District 9 (2009)

Release Date: 2009
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Starring: Sharlto Copley, Vanessa Haywood
Tagline: "You are not welcome here."
Random Trivia: Shot for 30$ million dollars, it broke that in the first week. Neill Blomkamp's first movie. Peter Jackson gave him the cash to make whatever he wanted after the HALO movie failed to find a greenlight. The shanty town is real; the aliens, obviously, are not. Filmed on location in Johannesburg. Sharlto Copley, the star of the movie, has exactly one acting credit on the IMDB at the time I'm writing this. The movie? District 9.

I've got a ton of reviews on the go right now, but this one is the most pressing, for obvious reasons. Caught it the first weekend after fighting traffic with HalfBaked and it was well worth the wait!

You're going to hear a lot of talk about Neill Blomkamp being the breakout director of the year for 2009.

Believe it.

I wasn't entirely won over by his script - he wrote District 9 as well - but when his writing lets him down, his directorial effort catches the fumble, making District 9 one of the best movies of the summer, and along with Star Trek, one of the best Sci-Fi movies in the past few years.

And one of the few, lately, with a compelling storyline. And awesome weapons. Pay attention to that: AWESOME WEAPONS.

You probably know the background here already - Neill had somehow managed to be tapped for the HALO movie that didn't happen. Peter Jackson, he of the massive oodles of Hobbit cash, decided to say "Hey, Neill - here's 30$ million, do whatever floats your dingy."

District 9 is the result.

I don't want to oversimplify it, but it boils down to the apartheid, with Aliens instead of Africans. It's a look at how humanity treats humanity, how we treat the other, how we adapt to societies that are different. It's how we long ago ceased to be culturally relativistic (not that we ever really were) and instead react in fear and revulsion against anything different from ourselves.



In other words, humanity as a whole is a bunch of narrow-sighted pricks, and District 9 gives us a constant reminder of it. How? By using the most obviously simple setup ever (and oddly, one used rarely in the past, with a few exceptions, i.e. Alien Nation and V to certain extents): An alien ship is crippled and winds up on earth, for a change not over a major American metropolis, but instead hovering over Johannesburg, South Africa. It's inhabitants are quickly labeled prawns, for obvious physical resemblance to the sea creatures. They're sick, and seem to be simple drones.

Yet society never asks the obvious, at least, not more than they're obligated to. No one really seems to care how or why they arrived, where they came from, what life for them was like, whether they are in fact drones in some sort of hive society. No one asks how an entire city's worth of alien beings wound up on an advanced ship yet seem to have the simplicity of 10 year old boys.

We heal them because we have to, but the government is merely interested in their technology, and in particular, their weapons. We do what we can to steal this, and stick them in a fucking camp. When that camp is overflowing, we force them to move.



There you have the concept at its core. Humanity would rather adopt a society's weapons than any of its key cultural components.

The power is flickering as I write this, and the monitor continually dims with each burst of thunder. Cool...

District 9 is not a pretty film. It's star is not marketable; in fact, Sharlto Copley has but one acting credit to date: this. That's a huge advantage in this case, as he pulls off a believable everyman in the near future forced to react to events around him.

Which is key: the background I just gave you is unveiled in the opening minutes of the film. The story we see - which I'm not going to spoil - is not the story of the Prawns, per se, or how they get to Earth. It's the story of Wikus Van De Merwe (Copley), an employee of the MNU, charged with controlling - and, currently, relocating - the alien population on Earth.



It's not a pretty story, but it's an entertaining one.

My baked mind noticed the following, and I could be mistaken on a few points, but some of the cool things here included:

- the fact that the humans can understand the Prawn language, and the Prawns have learned to understand English - but neither of them really speak it. Perhaps the languages are too difficult to actually replicate for either race? Or maybe they can just manage a little here and there.

- Prawns getting human names.

- The cat food addiction.

- the weapons. Fuck yeah, the weapons.

- Well placed CGI that doesn't take you out of the movie.

- No vapid, obviously in the movie as masturbation material token hot chick.

