"Apocalypse Now is sort of a fever dream of a movie. When you watch the documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, you suddenly understand what everybody went through while they were making that thing, and what a huge, unruly beast they got involved with, not even knowing what the movie was going to be. Everybody just decided to be a part of it even though it was just this evolving daily disaster. That being said, it is an amazing tribute to the film, that the beautiful cohesive piece that it is, is what emerged from that craziness. So many scenes that are just so memorable, the amazing lines, and how it just totally transformed war movies because it would have those incredibly realistic moments but also, you know, the huge “Ride of the Valkyries” helicopter attack. And it’s amazing that it worked at all, you know, besides the fact that it actually managed to work beautifully."

"One has to love a film that has for its subtitle An Introduction to Anthropology. This hardscrabble tale of two blockheads dedicated to making a yen in the flesh trade is the most congruent homage to Laurel and Hardy one could dream of. Everything falls apart around them, but they keep forging on. The film does, too, ratcheting up craziness along the way: a carp in a fish tank—the reincarnation of a deceased husband—somersaults to show its disapproval of the widow’s sexual antics with her new beau; a depressed middle-aged woman jumps on the windowsill of her hospital room and masturbates, to the great joy of a crowd of workers that seems to have just exited the Lumière factory; a crumpled pornographer indulges in a bit of voyeurism that turns into a lesson in the use of angles in cinema, etc., etc.; and finally an ending in the waters off Osaka’s harbor that leaves one howling with laughter. All of it is filmed with an aggressive, unrelenting elegance that puts the viewer through rigorous ocular gymnastics. If you thought that Ozu was the alpha and the omega of the visual possibilities offered by Japanese home architecture, Imamura’s truculent epic will open your eyes anew."