This is the opening night at the 'Check The Gate' season at the Prince Charles, dedicated to presenting films on film that will run at the cinema from 9th July to August 20th.
Check the Gate is a collaborative celebration of the big screen celluloid experience with a touring programme produced by some of the nation’s finest independent programmers, journalists and film fans. Capital Celluloid, Cigarette Burns Cinema, The Badlands Collective, The Bechdel Test Fest, Tim Robey (The Telegraph), Tom Huddleston (Time Out), Sandra Hebron (National Film & Television School) and the team at The Prince Charles Cinema are a few of the curators who have scoured Park Circus’ extensive collection of film prints to compile a diverse programme united by a common passion for film screenings.
Time Out review:
The central storyline – Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is tasked with tracking down and executing Marlon Brando’s rogue Colonel Kurtz – is essentially a slender thread upon which Francis Ford Coppola and his co-writer John Milius hang a number of increasingly wild asides. But these brief, brutal and seemingly unconnected incidents work together to drive the film forward: in their very randomness, they build a picture of a war being fought without strategy or clear intent, making Willard’s mission simultaneously clearer and more morally meaningless.
In contrast to Coppola’s earlier ‘The Godfather Part II’ and ‘The Conversation’, ‘Apocalypse Now’ isn’t a conspicuously ‘smart’ film: literary references aside, there are no intellectual pretensions here. Instead, as befits both its tortuous hand-to-mouth genesis and the devastating conflict it reflects, this is a film of pure sensation, dazzling audiences with light and noise, laying bare the stark horror – and unimaginable thrill – of combat. And therein lies the true heart of darkness: if war is hell and heaven intertwined, where does morality fit in? And, in the final apocalyptic analysis, will any of it matter?
Tom Huddleston
Here (and above) is the trailer.
Check the Gate is a collaborative celebration of the big screen celluloid experience with a touring programme produced by some of the nation’s finest independent programmers, journalists and film fans. Capital Celluloid, Cigarette Burns Cinema, The Badlands Collective, The Bechdel Test Fest, Tim Robey (The Telegraph), Tom Huddleston (Time Out), Sandra Hebron (National Film & Television School) and the team at The Prince Charles Cinema are a few of the curators who have scoured Park Circus’ extensive collection of film prints to compile a diverse programme united by a common passion for film screenings.
Time Out review:
The central storyline – Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is tasked with tracking down and executing Marlon Brando’s rogue Colonel Kurtz – is essentially a slender thread upon which Francis Ford Coppola and his co-writer John Milius hang a number of increasingly wild asides. But these brief, brutal and seemingly unconnected incidents work together to drive the film forward: in their very randomness, they build a picture of a war being fought without strategy or clear intent, making Willard’s mission simultaneously clearer and more morally meaningless.
In contrast to Coppola’s earlier ‘The Godfather Part II’ and ‘The Conversation’, ‘Apocalypse Now’ isn’t a conspicuously ‘smart’ film: literary references aside, there are no intellectual pretensions here. Instead, as befits both its tortuous hand-to-mouth genesis and the devastating conflict it reflects, this is a film of pure sensation, dazzling audiences with light and noise, laying bare the stark horror – and unimaginable thrill – of combat. And therein lies the true heart of darkness: if war is hell and heaven intertwined, where does morality fit in? And, in the final apocalyptic analysis, will any of it matter?
Tom Huddleston
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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