I'll forgive the fact that the script gets a little too preachy in the long run. That's perhaps its only downfall. This is a movie I'll definitely be watching again.

Overall rating: 3/4 Baked (4 out of 5)

The Munchies - Food Review: The McGangBang

Random Trivia: You can actually order this by name at some McDonalds locations in the U.S., although for obvious reasons, it's not on the menu.

Lets face it: Pot leads to the munchies, and the munchies sometimes lead to eating stupid amounts of fattening food, in one or all of the three pothead food groups: Salty, Sweet, and Fatty. Which brings us to:

The McGangBang. A quick Google search of this term will either get you a load of McDonald's themed porn, or the recipe to one of the ultimate munchie-driven meals out there; the holy grail of fattening yet satisfying food when baked.

A McChicken, shoved between the beef patties of a double cheeseburger.



The photo above illustrates the traditional concept. Food for fatties, basically.

The burger itself is a simple concept - lets combine two forms of meat into one awesome mega-sandwich. The variations, however, are nearly endless. The one key concept - you need to have a burger with 2 beef patties to allow proper layering of Bread, Beef, Bread, Chicken, Bread, Beef, Bread.

Extras like cheese, bacon, special sauce, etc. are an added bonus.

Due to two bouts of food poisoning I've had courtesy of McDick's, I haven't touched a morsel of food from them in five years, and that won't be changing. Luckily, there are plenty of other grease-joints that cater to fat-asses, those lucky people who never gain weight, and the chronically stoned.

Here's what we'll be reviewing today:

#1: Burger King Double Whopper Edition: A Double Whopper stuffed with a Classic Chicken Sandwich

#2: Wendy's Baconator Edition: A Baconator stuffed with a Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

#3: Burger King Double Stacker Edition: A Double Stacker stuffed with a Classic Chicken Sandwich.

#4: Lick's Pseudo Edition: A Homeburger/Gobbler Edition from Lick's.

Lets go!

#1: The double whopper is probably the most complex burger on this list. There's lettuce, tomato, onions, and a whole lot of mayo to contend with. I was cramming this in on the couch around midnight, and mess was a definite factor. The amount of mayo used has a simple advantage/disadvantage: For those with drymouth or lacking a beverage, well, it's juicy. It also drips ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE. I've got food stains on my shirt from this outing!

As the Classic Chicken Sandwich is somewhat oblong, I had to eat it down to size.

Given the size of the double whopper plus the chicken sandwich, this was very, very filling. I didn't eat again til the following afternoon.

Mow Factor: 4/5

#2: I love bacon, so this sandwich starts out strong on that merit alone. I also like spicy food so I went with the spicy chicken sandwich, which really does not live up to its name. Still, it worked out well. Far less toppings on the baconator - it's basically two beef patties, cheese, and bacon - made this much easier to eat. Considering I was mowing this down in halfbaked's basement, I didn't want to leave stains all over his couch... well not those kind of stains anyhow!

Taste-wise, this was also the best of the bunch. Fucking bliss. Beef, Chicken, Bacon. Every land-based animal I love to eat.

Mow Factor: 5/5!!!

#3: I took this one to the beach, after a night of smoking under the stars (well mostly the lights from the city blocking the stars out). Again, used the classic chicken sandwich which needs to be eaten down to size so that its shape roughly lines up with that of a regular burger.

This is the sandwich I really wanted to compare to the Wendy's baconator edition, as this puppy has a couple strips of bacon, and bacon makes everything better!

I was a bit let down in the end. The baconator far and away defeated both BK editions, and the Whopper was actually better than this. It wasn't horrible, but it just wasn't right. A bit too dry - although that took care of the mess factor - and the bacon wasn't really noticable. I also had a hard time getting this one assembled for whatever reason, which may have (unfairly) detracted from my enjoyment of it.

Since I can't fault the sandwich for being too high to manipulate bread and meat, I'm not docking any points for that.

