Customer Reviews

Apocalypse Now: A Bloomsbury Movie Guide (Bloomsbury Movie Guides)

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I strongly disagree with one reviewer who said this is hardly worth buying. My advice is: buy it - you'll love it.

OK, I'm probably biased in that I tend to enjoy the 'encyclopaedia' format of books like this. I read one entry, then follow the links to another, and another until I'm totally immersed in the arcane and amazing information on offer. Linear readers might find it a bit annoying, I guess. However, even for them, this book is well worth reading. It's an essential companion to Apocalypse Now, and has certainly enhanced my viewing of the film. I love Karl French's terse, opinionated style.

My only complaint is that with a tiny bit more effort the references could have been complete enough to make this a useful academic work as well as the popular paperback it already is. For example, I would have loved to follow up Nguyen Khac Vien's essay 'Apocalypse Now Viewed by a Vietnamese', quoted on p. 230, but couldn't since it doesn't appear in the bibliography. Having said that, there are plenty of leads here that I *am* going to follow up.

While French's encyclopedic approach to the story is a bit limiting, overall this is a good introduction to one of the greatest war movies ever made. The mythology surrounding "Apocalypse Now" and its chaotic making could consume several books and has spawned one brilliant documentary. While a chronological telling of the story and more indepth examination of the personalities would have been ideal, this book serves as a good collection of the essential information one would like to know about the film and its genesis. One good feature of this book is its ability to point to certain aspects of the film that may or may not be links or homages to other movies and books. It is literate in its sensibilities and the prose is very crisp. A very good read for the curious moviegoer. I'm anxious to look at the three other movie guides in this Bloomsbury series.

This is my favorite all time Vietnam war movie - so naturally I would have to read something like this on the background of the movie. This is of course, a cult favorite even for us Vietnam veterans. The orginal film left out some important elements in the telling of the story - so it was great to see the later version come out in DVD and video.

I still love the smell of naplam in the morning and I love this book as well. It works. Although there is a mis-quote in the book (or two) - over-all, I rate this as good and entertaining information. It is not enlightening or profound nor does it deliver some words of wisdom - but it is what it is and that is very much okay!

This first book in Bloomsbury's movie guide series is, so far, the best of the lot. Full of interesting and often hilarious insights and observations, this A to Z guide to the film actually works fairly well as a straight-through read. I particularly enjoyed the references to the place of water buffalo in classical dramatic structure.

On page 7 French quotes Kilgore as saying `I've been trying to forget about you' to Willard, but I am sure he actually says `Na Trang forget all about you?' He is implying that Willard's superiors have forgotten about him and his mission. I think this misquoting is important - French implies that Kilgore doesn't care about Willard or his mission but in fact Kilgore is trying to emphasise that their military superiors don't care about them, or anyone in the field really. This is why he cares more for surfing than war.

phil_swanwick@hotmail.com The author's dictionary format did not suit the ambiguous and anti-establishment setup of the movie at all. Besides the formatting, it does include some ineresting and sometimes deep analysis of the plot, characters and underlying principles. A solid review, but inadequate as a profesional work and hardly worth buying