Re-watching this movie thirty-two years since my first time - I was there on opening weekend - I'm a little better prepared to deal with the experience. This is a beautiful movie - the Blu-Ray is stunning - but its pedigree as a Vietnam war movie is a bit more dubious. As an update of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" it fares a little better. Using a phantasmagorical version of the Vietnam war as a backdrop for a journey into madness works well, as the outward insanity of war becomes the inner war of Captain Willard, trying to gauge whether his target, Colonel Kurtz, is indeed insane.

I recommend Hearts of Darkness, a documentary about the making of this movie, as a fitting bookend, as it chronicles Coppola's own journey into personal madness and darkness while apparently fighting the universe to get Apocalypse Now made.