wagnerian-like music, is never in doubt -- until the final stages.

| Sep 23, 2024

Flaws and all, the genius of Coppola and his team can still enrich, stimulate, depress, provoke, horrify, probe. The faces will burn in memory; the places as well. Since film is a visual medium, that, perhaps, is enough.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 23, 2024

The resulting disappointment is a harsher blow than usual. What has gone before is so good that you passionately want the whole thing to be terrific. Until the last quarter spoils it, Apocalypse Now is simply one of the greatest movies ever made.

| Sep 23, 2024

The best motion picture of the year. "Apocalypse," so powerful that it thunders with intensity, also shimmers in its own dramatic beauty, repulses in its brutal horror, and mesmerizes in its towering acting performances.

| Sep 23, 2024

To say that Apocalypse Now fails is to say that a man who comes within two strides of the peak of Mt. Everest, and then falls, is a failure. It's that kind of film -- monumental, up until the last half hour or so.

| Sep 23, 2024

Coppola's filmmaking skills are enough to enable Apocalypse Now to achieve, if not ultimate greatness, then certainly that singular quality which alone unites all the great movies.

| Sep 23, 2024

The results are nothing less than awesome -- the movie frequently has the menacing visual clarity and the morbid luminescence of a De Chirico deserted plaza -- and, besides all this, the film is very funny, too.

| Sep 23, 2024

Apocalypse Now is far from perfect. It has as many vices as virtues. But the virtues are as stunning and passionate as anything you're ever likely to see on screen.

| Sep 23, 2024

Without the underpinning strength of some conviction, it remains a fitfully brilliant film instead of the work of art one had keenly anticipated for years.

| Sep 23, 2024

The film is like the Vietnam War it represents: enormously costly, full of noise and bloodshed but, for the West anyway, achieving little.

| Sep 23, 2024

Small wonder that Coppola could not decide how to end the film, even as late as the Cannes Festival in May. The ending on which he has settled is as good as any, and as irrelevant to the ambitions of this majestic, spoiled enterprise.

| Sep 23, 2024

Yes, there are passages of horrifying beauty in Apocalypse Now, but it's a heavy, self-important work, redundant and undramatic -- more like a bad trip than art.

| Sep 22, 2024