While the first movie was only loosely based on the 'Resident Evil' video game series (the character of Alice is nowhere to be found in any of the games), 'Apocalypse' makes a token effort to incorporate elements taken mainly from 'Resident Evil 3: Nemesis'. We're introduced to game characters Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), the S.T.A.R.S. Special Tactics and Rescue Squad, and the Nemesis monster. Guillory is almost as smoking hot as Jovovich, and is a dead ringer for the animated version of her character. Certain sequences in the movie are taken directly out of the games, and much of the action is shot in a "run-and-gun" style gamers will find familiar.
Unlike the domestic Blu-ray, the German disc contains an Extended Version of the movie that runs 98 minutes, in comparison to the 94-minute theatrical cut. The extended cut incorporates about half of the footage found in the Deleted Scenes section of the Sony Blu-ray release, but also removes some footage from the theatrical version. The changes are unlikely to radically affect a viewer's opinion of the film, neither helping nor hurting it in any significant measure. My first time through, I had a hard time telling the difference. Perhaps the biggest improvement is the removal of some of the flashbacks to the first movie. After seeing the theatrical cut of 'Apocalypse', I commented to a friend that Eric Mabius should have received an above-the-title credit on movie posters for the number of times the film reused clips from his role in the previous picture. That isn't the case in this version; he's only shown once or twice now.
Apocalypse Full Movie In English Version Subtitles
Another problem that American viewers will find is that all on-screen text such as location identifiers are presented in German text in this version of the movie. It's a minor nuisance, but one that can be rather distracting.
Important Notice: This German 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' disc is one of the first HD DVDs to be flagged with an Image Constraint Token. If your HD DVD player is connected by HDMI to your display, there should be no issue in viewing the movie at its full 1080p resolution. Unfortunately, viewers connected by Component Video will find the image downconverted to 480p Standard Definition. This is extremely disappointing, to say the least.
The German HD DVD includes most of the bonus features from the original DVD release of the movie and the Blu-ray. Unlike the HD DVD for the first film, all of the supplements default to German subtitles that I could not manage to turn off.
Fresh from a successful release of the film in cinemas and on TV in West Africa, this screening will be the UK premiere of the 2022 version in Hausa (with English subtitles) produced by the filmmakers in partnership with Arewa 24 Television in Kano, Nigeria. It will be followed by a short break then a panel discussion chaired by PARC board member Peninah Achieng-Kindberg with director Rob Lemkin and film participants Amina Weira and Ibro Abdou (streamed from Niger) joined by film maker and writer Imruh Bakari and Luke Wentworth from #GladColstonsGone Solidarity Group, Founder CEO of TOPPLE Consultancy.
Apocalypse Now was originally supposed to shoot over a five-month period in 1976 but, famously, the Francis Ford Coppola movie's production became a complete and utter disaster. The documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse details everything that went wrong. Five months of shooting became a year of shooting, sets were destroyed by weather, filming was interrupted by an actual civil war, and Martin Sheen had a near-fatal heart attack on set - just to name a few things. When all was said and done, Coppola had shot over a million feet of film (to put that number into perspective, a fully edited cut of a typical 2-hour movie is roughly 11,000 feet of film). Understandably, it took Coppola and multiple full-time editors years to cut the footage into a presentable final product. The myriad production issues that are part of the true story behind Apocalypse Now's creation are mainly to blame for why so many cuts of the film exist, and why it was 40 years later that Apocalypse Now: Final Cut finally came out.
In 2001, Coppola re-edited Apocalypse Now (much the same way he's done with Godfather III) to put all the sequences he had originally cut out back into it. Titled Apocalypse Now Redux - a retitling convention followed by The Godfather Part 3's Coda cut - Coppola's new cut of the film is widely considered a massive step down from the original. A film's edit can be a delicate thing, and even the smallest changes can radically alter what the movie ultimately is. Apocalypse Now Redux's differences disrupted the original film's ecology and created a bloated, slow, and uneven version of Apocalypse Now that is much worse than the cut audiences were already familiar with.
Another version of Apocalypse Now has floated around over the years: a bootleg copy of the film's first assembly cut. An assembly cut is the very first edit of a film, which features every scene that was shot and is intended only for the creative team to view before they move on to a rough-cut version of the film. Apocalypse Now's assembly cut leaked for a time and was spread around on videotape. It would be one of the longest Francis Ford Coppola movies of all time, coming in at a behemoth 289 minutes long, and it included material not featured in any other cut of the movie. This draft of Apocalypse Now is probably too unwieldy to be considered a good movie, but it is an interesting watch for those so inclined.
While the Apocalypse Now Final Cut is a step up from the Redux, and some consider it on the same level as the original, the first theatrical cut will always be the definitive version of Francis Ford Coppola's classic post-Godfather movie and it is the tightest and most focused edit, though no less bizarre even with the stranger sequences cut out. That being said, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is still a fascinating companion piece to the original and Coppola has made all versions of the film easily available to the public, even packaging the theatrical version and Redux together in DVD releases. Something similar may happen with the final cut as could new restorations of older cuts.
The theatrical cut of Apocalypse Now is the film that audiences fell in love with, and it's what became a classic piece of 1970s American cinema. The existence of the other versions doesn't create competition as to which version is best, but rather serves as an opportunity for audiences to see how much a film can change by taking out, putting in, and rearranging the edited sequences. The hope is that Francis Ford Coppola is finally satisfied with the movie and that there's now a cut of Apocalypse Now he can fully stand behind as the movie he set out to make.
