[Resident Evil Live Action Film Retrospective] #2: Resident Evil Apocalypse (2004)

Last time we left Alice waking up in the hospital of a zombie infested Raccoon City, grabbing a shotgun and heading for the ruined streets for sequels’ sake.

So obviously this was setup to loosely mirror the plot and setting of Resident Evil 2, while keeping the Alice and Red Queen subplots, meaning you could expect Alice to wander around Raccon City and tag along canon named characters called to intervene on the pandemic situation of the city and trying to escape it when they hear of Umbrella’s plan to just nuke it all.

And you would assume correctly, though it’s made a bit confusing as she’s instead joined by Jill Valentine and Carlos Olivera, the protagonists of RE 3, and they’re followed by the Nemesis mutant of RE 3 as well, which is even odder when you remember RE 3 is basically taking place at the same time of RE 2, let alone that RE 3 was originally conceived as a spin-off entry.

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[Resident Evil Live Action Film Retrospective] #1: Resident Evil (2002)

Its 2002. The latest mainline Resident Evil games are RE Zero and Code Veronica (plus Gun Survivor 2 released the previous year), and the remake of the first RE game was coming a week later, but something else related debuts, and it’s the first feature lenght, live action film adaptation of the franchise, produced by Constantin Films via Sony’s Screen Gems label, with direction and script by Paul W.S. Anderson, previously known for the 1995 live action Mortal Kombat movie, and cult sci fi horror film Event Horizon.

So he already dabbled in the early wave of videogames films for the big screen, and fittingly enough the Resident Evil live action film would be his legacy, for the most part anyway, enough that eventually Capcom would collaborate with him again to make another film based on one of their IP, in this case one that started as a niche title but launched the popularity of “hunting games” and eventually became one of their biggest franchises, Monster Hunter.

But back to the zombies with what is now the first of the Resident Evil live action film series, and not even the only RE film series, as we looked upon the CG animated one some years ago.

In terms of what “Resident Evil 2002” it plucks from the games…. let’s consider the first one for reference, and it clearly a case where people from Capcom had a list of things that had to be in the movie to make it Resident Evil”, but never specified how and why these things should exist in this new continuity, because Paul W.S. Anderson clearly had little interest in making faithful adaptations of the games’ plot, and did its own thing, playing fairly loose with the videogame canon, which was reviled as it’s often now but was less lamented upon, at least compared to modern standards of backlash, “outrage” and rampant reactions from the internets.

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A Resident Evil live-action film retrospective has risen from the grave

Starting about now, a retrospective about all the Resident Evil live-action films released so far!

Pinocchi-O-Rama #9: The Adventures Of Buratino (1975)

For this month’s issue of Pinocchi-O-Rama, we’re going back to a “combo mix” of sorts.

We’ve seen live action adaptations, we’ve seen adaptations of the russian version of the novel, The Adventures Of Buratino/The Golden Key, we’ve seen musical adaptations.

So yeah, time to squish them all together for this 1975’s forgotten cult classic Soviet live action children musical TV movie adaptation of Buratino/Pinocchio shenanigans, made by Belarusfilm and released as a 2-parter, because media trends are cyclical after all.

Thankfully there’s no waiting for the climax as it’s almost a 50 yo adaptation, a fairly obscure one that thankfully can be found with hardcoded english subtitles on Youtube (fittingly spit in 2 parts, as well), and at the time of posting still is.

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Pinocchi-O-Rama #8: Pinocchio AKA The Adventures Of Pinocchio (1911)

For the record, i absolutely detest how more than 60% (to be kind) of these Pinocchio adaptations are often called or retitled for international releases as “The Adventures Of Pinocchio”.

I get why, but still, at least opt for simply “Pinocchio”, makes it easier to search for even if we still have to put the decade after the title to avoid confusion, not that it would help too much because “Pinocchio (’11)” we’re talking about today was not made in “2011”, but the other “’11”, as in 1911.

We’re going back in time as hard as we can this time, since this is the very first movie adaptation of Collodi’s novel, an italian production as one could assume, and given its 112 years old, its no wonder it has been considered a lost film for decades, then in 1994 a negative was found, a 30-minute version resurfaced in 2022, and in 2018 we got a 50 minute version restored in 2K from the original negative with more footage taken from a positive nitrate copy and another negative (with different color tints), now both stored in a national Italian cinema archive.

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[One Piece Film Retrospective] #15: One Piece Film Red (2022)

Yeah, bringing back the One Piece retrospective…. kinda, more like continuing it, with a full, detailed review of the last released One Piece movie, Film Red, that hit theathers in 2022, after the EXPRESSO review done at the time it released in theathers here.

For context, that year i was able to see the tie-in episodes of the series during the yearly Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy, sadly i missed the early projection of the movie itself, but i did see the aforementioned episodes meant to tie-in to Film Red that detailed a young Rufy meeting a young Uta in Fusha Town when Shanks and his crew set anchor there.

Which are cute but as you would expect they’re not mandatory viewing in order to understand the plot of Film Red, it’s a big popular franchise, they’re not gonna risk alienating people who don’t watch or follow the TV series but do follow the manga, for example.

