re: Roger Ebert's 10 greatest films of all time

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If I hated Heart of Darkness (which I did), should I still give Apocalypse now a go?

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Hmmmm . . . sure. I mean, it's worth a shot. The cinematic part of it is damned impressive. And hell it's not like it's going to cost you an arm and a leg.

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The one movie I've always wanted to see that I've never made it around to is Casablanca.

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Watch it immediately.

Ebert just hit a 10/10 troll on the M/TVB with the Tree of Life nom

and god bless him for that.

#TreeofLife4Lyfe

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The one movie I've always wanted to see that I've never made it around to is Casablanca.


Watch it immediately.

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This always makes me want to watch the movie again...Casablanca is epic in its story.

LINK

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If I hated Heart of Darkness (which I did), should I still give Apocalypse now a go?

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I've never seen Heart of Darkness but I loved Apocalypse Now when I saw it in the theater as a 19 year old and still love it. It was amazing and a true work of art in 1979.

I do prefer the short version without the French Plantation scene and other stuff I thought the film didn't necessarily needed.

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Tree of Life is one of the best movies I have ever seen, and I went in expecting to hate it.

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Tree of Life is what I picture Billy Walsh's first movie at Sundance would've been like.

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I think you'll appreciate how the movie mimics the book, and builds on it with an amazing vision considering the source material. I hated the book too. It's a "wtf" movie that you'd have to watch a couple times to fully appreciate. I still don't even really like the movie as a whole, but I love certain scenes

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RE: Heart of Darkness

I think that's about the only truly impressive (intentionally crafted) part of the movie - iconic scenes with great visuals. The setting of the film being a theater of war has actually prevented more people from noticing these interesting scenes stand before a cupboard largely empty of meaning - or at least empty of the sort of meaning that Coppola comfortably intended.

It is clear IMO from what was recorded (again I refer to the documentary on the making of Hearts of Darkness) and has been since written (refer to many of Coppola's interviews on the subject) any meaning in the film is probably close to accidental as the actors and directors improvised endlessly amidst the influence of drugs and alcohol and Coppola struggled with how to write a meaningful ending amidst the chaos and the bloated self important thing that was an aging Brando.

You can argue that this film resembling something with anything like a design is either the product of the viewer's desire to project meaning into a film or the ability of the subconscious (Coppola) to create meaning when the conscious mind was pretty much freaking about a lack of such (Coppola again).

But even so, I thought it was clear when you watched him grappling with teh script and other disasters that Coppola was trying for a more significant meaning than war is crazy and bad. He should have been familiar with critics such as Mencken who argued the correct interpretation of Conrad's book was something along the lines of a rejection of any deeper morality in life as Mencken argues below.

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"The exact point of the story of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness is that it is pointless. Kurtz's death is as meaningless as his life. The moral of such a story is a wholesale negation of all morals."

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But that's just not satisfying because it flies in the face of what Coppola alleged were his goals:

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"I wanted it to go further, to the moral issues that are behind all wars," reads his program note; "I, like Captain Willard, was moving up a river in a faraway jungle, looking for answers…"

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While I don't really dislike Roger Ebert I always gave more credence to Siskel's reviews.

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Leauxgan

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If Tree of Life and Drive had a baby, what would it be called?

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I have an urgent want to see this

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I have it downloading right now. Honestly even though I like Malick I haven't really been interested in watching this but since it just so polarizing here on this board makes it more tempting to see which side I'll fall on.