Cube

Rating:
Summary: Love It or Hate It; I Choose the Latter
Review: Like human excrement in an art exhibit, some will say it's cutting edge, others will say it belongs in a toilet. The Cube is a similarly polarizing movie. You love it or hate it, as these reviews show.

Everything you need to know: one-dimensional characters meet in a matrix of three-dimensional cubes, and get diced up, sliced up, and deep fried just in time for a cliched non-resolving ending that no science fiction fan will find the least bit surprising.

Somebody flush.

Rating:
Summary: A Pleasant Surprise...
Review: ....we'll get to that in a minute.

First - the movie "Cube":

Somewhat disappointing to me, it started out great though. The special effects were excellent, and the traps were extremely scary. But the problem is that it only showed a few traps being set off, and all those were in the first half of the movie. The rest of the movie focused more on the paranoia, fear, and desperation of the remaining characters. And shows what each character has to offer to help the others escape.

Not a bad movie at all, I'd give it 3 or 4 stars. The reason I gave this DVD 5 stars? That's the pleasant surprise.

On the second side of this DVD it had ANOTHER movie - "Love and a .45"
I would have bought it separately if I had seen it earlier. But as luck would have it I got it for free. Look it up here or at imdb.com for more info on that movie, I'm not going to do a review for it here, sorry.

So this was definitely worth buying for me. 2 good movies for the price of 1 !!

Rating:
Summary: Cubical...
Review: Six strangers wake up in a bizarre mechanized labyrinth of identically cubic rooms (more like cells) together, unaware of how or why they are there. They soon discover that many of the adjoining rooms are booby-trapped with only certain rooms allowing safe passage. What is the secret to this maze of death? Can these people find out before they die? CUBE is an intense study of human nature under severe circumstances. Panic and hysteria vs. logic and cool reasoning. Paranoia and terror vs. co-operation / teamwork. Only the clear-thinking will survive (maybe)! We get to go along, just as ignorant to the answers as the characters themselves. Get sealed in the cube today...

Rating:
Summary: The post-modern existentialist most dangerous game?
Review: At its best I think "Cube" is an example of post-modern existentialism, although I am certainly loath to explain that particular combination of 20th century reactions to modernism. At its worst it seems like a pointless variation on an episode of "The Twilight Zone" which may or may not be "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" (but if you watched Rod Serling's series I am sure that at least one episode will spring to mind as you watch "Cube"). However, just because I think that Vincenzo Natali's film is trying to be provocative does not mean that I think it is necessarily being profound.

"Cube" begins with our first look at the cube set that will be creatively redressed throughout the film. A man (Julian Richings) enters the cube and we discover that these can be places of great danger. We do not know what is going on, but whatever game is being played it is decidedly deadly. We then meet the players and the game begins in earnest. Eventually we find there are six people still alive in this system of interlocking cubes. Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint) is a cop, Rennes (Wayne Robson) a prison escape artist, David (David Hewlett) is an architect, Helen (Nicky Guadagni) a doctor, Leaven (Nicole de Boer) a math student, and Kazan (Andrew Miller) is autistic. None of them know how they got there, why they are there dressed in uniforms, or what they are supposed to do next. All they know is that in every cube there are six hatches leading to the next cube, one on each side. What they learn is what we already know. Some cubes are not safe.

The six assume they are in a maze. Since there was a way in there must be a way out, and one of them figures out that there are actually clues as to which hatches it is safe to go through and which are not. That becomes our biggest clue as to what we are supposed to be doing as viewers, because it is clear in this 1997 film that putting ourselves in the position of the characters is problematic. For me watching "Cube" was similar to watching "Survivor": the main thought going through my mind is that I would be dead because I would not be physically up to the challenge. So I did not get into the "what would I do in that situation" frame of mind.

Instead my focus became on the group of six people. When we learn that one of them has a reputation for breaking out of prisons we discover that these people are not only the only resources the group has but also the only ones they need. The point is that the lesson is lost on the group, and the question is whether they will figure it out in time. Of course, the larger question is "what is going on?" However, at this point in the saga ("Cube 2: Hypercube" came out in 2002 and "Cube Zero" just come out on DVD), that would be telling. More importantly, the fact that they do not tell is key to appreciating what is going on. It is not yet time for the big picture, but for the intimate horror story being laid out for us.

Even if you are not interested in why this is happening, the "what" of "Cube" is compelling enough. The deadly cubes are always dangerous in different ways, and you are always wondering what is going to happen next. Especially since the "deeper" the group goes into the "maze," the more they get into their own paranoia, which is decidedly not good for the developing group dynamic. In the end, "Cube" can be dismissed as a shaggy dog story, but it is a much more engrossing one than the story about the pink and purple polka dotted ping pong ball.