Mow Factor: 3.8/5

#4: Very, very disappointing, and I love Lick's! Their burgers just aren't made for this. Plus, I had to break a golden rule, and have only one beef patty (removing the extra piece of bun so the sandwich went Bun/Burger/Bun/Turkey Burger/Bun). Too dry, and since the Gobbler is minced Turkey rather than a deep friend patty like a lot of chicken burgers, it just seems like an extra big burger.

Mow Factor: 1/5

Overall - take the Wendy's Baconator edition if you plan on doing this, fatty! Or try creating a different version of it, and let us know how it went!

Independence Day (1996)

Release Date: 1996
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: Will Smith, Brent Spiner, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Randy Quaid, Vivica A. Fox, Adam Baldwin, Bill Pullman, Mary McDonnell
Tagline: "We've always believed we weren't alone. Pretty soon, we'll wish we were."
Random Trivia: Adam Baldwin is NOT one of the Baldwin brothers. Advanced Screening prints of the movie were labeled Dutch 2. Dutch starred Ed O'Neill. Ed O'Neill played Al Bundy. Al Bundy is God.

I had to go back and check, but yes - Independence Day was the start of the Will Smith summer blockbuster trend. This basically progressed from Independence Day - his first real blockbuster (I love it, but Bad Boys doesn't really count), went to Men in Black - another huge one - then tanked with Wild, Wild West. After that, the summer Smith movies became more and more sporadic. Men in Black II got a lukewarm reception at best. Bad Boys 2 was trashed by the critics, but fuck them, I loved it! I, Robot was more shiny than intelligent, not necessarily doing Asimov a great service. Shark Tale wasn't a summer movie (it came out in October), although it should have been. And then there was Hancock, which we've already covered on this site.



This was the one that started the little Will Smith summer trend, however. Every few years, a big release from Will, and an album or single at least. Remember Willenium? Or have you drank yourself stupid in an effort to forget it? How about the Wild Wild West single? Still looking up services willing to destroy bad memories?

Still, this isn't a Will Smith vehicle, and don't get me wrong - he's a talented guy, when his personality doesn't overtake the actual picture. But here, you've got a completely awesome ensemble cast with Bill Pullman, Randy Quaid, Brent Spiner, Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch. Female characters were seemingly thrown in as an afterthought, but this is a "lets blow up stuff real good" boys movie anyway.



Oh, and it's pretty much single-handedly responsible for the trend of blowing up famous landmarks in movies. You remember the White House going ka-BOOM. You know you do! It was freakin' cool.

Random stoned thought - I would have figured that 9/11 killed off the desire to see landmarks destroyed in movies, but Cloverfield proved me wrong...

The script leaves various bands of characters scattered throughout a country - and planet, but remember, this is AMERICA, and in AMERICA, only AMERICAN survivors matter, so that's all we really see aside from the odd mention - under attack by an alien intelligence. They're big, ugly, and their technology kicks our ass. Not to worry though - we have a tough President looking to live up to the moment (Pullman as President Thomas J. Whitmore), and a hot-shot fighter pilot (Smith as Capt. Steven Hiller), plus... Jeff Golblum as geeky David Levinson, and drunken redneck Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) somehow teaming up to save the day.



This is half about the survivors of a vicious alien invasion, and half Top Gun with spaceships vs. jet fighters. It scores one for paranoid conspiracy theorists by getting us inside "Area 51" when the existence of Groom Lake was just entering public consciousness, and it looked pretty.

But more importantly, stuff blowed up real good.

Seriously it's brain-dead action, yelling, screaming, shooting, running, everything that's been in every summer blockbuster since Jaws spawned the phenomenon. It rips heavily off of War of the Worlds, The X-Files (which at the time had the public primed for this sort of thing), Star Wars (with a couple hidden references to the original trilogy), etc.



What more can I say? Well, sadly, this actually comes off as intelligent and realistic compared to the schlock that comes out today... and Bill Pullman made a pretty cool President.

Oh yeah - the Independence Day Super Bowel Ad is credited with being the origin of movie ad extravaganzas during the big game. So it has that going for it too.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Gruesome (2008)

Release Date: 2008
Director: Jeff and Josh Crook
Starring: Lauren Currie Lewis, Chris Ferry, Cody Darbe
Tagline: "What if every day you relived your own murder?"
Random Trivia: The original title was Salvage; Gruesome is the international English title.

