It works really well, and stays so good, I think, because so little of it is connected to Vietnam in the specifics. It's set in the Vietnam war, but the "war" is so generalized it could be anything from WWI to Afghanistan (which, yeah, it's based on Heart of Darkness, so it's of course not based on Vietnam whatsoever).

He had a few good dramatic roles in the 80s. Witness, Mosquito Coast, Presumed Innocent are all interesting and deep dramatic roles. Then, Regarding Henry, and that was that.

I love how, in Apocalypse Now, he is the actual officer who gives Willard the command to "Terminate the Colonel's command", and he stammers and has to keep clearing his through throughout.

Those are very good to great movies, but…c'mon, the Godfather II is a towering classic, and the Conversation is one of the greatest New Hollywood movies ever.

Wasn't it the Cotton Club that ruined him? Apocalypse Now set it in motion, but the Cotton Club really wreck him financially, and once you don't have money…well, you don't have the money. I don't know how incentive he was to get back into the Hollywood system after that.

This is probably my favorite movie of all time. It's sublime for so many reasons, and it works as a few different 'kind' of movies. Exciting, tense 70s techno-thriller, sure! Downcast character study, absolutely! New Hollywood downbeat ending drama with true and unwillinable moral conflict, certainly!

He's also really great in a similar role in Apocalypse Now. For a guy with such an easy leading man Charisma, he was also oddly great as a flunky for large, bureaucratic organizations.

Impossible. As the article said, this movie, which is maybe my favorite movie ever, lost to ANOTHER movie of his, Godfather II, which is an unassailable super-classic. If anyone had put out either of these movies at any point in their career, it is a masterpiece.

So they wouldn't leave fingerprints on the guns, I thought. Also it looks "neat"

Your loss buddy. I have a great nootropic stack that I just crossed your name off of :(

A wonderful subversion. Saving the princess who seems to BARELY need saving. Then, later, Jabba enslaves her, and then she chokes the SHIT out of Jabba.

She had cardiac arrest, not a massive heart attack. Honestly, she's been dead before the airplane landed. An airplane is a pretty cruddy place to go, but cardiac arrest is one of the better ways…you get lightheaded, dizzy, your heart flutters, stops, you pass out, and that is pretty much it.

That is an unbelievably cruel and mean-spirited movie. It's awesome, but the deaths are routinely hideous and nasty.

Mola Ram is Indiana Jones best villain though. Better than Nazis, Nazi stooges or, I dunno, a psychic Russian. Mola Ram is a heart-stealing, cackling, black-magic force of darkness.

Cameron gets a lot of shit for writing clunky dialogue, but the story beats and structure of his movies are so slick. They're all built so well and develop to such a thrilling climax.

Sarah Conner between the two movies is an amazing transformation, mostly psychologically. You get to see what would be (well, maybe not a fully realistic), but what an absolutely shocking thing it would be for an average person to go through the events of an action sci-fi movie.

You know, you could attempt to explain what you mean to a fairly receptive audience here, but you're coming across as extraordinarily condescending to everyone. Do you understand that? You're attempting to, well, push away everyone who doesn't immediately grasp what you are saying.

Ah, I see now. It makes so much more sense in how fully ingrained it is. It helps that it is so, well, good, and visually delightful, but the art film aspects that you mention are absolutely correct: We're in space, there's a battle, a all-black cloaked thing (a robot? a cyborg?) kidnaps a princess and then we are…

Could you list what you mean about it not being standard narrative? The first act is pretty weird, with having side characters (the droids) running things (and in a pretty goofy way) until Luke gets involved, and even then, its STILL not clear how things are coming together.

Cut and paced so well! and the movie is unreal. It's like watching a dream come to life. It's amazing how the plot progresses through completely insane beats that involve a psychic man-baby alien thing, a trip to mars, ancient martian technology, a Martian dictator, a Mutant uprising on mars, a possible Matrix style…