Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse is one of those rare, strange, magnificent things: a making-of documentary that approaches the greatness of the film itself. The movie under the microscope, of course, is Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s brilliant 1979 meditation on Vietnam.

In Darkness, directors Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper show us the actual descent into madness that took place behind the scenes. For film buffs, watching this doc—now out in a new special-edition DVD—is like an orgy on ecstasy. Coppola bickers with his actors, and the film offers quintessential moments in the careers of several of the finest screen actors America has ever produced. There’s Martin Sheen, getting drunk to create his famous breakdown scene early in the film; Marlon Brando, arriving in the Philippines for the shoot, charging a million a week and squabbling with Coppola about nuances in his character; and Dennis Hopper, unable to remember his lines because of the drug-induced fog that surrounds him. Sheen would suffer a massive heart attack, and after this we see Coppola’s pragmatic instinct in action. How, he asks furiously, could this have been leaked to the trade papers? Doesn’t anyone know this could lead to the production being shut down?

There’s a sadness that sets in as we watch the tortured Coppola attempt to make the movie happen. Apocalypse Now, along with Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980), marked the end of what was arguably Hollywood’s last great period. The Reagan era and increasing corporate ownership of the studios have meant movies really aren’t what they used to be.

The Best of the Colbert Report is now out on DVD. I love the man who once famously comforted George W. Bush by telling him not to worry about his bad poll numbers, as “reality has a liberal bias.” But Colbert works best on a daily (or nightly) basis—just like the news programs he’s spoofing—not so much on a DVD compilation.

by MATTHEW HAYS