Gruesome. eeehh... kind of. What Gruesome actually is can be summed up as follows: A ho-hum slasher with tepid acting, a lead actress who has a nice rack, perky nipples and a cute ass (focused upon multiple times in order to keep viewer interest up), and a story-line that owes a fair bit to Groundhog Day, The X-Files where Mulder keeps reliving the same day during a bank heist, any episode of Star Trek where the crew (any crew) encounters a singularity of some sort, and that episode of Angel where Gunn keeps getting chained up and tortured in the basement.

Sort of.



See Gruesome, having little budget and less technical prowess and star power, tried to do something cool, and turn the concept of reliving the same day/experience on its head. It's just not quite there... Lauren Currie Lewis, she of the perky nips, is actually not all that bad in the lead role. The rest of the supporting cast is stiff, and the script badly needs some better dialogue and a bit of tweaking. There's a few too many pointless scenes that are supposed to be scary, and my half-baked brain (although no, I'm not him) has decided to inform me that pointless scenes are pointless.

On top of this, the finger-tapping-a-key on the piano score gets annoying after a while, and as a result, the mix of bland rock and generic metal during the few energetic sequences the movie has to offer serves as a welcome change. I swear, I've never been so happy to hear generic radio clones.

Back on topic. Lewis plays Claire, who has a vision of her own death so real that it freaks her right the fuck out. She wakes up at work - the nightshift at some hardware/convenience stop I can't remember the name of - convinced that it's all real. As time goes on, she remembers more and more, and we get... more and more bored.

There's not a single scary movie going in this film. The most I can give it credit for is Claire's eventual death - when we see the full length of her vision unfold - which is quite gruesome, so I guess the title is well-earned after all.



Chris Ferry plays Duke, the killer, who apparently has a "weird name" to those not accustomed to the American south. "The only thing that matters is what you feel... when I cut your head off." How memorable. I'll put it on my Christmas card.

If you're insanely bored or just feeling masochistic... nah, I still couldn't recommend it. Even the weed isn't helping.

Oh, sorry about the photos. They suck. It was this or take some photos of the TV screen, but I was lazy, the camera was far, and they're not going to help you much anyway.

Overall Rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Collateral Damage (2002)

Release Date: 2002
Director: Andrew Davis
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Turturro, Francesca Neri, Lindsay Frost, John Leguizamo, Cliff Curtis
Tagline: "Nothing is more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose."
Random Trivia: Due to 9/11 all advertising for the film was pulled. Terrorist El Lobo at one point dons a police officer's uniform which is identical to Robert Patrick's from Terminator 2.

Collateral Damage is one of those understated, underrated action flicks from the latter part of Schwarzenegger's career. It's his "anti-gun" phase (which, honestly, didn't last long once T3 came around) - he's never shown firing a gun on screen, same as with End of Days, another flick I liked from this era (the other one, The 6th Day, well...).

It's the story of Gordy Brewer (Arnie) - a firefighter, patriot, and all around good-guy, whose wife and son are killed in a vicious terrorist attack planned and executed by El Lobo ("The Wolf," played by Cliff Curtis), a Colombian terrorist more interested in blowing up Americans than shipping them blow, somewhat ironically. Actually, John Leguizamo gets that duty, as a drug manufacturer so westernized that he's looking for a hip-hop career before being blown away by...



Well at this point things are getting so damn muddled I'm not even sure. Brewer heads to Columbia looking for revenge, finds himself in jail with John Turturro as a perverted Canadian who works as a mechanic for the drug runners, gets his secret password, and heads up river. Have you ever noticed that, going up river, you always need a secret password?



Maybe it's the state I'm in but for a change Leguizamo isn't completely distracting.

Brewer eventually meets up with a local women and her son, saving their life, and oh, what a coincidence - it's the love of El Lobo's life! Arnie has saved their life where his own family, in the earlier attack, saw no such mercy.