Rating:
Summary: What a completely forgettable movie
Review: This movie starts off on a good foot. The fact that the viewer is kept in the dark about why these people are being subjected to the tortures of the maze-like cube is tolerable...at first. The writers go to all the trouble of suggesting that the characters did not randomly end up in the cube, but were selected because each of them possessed a certain talent, but gives no explanation beyond that. Yes, the math student and idiot savant are able to decipher the riddle of the cube, but what are the others there for? And you never find out who put them there and why, and that just doesn't sit well with me. It's as if the writers had a really good idea for the BEGINNING and the MIDDLE of the movie, but couldn't think of a good ENDING for it, so they just left it as is. They never even hinted at who and/or what may have been responsible for constructing the cube and placing these people in it or even why it was built (ok, so they VAGUELY suggested that it could be the government/military or aliens, but VAGULEY). It's not as if I want the writer to tell me "this is what happened and why," but they could have done a MUCH better job of at least offering SOME explanation(s). Leaving the ending open for interpretation doesn't make the movie more interesting, just more lame. Maybe if the acting and dialogue/script weren't so horrible, I could have enjoyed the movie a bit more. But not much.

Rating:
Summary: New Wave Science Fiction
Review: "Cube" is constructed in the style of the so-called "New Wave" of science fiction, which has actually existed for more than 20 years and is no longer so "new." The characteristics of New Wave are that the endings are often more ambiguous, and the science part of science fiction is often significantly less well explained or perhaps even understood, causing some New Wave science fiction to border on fantasy. In the case of this movie, a group of people are spirited away from various places with no memory of being moved, only to wake up in a room in the shape of a cube.

At first it appears that the people were randomly chosen. However, as the movie progresses there appeared to have been logic as to why this particular group of people was chosen, though the specifics of the logic are never explained. We find out later that the group of people chosen has the capability of escaping from what turns out to be a gigantic maze of cubes.

If the only task of this group of people was to escape from the cube maze this movie would have been very boring. When one of the characters is killed in a most gruesome fashion near the beginning of the movie we learn that some of the cubes are booby-trapped. We also learn that there are cubes that are not booby-trapped and by a mathematical calculation you may determine whether the next room is safe or contains death in the form of acids, various cutting instruments, flame, etc. The movie slowly moves the characters from one cube to the next, fighting the cubes as well as themselves, and losing characters along the way. I will not reveal the end of the movie for those who plan to watch it.

The one thing this movie has going for it is the novelty of the cube maze. Adding the booby traps changes this movie from a pure mystery to a cerebral exercise. Why was the maze created? Why were these particular people chosen? Why booby-trap the rooms? Are these people just human guinea pigs? Is there a safe way out of the cubes? Given that the majority of this action in this movie is arguing and moving from cube to cube, the speculations provided are the core of the movie.

I was intrigued by "Cube" and have seen it twice. However, after having seen it twice I am no longer amused and do not plan to watch it again. While the concept of the cube maze is interesting, there is a certain measure of futility that discourages multiple viewings. The futility of being in the maze adds to the generally poor acting and occasional over-acting. The only actor I recognized was Nicole de Boer, who played a math student, from her role on the television series "The Dead Zone." Definitely rent this one before you buy it.


Rating:
Summary: Gleaming the Cube
Review: Imagine this: you went to sleep, soundly, in your own bed. Hard day, harder night: drinking, carousing, maybe; maybe you curled up after a stressful day and an even more stressful commute with a good book, and sleep came crashing down. Whatever; past is prologue, and prologue here doesn't mean much.

You wake up in a cubic room. It's about 20 feet by 20 feet. In the center of each cubic face---even on the ceiling---is a hatch. You're clad in a prison-style grey smock, with your name stenciled gulag-style above the right nipple, and when you have slightly recovered from the initial shock (where am I? Is this a dream? What do I have to do to get back to the real world? Where do I poop?), you amble dazedly over to the hatch on the left and give the submarine-style airlock door a turn. It comes open, and gazing through the aperture, you spy---another Cubic room, that looks just like yours.

That's "Cube", a vicious little puzzlebox of horror and delight from Vincenzo Natali. It's brilliantly simple, conceptually engaging, brutally compelling.

The opening sequence, for instance: a man opening up a hatch, shinnying through it, setting foot in the new Cube Room---and then a noise that sounds like a butterfly farting, and the man---Alderson---goes rigid, his body frozen in place in a living rictus, eyes wide, a true Kodak moment for just a split second. And then, an instant later---

Nah, I won't ruin it for you. Suffice it to say that the Cubes contain death traps---well, some of them. We meet the heroes, chiefly, as they meet each other: somebody opens up a hatch and peers through, only to find one, or two other prisoners, clad in grey smocks, equally bewildered by their twisted predicament: Math student Leaven (Nicole de Boer), architect David Worth (David Hewlett), rugged cop Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), Dr. Helen Holloway (Nicky Guadagni), Autistic Kazan (Andrew Miller),escape-artist Rennes (Wayne Robson). In whole or part, the names of our players are prisons: Leaven and Worth, Kazan (a notorious Russian labor camp), Holloway, even (San) Quentin. None of them have anything obvious in common, apart from their mysterious confinement. Oh yeah, and those prison names.

