Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut [Blu-ray]

Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut [Blu-ray]

Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut [Blu-ray]

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DVD details

Actor: Angelina Jolie, Brian Blessed, Colin Farrell, F?odor Atkine, Nick Dunning
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto
Composer: Vangelis
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 213 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video

DVD Reviews of Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut [Blu-ray]

DVD Review: Ridley Scott is a great Director.......this is a good film
Summary: 4 Stars

Alexander was released to theaters where it didn't do as well as it could of. This film is really a history buff's kind of movie. Yes, it has action, big names (Farrell, Jolie, Hopkins, and Kilmer) and is based on a lot of historical fact. I think the homosexual relationships and the movies length and pacing are what killed it at the theater, which is what I have gathered from others when I have asked them about what they thought of it.

Personally, I have no problem with the relationships described in this film as it is pretty much a fact that all Greek men had male lovers back in the day. This movie was paced for Hollywood in the original cut (some suit did that) and cut to make it more audience friendly. The ensuing original product just felt rushed to me and I waited to watch this version; I was not disappointed by the story on either version but it was a better experience with the edit.

This version is put together entirely different and I think it is a better story and version of the film. The battle scenes are extended and there is a lot more character development. Kingdom of Heaven's re-cut and re-release is a better film than this one but this is very good and worth obtaining.

The Blu-ray transfer is very good......picture quality wise but the sound could be better. Overall, I would give this movie 4/5 because of the sound quality. Dolby on a BD is good for a DVD but for being on BD there was a lot of GB space wasted on this film especially since you have to change disks to watch the whole movie.
I am still at a loss as to why you have to do this because of the storage capacity of BD but hey what do I know?

-fin

DVD Review: Alexander the final chapter
Summary: 4 Stars

If you was sceptic to this movie see it again. It's muche better. More action and more dynamic store about Alexander. We are going forward and back in store about Alexanders life. This 3,5 houer you never feel boring.
Everything is impotend to undestand Alexande the real person. Not only the king, the worrior but also as a trubel man with feelings who is serching for excating new world.
This version of the movie is more complite and more show the world thare Alexander was a living person.

DVD Review: The version that should have been in theaters
Summary: 5 Stars

Oliver Stone's "Alexander", in its theatrical release version, somehow managed the uncomfortable feat of being both too short and too long at the same time. On one hand, there were the endless narrations by Ptolemy and the general slow start of the movie with no battles in sight, on the other it somehow felt rushed and didn't have the moments of quiet and reflection a true epic needs.

Apparently Stone also thought so, because he made a second, significantly shorter cut, and now this longer version. Making the movie shorter was probably not a good idea, as in that direction the Richard Burton movie lies, which was pretty decent for what it was. But if you make another film about Alexander the Great's life with a big budget, it makes more sense to give it a bigger scope and longer running length, which "Alexander Revisited" attempts to do, and for the most part successfully.

So now the movie looks more like what it probably was supposed to be from the start, with an intermission. I don't know why intermissions in longer movies have fallen out of fashion -- it certainly makes for a much better viewing experience, and Hollywood epics used to have them as the DVDs show. It certainly gives a movie a more grand and operatic feel and allows the audience a breather before the denouement. The theatrical release of "Alexander" was simply too much packed with events to be stomached in one sitting.

The structure of the film has changed a bit, with Alexander's death and the battle at Gaugamela being right up front. The constant jumps in time ("4 years later", "17 years earlier", "5 years later", "12 years earlier", etc.) are still a bit confusing -- I think a chronological telling of the tale would have worked fine, maybe Stone should try that as the fourth variant? -- but on the whole the movie seems less cheesy and Farrell's performance seems to work better in the context of a longer movie. Maybe it's not is performance, just that you have more time to accommodate to the sight of him in a blond wig. Same for Val Kilmer as Philip.

Some parts are still edited a bit confusingly -- like the "He too is Alexander" scene, where all the close-ups don't make it very clear what's going on. A wide shot would have done wonders there, and might even have made the scene funny, which is direly needed in a movie relatively devoid of humor. But on the whole everything hangs together better.

Even the score by Vangelis seems less cheesy here. Perhaps in the theaters it was just the disappointment about hearing synthesizer music in a big-budget movie as if it was a made-for-TV production, but I'm beginning to realize that the music is actually very fitting. Since the movie tries to make out Alexander as some sort of visionary, it makes sense that the music would be more modern-sounding.

Also, since Aristotle survived Alexander, why not have the narration be delivered by him? The choice of Hopkins and Ptolemy seems like pandering to the audience, just so a (still-existing) Alexandria and the Library can be shown. Christopher Plummer brings zest, energy, and a little sarcasm to his relatively small role, and the movie would have profited from having him as a narrator instead of Hopkins.

The intermission comes a few minutes too late -- it should be right after the dramatic scene where Philip throws Alexander out of his palace, but instead it's right after a far less exhilarating scene where Alexander...descends from a mountain in the Hindu Kush and wearily comments, "We must go on, until we find an end!" One of those unintentionally funny clunker lines, as the same could be said about the movie itself. Bad placement!