None of Francis Ford Coppola's new movie cuts are short by any means, but they tend to vary in length. The longest version is the film's first assembly, with a runtime of 289 minutes that's full of extremely rough footage. On the other hand, the theatrical cut of Apocalypse Now is the shortest iteration - clocking in at 153 minutes long. It's significantly shorter than its counterparts, even the Final Cut and the Redux version. While the former cut of Apocalypse Now is about 182 minutes long, the latter was 202. As in the case of the definitively better Godfather 3: Coda cut, which trimmed 4 minutes off the original, shorter means better for Apocalypse Now. The theatrical cut is - by far - the best version of this surreal Vietnam War classic.
Just as the original theatrical version is regarded as the best cut of Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Now Redux is generally accepted as the worst. The film still has many strengths, and it does add interesting context to the well-known scenes and story of its predecessor. For many, however, the extended runtime of Redux prevents it from being a real contender with the theatrical release, since the main Apocalypse Now: Redux difference is its additional 49 minutes of material that don't amplify the story but bog it down instead. As an example, the additional scene in which Sheen's Willard takes his team for some hard-earned downtime while getting to know a French family might've seemed important to Coppola for providing some contrast with the rest of Apocalypse Now's oppressive bleakness, but it reduces the heavy impact of the wider film by allowing the audience some respite along with the long-suffering military men. The pacing of Apocalypse Now is already one of the film's more unusual aspects, and Redux draws it out to an unnecessary degree, especially through its more protracted political discussions. While these add depth and timeliness for Redux's admittedly numerous fans, it's called Apocalypse Now and not Apocalypse In 30 Minutes' Time for a reason, and such extensive dialogue throws a wrench in the works of the film's already considerable runtime. Coppola fans love diving into his work, but more isn't always better, and a director can be judged as much by what they exclude from a movie as what audiences see on-screen. Redux missed this point entirely and added "more" scenes instead of "better" scenes.
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse adds another rendezvous to pop culture's present love affair with the undead. As you can guess from the title, this one takes a comedic bend, aiming for that same horror comedy sweet spot that made Zombieland a hit in 2009.The film opens by introducing us to our three Scouts, who are never identified as Boy or Cub for obvious reasons. Troop 264 is comprised of just three friends, high school sophomores Ben (Mud's Tye Sheridan), Carter (Logan Miller), and Augie (Joey Morgan), and their enthusiastic toupeed Scout Leader Rogers (David Koechner). Secretly, Ben and Carter have been talking about leaving the Scouts, which hasn't recruited a new member in ages. Tonight, though, they are sticking around for their nerdy, chubby pal Augie, who is getting his condor badge as part of a camping trip.Ben and the randy Carter do decide they'll sneak out in the night to crash a secret senior party they've been tipped off to. But the night has other plans for them, when they sneak into local strip club Lawrence of Alabia and are treated to a dance from a blood-spilling stripper. As if the title didn't make it clear, the pals are facing a zombie apocalypse, something foretold by a prologue, in which a "Black Widow"-singing lab janitor (Blake Anderson) raises the wrath of zombie, and another scene, in which Ben and Carter drive into a whitetail deer, only to have it disappear.The two teens, their overweight pal (wise to their plans and hurt by them), and a shotgun-wielding high school dropout turned cocktail waitress (Sarah Dumont) try to brave the night full of ravenous, reasonably-paced flesh eaters and find safety along with military called in to contain, quarantine, and evacuate.Scouts Guide has a good sense of humor about it. And it occasionally hits its comic marks, with fun use of songs like Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and Britney Spears' "Baby...One More Time." But after a promising start, the movie devolves too frequently into typical modern horror traps, relying heavily on over-the-top blood, violence, and grossness that must have made obtaining an R rating from the MPAA an uphill battle.That design puts Scouts Guide among the rare breed of movies that are teen-oriented but rated R. Most of those, from The Breakfast Club to Superbad, have held value for adults, who could relate by recalling their own high school experiences, but Scouts more resembles Project X, a movie that would strike even many college students as sophomoric.While Scouts Guide bombed in theaters, grossing just $3.7 million domestic on a $15 M production budget, you can't chalk up the failure strictly to courting an audience of 17 and 18-year-olds who could legally buy tickets. The movie's theatrical reception became something of a case study for Paramount Pictures, who used this and, a week earlier, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, to try shortening the theatrical window. That's a touchy topic with exhibitors, who have resisted change even as the shelf life of most movies has rapidly devolved to just a few weeks.When the studio announced plans to make their two fall horror movies available on VOD just seventeen days after their theatrical debuts, many major theater chains (Carmike, Cinemark, and Regal) refused to screen the movie at all. Other chains (AMC, National Amusements, Alamo Drafthouse, and Canada's Cineplex) agreed to Paramount's experiment, but they could only give Scouts Guide a theater count of 1,509, around half of what a typical nationwide release secures these days.Paramount waited just over two months after the Halloween weekend debut to bring Scouts Guide to physical media, releasing it last week in a single-disc DVD and the two-disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD combo pack reviewed here. 2ff7e9595c
Comments