Apocalypse Now (R, 1979)

Though I've lived a short life of only 18 years, I've seen around 700 films, especially romantic comedies because my mom loves them and I wasn't smart enough to leave the room for I had nothing better to do. After many years of not being allowed to watch rated R movies, I'm doing a heavy overdose now that I'm old enough. After all of my viewing experience, this is probably the best movie I've seen yet, better than Star Wars or The Dark Knight or any other film. It is visceral, brilliant, and rises to the occasion on every level. The other truth is, this film is not for children. The plot is extremely amoral, everything is dark, people are killed and a water buffalo is truly slain before the camera's eyes, and people take drugs all of the time. You would have to be a bad parent to let anyone under age 17 watch this film. I prefer the Redux edition, which contains more sexual parts than the original, which of course makes it worse in age appropriateness. I find this film to be one of the pinnacles in movies, but I can't seen anyone young watching this at all.

Really good war film, and the last scene isn't that graphic, as you don't see most of it. Suitable for 13+

Excellent war film. Apocalypse Now illustrates the horror, the absurdity, and the futility of war, but most important it portrays war's damaging psychological effects. A descent too far inward thus becomes a descent into hell—a hell brought on by the metaphorical journey upriver. The atrocities of war have caused the each character to lose all sense of self and to become an other, an empty shell that can no longer recognize itself or, like Kurtz, discriminate along moral lines. But while Apocalypse Now implies that war effectively displaces the self and the rights and wrongs of morality, its conclusion suggests that the soul is capable of rejecting such darkness.