All in a all, this is finally a worthy version of Alexander, with a definite streak of Fellini / Pasolini (the Bactria sequence) and "Indiana Jones II" (the India sequence). There are still Angelina Jolie's overblown lips, Jared Leto's hairstyle, the Klingon sex scene between Alexander and Roxane, English words written in Greek letters, and some other silly bits, but this is probably as good as it gets in terms of an Alexander biopic. The only question remains, why couldn't this have been the _first_ version?

DVD Review: Don't let the positive review fool you
Summary: 1 Stars

I had skipped it in the theaters because of the critic response, but decided to rent it because of the reviews here regarding the directors cut. I am a student of history and mythology and rented it based on the favorable reviews here. I am writing this now to save any thinking person an hour of their life (that's about how long you will last before you bag it or put it on fast forward). It's bad. It's really, really bad. It makes a mockery of the true message of myth. It savages history. It attempts surreal and winds up being tediously, you can read that te-di-ooouuuuuussss-lllllly stupid. If you like watching greek soldiers in bad makeup, and too short skirts talking in scottish brogues with soldiers who most of the time wear the same expression that you'll find on the models of the men's underwear section of a JCPenny catalogue or a Kiss album, then this may be your thing. Otherwise, take my opinion as accurate. If it has any redeeming qualities, acting and directing are not among them. It is the worst movie I have seen since Neighbors.

DVD Review: Stone's flawed "Alexander" still worth seeing
Summary: 4 Stars

Althought I had seen this film on the big screen and though it received indifferent reviews, it's still worth seeing in High-Definition. I bought this at a premium price in HD DVD and the quality is so astounding that I'm willing to forgive the flaws in Stone's epic. Among them is the casting of Colin Farrell, who though not terribly bad, tends to overplay his scenes as Alexander yet other roles come out better such as Jolie's manipulative mother and Kilmer as Philip, the lustful father. Also as inviting as the scenery and battle scenes is the luscious, exotic Rosario Dawson as Roxanne, the Persian beauty that Alexander claims but loses. The seduction scenes between her and Farrell really kept my blood rolling as I watched it!! At least this film is a big improvement over the boring, talky 1955 version with Richard Burton and Frederic March!! As Stone states in his introduction for those who hated the film--you will probably hate it more in this version. But for those of you who did admire this flawed masterpiece (it did much better in Europe than here!!) in the theater--you'll love the riches Stone has added to this version. Definitely worth seeing in HD DVD or Blu-ray!!

Description of Alexander, Revisited - The Final Cut [Blu-ray]

Now available is an all new and completely unrated version of Oliver Stone's incredible epic film, loaded with nearly 40 minutes of additional never-before-seen footage, that takes the film to a new level of realism and intensity. Restructured and expanded into two acts with one intermission, Oliver Stone's vision is delivered the way he originally conceived and intended. With the new, unrated and graphic battle scenes and unadulterated sensuality, it's the movie you couldn't see in theatres, now available on DVD for the very first time!

DVD Features:
Introduction
Theatrical Trailer

For better or worse (and in this case, it's mostly for better), Oliver Stone's Alexander Revisited should stand as the definitive version of Stone's much-maligned epic about the great Asian conqueror. Following the DVD release of his previous Director's Cut, Stone offers a video introduction here, explaining why he felt a third and final attempt at refining his film was necessary. Essentially, he's using this opportunity to re-create the "road show" format of the Biblical epics of the 1950s and '60s, with a three-and-a-half-hour running time (with an intermission at the two-hour mark) including 45 minutes of previously unseen footage. Stone has also significantly restructured the film, resulting in substantial (if not exactly redemptive) improvements in its narrative flow. Alexander (played in a torrent of emotions by Colin Farrell) is dying as the film opens, his final moments serving to bookend the film's epic story, which incorporates flashback sequences to flesh out the Macedonian king's back-story involving the turbulent battle of fate between his father, King Philip (Val Kilmer) and his scheming sorceress mother Olympia (Angelina Jolie, ridiculous accent and all), who insists that Alexander is literally a child of the gods.

In Stone's final cut, epic battles remain chaotic (although Alexander's strategy is somewhat easier to follow, with on-screen titles indicating left, right, and center during his army's greatest maneuvers) and the ultra-violent battles are more graphically gory than ever (hence their "unrated" status). The animalistic lovemaking of Alexander and his barbarian bride Roxana (Rosario Dawson) is slightly extended (with Dawson as ravishing as ever), and Stone's additional footage also improves the overall arc of Alexander's relationship with his closest generals and male companions, although his most intimate homosexual encounters remain mostly discreet. As Alexander Revisited makes clear, the film's weaknesses remain unavoidable, but Stone deserves credit for recognizing how a longer running time, and more disciplined narrative structure, would bring Alexander closer to the respect it never earned from critics and filmgoers alike. This is unquestionably a better film than it used to be, leaving us to wonder why it took three separate efforts to shape Alexander into its best possible presentation. --Jeff Shannon

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