14. Apocalypse Now (1979)

War sucks, and no film has ever done as good a job showing that as Apocalypse Now. In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz has lost his mind in the middle of the Vietnam War. He’s commanding troops with the will of a dictator, ordering them to do crazy things, all the while being completely separated from his chain of command. It has to stop, and Captain Willard is the assassin for the job. Willard, in the course of the war, has become somewhat insane as well, and the only thing he can think to do with his time is fight. He knows nothing else, and the war is always with him. The insanity of war is exemplified in the exchange Willard has with a random soldier in the midst of a nighttime assault by the Vietcong. Willard asks the soldier who’s in charge, and the man's only response is “Ain’t you?” Vietnam was a senseless war, and Apocalypse Now shows this in its entirety, what happens when a man loses himself in blood. Also, stay away from Apocalypse Now Redux… it’s genuinely awful. All I can remember is that Willard was in some random colonial house talking with a bunch of French people about politics for an hour. It was painful, stick with the original.