I can poke fun at the plot quite a bit but in all honesty, Collateral Damage is actually pretty decent, and it did turn out to be one of the last times we saw Arnie on screen. Only Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines came after it, aside from the odd cameo.

Highlights:

- Leguizamo, surprisingly
- Arnie being Arnie
- Turturro in prison
- Old-school, simple action. No kung-fu fighting or overly bad CGI



I think, really looking at it, in an odd way, Collateral Damage reminds me a lot of Commando. Not Arnold's best, but solid action, solid entertainment. Nothing makes it stand out - but having sat through it, I have no complaints.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

BASEketball (1998)

Release Date: 1998
Director: David Zucker
Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Dian Bachar, Yasmine Bleeth, Jenny McCarthy, Ernest Borgnine
Tagline: "Two guys invented a game... and turned the sports world upside down!"
Random Trivia: The word "dude" appeared in the script 39 times... but was used 98 times in the final cut of the movie. Matt Stone and Trey Parker agreed to do the movie assuming South Park would be canceled. It wasn't. BASEketball is a real game, created by director David Zucker and friends.

I think the concept here goes a little something like this: you know how you have that basketball net over your garage, that you rarely use, because you suck? And every now and then you play Horse, or some other game that you come up with spur of the moment, with your own bass-ackwards rules and little or no consistency? Well, what if that game actually took off and went national?

Given how lame baseball is, and how much crying there is about fouls in basketball, taking those two pro sports - the two wussy ones - and combining them makes sense. Remove the athleticism from basketball so that it's just free-throw shooting; any fat guy can do that. Remove the... the... leave baseball the way it is, and combine the free throw shooting from basketball, stick it in a driveway, and let it catch on in the neighborhood.



Joe Cooper and Doug Reamer (Trey Parker and Matt Stone, respectively, of South Park fame) do just this, creating the game on a whim to win a bet at a party. The game takes off, and, due to America's distaste for overpaid professional athletes, garners far more attention than it deserves.

Confession time: I like South Park, but the first time I saw BASEketball, years ago, I stopped watching after about fifteen minutes. Looking back, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for a comedy, because the movie actually is funny, and, while absurd and offensive, it does have a point: overpaid athletes and greedy owners are KILLING pro sports. Do you hear me, MLB? I stopped watching after the strike year, so there's proof enough for me. Whatever happened to playing for the love of the game?



Soon enough, Coop and Reamer form a team, with "friend" Squeak (Dian Bachar, a pal of Parker/Stone who's done some voice work on South Park), a neighborhood league - and soon enough find themselves going national.

With national attention, of course, comes the temptation of greed, stardom, etc.: As Coop tries to stay true to his dream of a sport where regular guys get paid regular wages, Reamer is drawn to sponsorships and big money.

The usual relationship subplots pop up - and the heartwarming story of Coop dedicating some home run shots to a sick boy - but the funny stuff comes in the "psych-out" aspect of BASEketball (the game itself), where anything goes when it comes to distracting your opponent.

Maybe it's the high talking but I probably should have given BASEketball a better chance on the first viewing. At the very least, it's aged pretty well, and given how barren the comedy arena is today (does crap like Epic Movie even count as a comedy?), it's definitely a nice change of pace.

Oh, and keep your ears open for some South Park voices...



P.S. - nice job on the cheerleaders, guys!

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Species IV: The Awakening (2007)

Release Date: 2007
Director: Nick Lyon
Starring: Helena Mattsson, Ben Cross, Dominic Keating
Tagline: "Irresistible beauty. Unstoppable instincts."
Random Trivia: The movie went back to the creature designs from the first film. This is the first movie in the series without Natasha Henstridge.

We're in porn-level acting territory here, folks.

Now, have I ever explained what I look for in a movie whilst baked? Either knock-me-on-my-ass entertaining, action-packed, and/or funny... or a massive amount of slutty looking chicks with no tops. Seriously. I'm a guy, I'll own up to that fact. And if it's a horror movie, combine that with gore.



In a normal state of mind, I'm much more picky, but seriously, that's all I ask when high.

