I finally got to see Resident Evil: Apocalypse — twice!  Yesterday when I went to return the Event Horizon CD to Dollops, I noticed that he had just got the CD of this movie, and I immediately rented it.  Watched it last night, and finished watching it a second time with a different "audience" — mainly those who had Financial Markets exam today (so they could not watch it last night).

So how is it?  Well, after having watched it twice by now, I would say it is a really good movie (probably almost as good as the first, which I also thought was really good).  It takes place shortly after the first film, with the sinister Umbrella Corporation re-opening the Hive and unwittingly unleashing the T-virus on the entire population of Raccoon City, and turning everyone into flesh-hungry zombies.  And then Alice (Milla Jovovich) wakes up and walks out of the experimental lab at Raccoon City — and finds devastation (this is the first film's ending).  Umbrella realises that the infection cannot be contained — so they close off the entire city and plan to nuke it by morning.  Meanwhile, some of the Special Tactics And Rescue Services (S.T.A.R.S.) members, including Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) remain inside, and all must work together to get out by morning.  There's help in the form of one of Umbrella's top scientists, Ashford, who asks them to find his daughter, Angela (Sophie Vavasseur) who's somewhere in the city, in return for which he will help them get out.  Trouble is, Umbrella sees the outbreak and quarantine of Raccoon City as a perfect opportunity to test out their latest creation — Nemesis, a huge bazooka toting monster (who was once Matt Addison, played by Eric Mabius in the first film), against Alice (who has also been genetically reengineered).

As you can make out, the movie has a considerable amount of intriguing storyline behind it (written by Paul Anderson, who wrote and directed the first movie).  There's quite a nice link between the Ashford characters here and the first film as well (which I won't reveal here).  The movie's feel is different from the first.  I think Anderson gave his film a more slick, polished look, while this movie — directed by Alexander Witt (because Anderson was busy directing Alien vs. Predator) — has more a B-movie-like feel.  That's not a bad thing since I thought an atmosphere of dread came through quite nicely.  Of course, there are plenty of cool action scenes, and two strong female lead characters, a music score that suits the movie (though I don't think it compares to the awesome score of the first), creepy zombie scenes (a standout is the scene in the school with the kids).

A few complaints about the movie though: the fight scenes were edited in a quick-cut manner, and the camera keeps moving so much that it's sometimes difficult to make out what's happening.  And finally, although the movie did have the requisite amount of zombie and creature presence, I felt that there was a bit less gore/blood than there could have been.  Considering that the movie is rated R, they could have piled on the gore but they didn't.  Anyway, the movie ends with a terrific setup for Resident Evil: Afterlife (Anderson said that he always intended this series to be a trilogy)!  Overall, a good movie and especially highly recommended for the fans of the first movie.  Having never played the games these movies are based on, I have no basis for comparison, so I make my comments purely on the films themselves.

I finally finished the End Term Exams today, with Strategic Management (which went not very well... why do all these End Term Exam thingies end on a sour note?).  Varun gave a presentation today on C Pointers and Structures (his first presentation!) at SSI (which I heard went off really well).  As I mentioned before, I won't be going home this vacation as I have T-Group Sensitivity Training.  There was an intro session today and apparently the whole set of sessions requires about 40 hours.  We are free to schedule it though, and so tomorrow there's sessions from 1 PM till about 7:30 PM (with a break in between).  So I better go to sleep now!