Who’s Uta, you might ask? But she’s the new character and protagonist of Film Red, a world famous livestreamer and renowed singer that is finally having a concert on the island of Elegia, ammassing a huge amounts of fans coming from all walks of life, be it Goverment soldiers, Navy officers or pirate ships, and of course the Straw Hats come too, as Luffy arrives there and reveals he and Uta were childhood friends.

And then he drops the bombshell that Uta is Shanks’ daughter.

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Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse (2021) [REVIEW] | Sequelgeddon #sharksncrocspartdeux

I eventually had to find out this existed, because words like “sequels” don’t mean anything anymore, even more when we dwelve in the “homegrown/DIY” territory of the shark movies, where one name echoes through the vast oceans, Mark Polonia, and he stands atop of his carboard throne, commanding beasts of papermaciè and plastic (and whatever the budget can afford) to fend off the rare adventurers setting off in the desperate quest for the homegrown crown.

So powerful he is that only he can received the task of doing a sequel of a low budget shark movie he didn’t originally make, as Jurassic Shark was directed and produced by Brett Kelly, but that isn’t even the stranger thing about Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse.

That would be this one standing as the “official” sequel, as Brett Kelly also directed Raiders Of The Lost Shark, which was a surprise kind of sequel to Jurassic Shark, as i discussed when reviewing it.

But this one gets to have the Jurassic Shark name and slap a 2 on the end, for whatever reason, and so it kinda surprising the plot has anything to do with the first, as the oil company from the first movie (whom accidentally released the megalodon) is back and wanting to drill for oil of the coast of Cat Island (not that one), and its up to the workers of the oil rig – that accidentally discover the beast – to try and save what they can from its unfeeling jaws… And its amazing inflatable fin.

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Crocodile (1979) [REVIEW] | Thai Croc Jaws #sharksncrocspartdeux

Can’t get more basic than “Crocodile”, not “killer”, not “mutant”, nor “apocalypse”, just your plain old reptilian creature to not be confused with an alligator.

Which is arguably kind of a lie, since this is an obscure Thai monster movie that was made – in unison – “to ride Jaws’ coat-tail”. I don’t even do this on purpose, there’s that big a chance even killer croc movies somehow can be linked back to it, either due to the decade of their release or the basic plot structure and popularized cliches.

Often it’s both, as “Crocodile” was released just years after Jaws rocked the box office, AND the plot it’s virtually identical… or is it?

Not to be confused with a 1978’s Korean movie also with the international title of “Crocodile”, from which this 1979 Thai film is edited from… and by that i’d say it borrows some stock footage from the 1978 one, i don’t know to what extend, since i couldn’t find a copy of the 1978’s film, because i do believe these are two different – yet almost identical sounding – movies, not one and the same.

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Roboshark (2015) [REVIEW] | Livetweeting The Shark #sharksncrocspartdeux

Robocroc left me feeling very meh and mildly bored, so Roboshark would have to pick up any pace in order to better. Or worse.

Regardless, it was originally one of the many shark movies making their debut on SyFy during the second annual Sharkenado Week of 2015 on the channel, and like most of you would have already guessed, indeed, it’s not a sequel at all, just shares the concept of something cybernetic getting into contact with predator animals and turning them into robotic-cyborg version of themselves.

But honestly the circumstances of the movie’s release it’s a perfect framing in what climate Roboshark came out, because it was indeed a time where everyone wanted to be in on the joke, ride the meta self-awareness sea train but deliberately doing it WITHOUT a “Don!”, engineering itself to be made fun of, to have people online live-tweet the shit out of it, to make you look at the freak, hoping that word of mouth and horrible reviews would make for unorthodox promotional material, because making that view counter go up is the only reason to make the thing in the first place.

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Future Shock: No Sleep From September (and Summer Plans) (UPDATED)

So, let’s not wait around more to lay out what’s coming in July and August for Wise Cafe International, and what will change from this September onwards.

July will have another round of killer croc AND killer sharks films, Sharks N Crocs Part Deux, alongside some timely videogame reviews to tie in with upcoming releases (aka – pardon me for the disgusting thing i’m about to say – trying to milk some “SEO juice” since this time i could plan ahead something reasonable).

August won’t have a One Piece retrospective per sè, but will have some One Piece videogames’ reviews, plus a newly written full lenght review of Film Red, and hopefully some fittingly summer themed posts about stuff that maritime or whatever.

From September instead – after thinking about it for months – i’ll have to slow down the posting significantly, so instead of a review or piece every 2 days, i opted for a weekly basis, since i will be taking a master’s degree this year, so yep, even less time on my hands since i will be hitting the books, attend and most likely still continue the dayjob.

So instead of shutting it down or opting for a “whenever i can” posting schedule, i feel this it’s a reasonable compromise, even more since i guarantee a review every 7 days, meaning there could be more if i can squeeze in some EXPRESSO reviews or something on the quick, i will try.

Meaning EXPRESSO won’t be retired, it never has been and that won’t change.

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