And Species IV almost delivered on the titty aspect - almost, and yet manages to fail in almost every other way possible.

First of all - the original Species was horrible, yet managed to make Natasha Henstridge a house-hold name for about five minutes.



This straight-to-DVD sequel is Henstridge-less and puts Helena Mattsson in the "species" creature role as Miranda, a girl who never changes until she's heading off to school. Growing up with her "uncle," she has no idea what she is, til it hits like a bad case of acne at the onset of puberty. As it so happens, it turns out her "uncle" (Ben Cross as Uncle Tom, well Tom Hollander) has been administering shots to keep the creature at bay - shots that are no longer effective.



Upon discovering this, the pair head off to Mexico in search of Hollander's old lab partner, Forbes McGuire, who follows in the footsteps of Anderson Cooper as a man with two last names. He also has a ton of "species" creatures running around his small Mexican hangout; works that didn't quite go according to plan, mostly - as well as a few slutty species chicks including a dominatrix style chick with a split tongue who likes to play naughty nun.

At this point, Miranda's creature side comes out, her and the slutty nun go toe-to-toe, and uncle Hollander - who is more like daddy, having created her - tries to find a cure, only to be told by Forbes that she's really just dying. Of old age, no less.

But wait! There's a cure! We can rebuild her.



Too bad she comes back as an evil skank.

Yeah, I pretty much just gave away the ending, but really, this isn't even worth watching unless desperate. Which, apparently, I was.

Overall Rating: Buzzed (1 out of 5)

Family Guy: Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story (2005)

Release Date: 2005
Director: Pete Michels & Peter Shin
Starring: Seth McFarlane, Seth Green, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis, Mike Henry, Lori Alan, Drew Barrymore, Will Sasso, Adam West, Patrick Warburton, Michael Clarke Duncan, Tori Spelling.
Tagline: "88 Minutes of Pee-in-Your-Pants Fun!"
Random Trivia: Will Sasso has done a couple of Family Guy episodes. He was also in an episode of The X-Files and Doctor Who. Cooool. He got his start on a Canadian show called Madison, which I actually remember. What's the connection? Well, Will Sasso showed up on WWE wrestling, as did Family Guy regular Seth Green. Both of them were involved with Triple H. Why do I even know this?!?!?

Yet another Family Guy review featuring incredible YouTube Clip-O-Vision!

I'd like to start this off with a rant. Stewie's gay. We get it. He's awkward and effeminate and inappropriately pervy at times. He has a penchant for cross-dressing that's borderline creepy. And it was funny. Once. But it's overkill. Bring back matricidal Stewie!!!

Ok I guess the show did bring him back in the Stewie Kills Lois episode... but gone are the days when Stewie was the funniest character on Family Guy. During the initial run, he certainly was - Seasons 1 - 3, which on DVD eventually rescued the show from oblivion. But much like Bart Simpson gave way to Homer as the epicenter of the show after a few years, Stewie has been dumbed down and allowed Peter's more zany stupidity to shine through and amuse us.

Yet he remains a t-shirt peddling, calendar moving animated icon. He's on my wall right now, and for once, the page is turned to the correct month - at least for a few more days.



And he is still funny.

Hence the reason for Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story. This DVD is probably a tad too late, and really, the time to release it would have been the second the show returned - but alas, it was delayed, held back, etc., for whatever reason(s).

When it finally did air, it served as a multi-part episode, but here I'm reviewing the DVD, supposedly longer/uncensored. Basically, it's a big long episode, and the first of what seems to be a trend now that the Star Wars spoofs have come to fruition.

Some highlights:

- Quagmire's Cross-Cuntry Tour - nice! Or better yet, Giggity!
- Adam West taking "Maple Syrup" back (I'm keeping that one)
- "Women on Women or anything with an amputee"
- Meg knee'd in the face
- You know what really Grinds My Gears?
- The red carpet premiere of the "movie"

The basic premise of this is simple: Peter gets his own segment on the local news, a flat-out rant that goes something like this: You know what really grinds my gears? You, America. Fuck You.

