Watching this new transfer and cut of Apocalypse at BFI's IMAX was like watching it for the first time;

Rating: 10/10 (7 February 2020)

It was surprising, shocking, frightening and hypnotic; I was amazed that the film played out completely different to how I remembered it. It really is a masterclass on delivering something esoteric and meaningful and really the quintessential (as it should be) journey into the Heat of Darkness, and yet also still utterly and completely a movie, and not an experiment or a passion piece so awkward as to not be able to enjoy it just as a movie. It strikes a perfect equilibrium and harmony with its message, cultural zeitgeist, its creators (Milius and Coppola), and its inspired material.
Regarding the image, it's mind-blowing, the rich colour-timing pops and yet is seamless, and the quality of the image is used to tremendous effect on those close-ups, where the actors are looking right into you.
Regarding the cut itself I almost knocked half a star off for the plantation scene; a scene that is fine on home video, but on the silver screen breaks the pace; stalling the way on to the ending, it provides commentary to something best left to stings of dialogue and visuals and editing instead of table scenes, and then culminates with a cringe-inducing score while Willard is seduced by the French Woman. A brief dinner scene showing the generational opinions and then the opium scene would have still held the essence instead of feeling completely out of place. There's also a palpable smidge too much of Duvall.
Watching it this time, the sound effects were so ahead of their time, they are perfect, and I've never really heard the score for this movie before, this time I thought it was sumptuous; a mix of dreamlike and grounded, somewhere else; modern and timeless.
There was a pre-filmed QnA afterwards with Soderbergh which was nice to watch, but alerted me to the excellent and enlightening Coppola/Miulius 2008 interview that can now be found on YouTube which made me appreciate the collaboration and humility of the filmmakers even more.
Apocalypse is unique, it's perfect, it's powerful and important in both the human heart and cinema. It's a masterclass and the scope, amount of extras, breadth of sets, intensity of the realism; of it all speaks to a bygone era in a powerful way; the way helicopters land so close to us in a way they never could now without CGI, the destruction that connects us to the destruction of the American machine during Vietnam, it's out of this world.