Easy Rider

I picked this movie up from the library. My dad, being a motorcycle enthusiast, always said that this was one of the best movies ever made. And he subscribed to Easy Rider magazine, which always had pictures of naked chicks laying on custom bikes, so the movie had to be great, right?

Easy Rider was released in 1969 and stars Peter Fonda as Wyatt and Dennis Hopper as Billy, 2 motorcycle riding free-spirited guys who just landed some drugs in L.A. and are headed to New Orleans during Mardi Gras to sell it and make it big, man. Fonda, who wants to rock your Honda, is a pretty cool guy. I'd like a pair of his sunglasses, though being almost a full foot shorter than him and much less hair, I probably wouldn't get the same effect. He rides the bike with the American flag painted on the tear-drop tank, the ape hanger handlebars, and he wears the Captain America-type helmet.

Hopper, on the other hand, could easily pass as David Crosby with the long hair, handle-bar mustache, and skin jacket with the fringes, man. He rode the flame-painted bike with the short-bar handles. man.

As the 2 get so somewhere in the desert, they pick up some hippy dude and make their way to his hippy ranch. This is where the city and suburbanite kids go when they want to be one with nature, man. And smoke dope, man. And free love, man.

Soon, the group heads towards Louisiana where they meet up with Jack Nicholson whose playing George Hanson. He's a hippy alcoholic lawyer who rides on with them. They make it to New Orleans, but find that the folk in the South ain't to happy to see them 'Yankee queers'. Unable to get food at the restaurant, they park outside of town and sleep for the night. The southern redneck sheriff and his posse beat the crap out of them, killing Nicholson with a machete.

They decide to get to New Orleans, send off his belongings and meet up with some hookers that he recommended. The movie then goes on this 10 minute drug-induced tangent. I'm sure my dad enjoyed this part in 1969, but me watching it in my family room on my leather couch while eating a bowl of cherries, it probably didn't have the same meaning to me. One dude is talking to a statue of Mary, one of the chicks gets naked and is crying and saying she's sorry. It's all very weird. I've never tried LSD, but I image that if you did, this is what it would be like.

(Spoiler in this paragraph)

Finally, the next day Fonda and Hopper head out of town with plans to go to Florida and live off of the money that they earned selling their drugs in New Orleans. However, while heading down Highway 105 just north of Krotz Springs, Louisiana, some rednecks pull up and antagonize Hopper. He gives them the finger, so they shoot him and he crashes. The reds keep driving and Fonda circles around to help Billy. Fonda then decides to go run for help. As he's riding down the road, the honky-tonk southern rednecks are now coming the other way. The shoot at Fonda, hit the gas tank and the bike explodes, supposedly killing him. The movie then pans away from the explosion and rises into the sky, showing the road, the fire, and the mighty Mississippi.

(End of Spoiler)

Now, Easy Rider is considered a cult movie and a representation of rebelling against the establishment in the 1960's, something that many did, my dad included, I'm sure. The majority of the movie in nonverbal with classic rock playing in the background (though it wasn't classic rock at the time. I think they just called it rock.) So if you like Steppenwolf, The Band, Crosby Stills, Nash, and Young, The Byrds, and Jimi Hendrix, you'll love just listening to the movie.

What this boils down to is that I'm not sold on the movie. It's not a bad movie, but I just don't see the cult-factor. But then again, I didn't live through the 60's. The movie is Rated R for nudity, cursing, violence, and drugs and it is a little over 90 minutes long, which was good since I didn't start watching it until 10pm. With all due respect and apologies to the baby boomer generation who were hippies, I give this movie 3 stars. The movie is part of Americana and you can see it's influence in many things. One example I found was in the movie Ghost Rider with Nicolas Cage. Peter Fonda played the devil. Cage was riding an exact replica of Fonda's bike in Easy Rider. Fonda comments, "Nice bike." Now I get it!!!

Apocalypse Now

I borrowed Apocalypse Now from a friend. This is the 1979 Viet-Nam classic that stars the who's-who of the 1970's and 80's cinema.

Per typical Francis Ford Copula-style, this is not your average Viet-Nam war movie. When we think of Viet-Nam movies, we now think of Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, and Platoon. This movie is more about being set in Viet-Nam during the war and less about the war.

The movie stars Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin Willard, who could easily be confused as a young Charlie Sheen, but not a young Emilio Estevez. He is a soldier who specializes in secret missions. He won't even tell the general which missions he was on. Or, in the words of scientology's craziest psychopath - Tom Cruise, he could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you.

Sheen is sent on a mission up a river into Cambodia (but that's a secret). He's going to use extreme prejudice and eliminate the unstable Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). He's holding out in Cambodia with some sort of native dope smoking love camp. And we all know that the government needs to eliminate dope smoking love camps.

The majority of the movie focuses on Sheen's daydreams and the ride up the river. Along the way he runs into the irascible surf-nut Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, where you see the infamous Ride of the Vulcary attack on the river village. If you know anything about this movie, then you know the quote, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." This is Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore at his finest moment. This is right before he sent some soldiers out on surf boards to check out the waves - this during a firefight.

Also making appearances in the movie are Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburn, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper (at least he wasn't selling retirement services on the beach this time), and R. Lee Ermey (gunny from Mail Call and Full Metal Jacket).

Overall, the movie is very artistic and less action-oriented as I seem to recall. The audience is supposed to be intrigued by the thoughts and pains of Captain Willard. Light is an important element along with extended sections of hypnotising music and sounds. You can interpret this to mean that they will play songs by The Doors. This would explain why Apocalypse Now also earned 2 Oscars, one for Best Sound and the other for Best Cinemotography, though different from my version of cinematography. I watched this movie when I was in my early teens and thought it was pretty cool. I am assuming I thought it was cool because of all the gunship fighting and the potty mouth. Being less in tune with the intended deepness of the movie gave me a different interpretation of the movie then than what I get now.

That being said, I think I would prefer to stick with my teenage impression of the movie. I'm less inclined to like artistic movies, unless, of course, there's good cinematography.

Apocalypse Now is rated R for violence, lots of it, profanity, lots of it, and adult situations. The movie three days long, though only 153 minutes if you watch it straight through to the end, a formidable task indeed.

I gave Apocalypse Now 4 stars. The movie had a great impact on moviedom and starting giving the audience a different view of what it was like in Viet-Nam. I believe it spawned other movies like the ones mentioned earlier. Though some may say that The Deer Hunter inspired Apocalypse Now. You should watch this movie not so much because it's a good movie, but because it is a part of Americana.