Well actually that's his final broadcast; prior to that he has some real topics that grind his gears.

And, during the commotion of Peter getting his own news spot, Stewie happens to notice a guy on TV who looks EXACTLY like him - only grown up! Thinking it's his "real" father, Stewie embarks on a mission to hunt the man down - only to find out that the man is, in fact, himself - back in time on a vacation from the future.

Obviously, Stewie's life hasn't turned out the way he has been anticipating - he's not the ruler of the world, and dear mother is not dead - thus he hops a ride back to the future, where Chris has a bitch of a wife, Brian is dead, and Meg has become "Ron" by way of a sex change. No one's all that surprised over the last bit of news...

I'll admit it - this episode is much more amusing when high. It's one of those rare times when something that somewhat disappointed me because much better thanks to being baked. So thank you, Marijuana, for making the purchase of this DVD that much more enjoyable.



I still can't give this one a spectacular review by any stretch of the imagination, as given the hype that led up to it, it really was a let-down - but Family Guy fans should still enjoy it. And the best part of it, in the end, for me, was the clip above, the spoof of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It should have just been thrown in with the rest of the season in a box set, however. FOX - fuck you and your bleeding the cash cow dry.

Bottom line - this gets a 3/5 due to me being high, otherwise, it would score a 2.

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)

Cube (1997)

Release Date: 1997
Director: Vincenzo Natali
Starring: Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson, Maurice Dean Wint
Tagline: "Fear... Paranoia... Suspicion... Desperation"
Random Trivia: Every single actor to appear on-screen in the movie is listed above. Natali actually produced a short film depicting what was outside the Cube... then destroyed it, preferring to keep it secret. He had no direct connection to the two sequels.

Ok, a few things I want to point out:

- Without Cube, would we have Saw? Would Saw be the same? Perhaps but there's definitely some striking similarities between the first two Saw movies and the earlier Cube. I'd wager it was definitely influential.

- Natali is a very approachable guy. I actually attended the North American premiere of his second directorial effort, Cypher, a few years back, and he answered every single question the audience had after the show. Sure, that's the point of a film festival appearance/premiere, but not everyone comes through.

- The sequels? Forget them.

- So I was about a third of the way through typing this up when blogger crapped out and didn't save my draft... UGH!

Cube is an interesting little precursor to the Gore Porn genre of Saw, Hostel, etc. An extremely simple concept, way before its time - a handful of people wake up to find themselves trapped in a perfectly square room (a cube) with secured doors, that can be opened, on all sides. Each door leads to another perfectly square room. They need out. They also need to deal with each other.



Lets start with the basics - A jumble of personalities bound to conflict: the street smart cop, the smarter-than-her-years teenage girl (Nicole de Boer, who later appeared on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and The Dead Zone series), the pessimist who knows something, the snooty chick, Wayne Robson as an escape artist, and Julian Richings as an idiot savant (think Rain Man). Both of the latter are soon to be seen in George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead in a reunion of sorts.



You can see where this is going. There are traps in each room sure to lead to certain death. Numbers on the door to each new chamber give clues as to which are safe, and math geek Leaven (De Boer) thinks she has the key. She quickly befriends the much older Kazan (Andrew Miller), which no doubt pisses off snooty Holloway, who cracks wise about him liking younger girls. As the group battles traps and solves mathematical clues to stay alive, they also try not to turn against themselves - which doesn't last long.



That's right, I said certain death...

Tension leads to violence (which I'm told leads to anger, hate, and the dark side) before all is said and done. The most trying aspect for the prisoners is the introduction of idiot savant Alderson (Richings), who holds the key to their escape - but whose condition risks their lives at every turn.

Probably one of the best low-budget horror films of its time, Cube holds up to most of the schlock coming out today, and actually has a decent script and message - not something seen all that often at this point.

I don't want to give too much away, other than to say that characters go through definite shifts as their time trapped within the Cube grows larger.



Oh yes, I may have failed to point that out - each single room adds up to making a giant cube, the origins of which are a mystery to all those inside... maybe...

Overall Rating: Half-Baked (3 out of 5)