Spooky.

Frankly, when I first saw Cube I hadn't heard anything about it; I knew what the idea was, roughly, and I had seen the first five minutes on HBO. That five minutes alone sold me. But aside from techno-bloodletting, I wasn't expecting much from Cube.

As a result, Cube snuck up behind me, banged me in the skull with a blackjack, locked me in a cube full of cubes, and made off with my socks (leaving me my shoes so I could check the rooms for traps). Director Vincenzo Natali (who did not direct the second installment---and it shows) keeps the storyline a taut tripwire of paranoia, makes the most of his spare set, pumps up the tension with solid acting all around, and ices the cake with some deranged little engines of destruction (all fitted nattily into those deceptively harmless looking little cubes) that would make a Hellraiser Cenobite giggle with delight.

Natali dumps his ingredients into this deadly steel cauldron, stirs the brew up, and brings it to a boil by milking the tension between the characters as they struggle to understand their plight and---more importantly---to get out of the Cube. Best of all, he punctuates the internal struggle between a group of people who don't know and don't trust each other, but need to work together nonetheless, with shrieks of wanton, and totally unpredictable, carnage.

I'm a pretty adventurous guy, and I've never been one to put my horror movie cannon fodder through something I wouldn't do myself---that's no way to treat the Troops! But this time, watching these frail, highly perishable, lightly clad, completely defenseless men and women carefully testing out an unknown cube, checking with shoes for hidden pressure plates, ever alert for shifts in the atmosphere---perhaps an acid spray, perhaps a serrated spinning whirly-blade of death, maybe a floor to ceiling Mach-8 speed cheese grater---you truly appreciate how puny human flesh really is, how easily it can be mangled. You get tense yourself just watching; too many times I thought "better them than me". Brrr.

Natali succeeds by keeping Cube simple: without much exposition and with absolutely no clue as to what lies outside the interlocking cubes---if anything---we have to know the characters from what they tell each other, and the environment from what the characters see. Getting out is not only vital, but seemingly impossible: the gang can't simply cross horizontally from Cube to Cube until they reach the "outer Cube Wall", because death trap rooms bar their way---as a number of hapless---and unwitting---human mine detectors prove.Who would do something as vile as this?, they wonder. Why us? And to what purpose? And do the series of numbers---what appear to be serial numbers, actually---hold any clue to working out how to get out of here? As it turns out, the Cube isn't the only thing in this flick with secrets.

In the end, Cube provides a little something for the whole family: the bloodthirsty gorehound will spend a giddy 90 minutes punctuated by constant bursts of "Oh Hell yes!", while those more intrigued by the colossal mystery of the fiendish cubic puzzlebox will walk away sated. And for those who dread more than anything else having to wake up Monday morning hung over, alarm clock blaring, a tedious commute yielding up only another agonizing week of work---rejoice! Cube proves it could always be much worse.

JSG

Rating:
Summary: A truly unique film.
Review: Very well thought out with great acting. It's not a horror, but it can be eerie. I would highly recommend at least renting it if you're a fan of the X-Files or Twilight Zone.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting movie, but it's not anything amazing
Review: I've seen the movie CUBE about four times now, and it still captures my attention. There are a lot of little things you'll notice/pick up on with each viewing, and it's a good low-budget horror film.

CUBE is the story of a small group of people trapped in a giant cube, and certain rooms are trapped. The cube looks like a Rubick's cube, with different colored rooms. The main characters (Leaven, Worth, Holloway, Quentin, Kazan, and the Wren) all have a certain "quality" that will help them find the way out of the cube, but they just have to figure out what that quality is.

I wouldn't say that CUBE is a very scary movie, but it's definately creepy. CUBE is a good movie to watch with a group of friends or late at night (both make the movie more interesting - with a group, you can try to figure out what everyone's special quality is before the movie tells you; and late at night, the movie is a lot scarier).

Overall grade - C+

Rating:
Summary: A Unique, Twisted Thriller
Review: I absolutely LOVED this movie. The premise is that a group of people awaken to find themselves in an otherworldly cube, unsure of how they got there or who put them there. The cube consists of countless rooms, chock-full of hidden, deadly booby traps.

This group of people, who over time start getting at each other's throats, must somehow put their differences aside and work together if they are ever to emerge from this cube.

The secrets of the cube are very thought-provoking, and I can't think of another movie that has used a similar idea. Everyone in the cube is there for a specific purpose, to bring something different to the group. Each individual has a skill that, when used properly, can make greater the chance of survival.

The conclusion of the story is perfect and eerily beautiful. Though a sequel to this film was made (Cube 2 : Hypercube), it wasn't needed and really was just a rehashing of the ideas already presented here in the original.

This film flows along the veins of the best thriller cult films. It is highly original, full of lesser known actors, superbly shot, approached, and acted, and lures you in until you feel as though you are right there with the characters.

Twists, turns, and startling revelations abound, and for anyone with an appreciation of incredibly unique, eerie, masterful sci-fi thrillers, check this one out.