Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Men In Black 3 / Cert: PG / Director: Barry Sonnenfeld / Screenplay: Etan Cohen, Lowell Cunningham / Starring: Will Smith, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Tommy Lee Jones, Emma Thompson / Release Date: November 5th

In 1997, Barry Sonnenfeld directed the original MIB, a fun sci-fi romp that teamed streetwise NYPD cop J (Smith) with grizzled defender of the earth K (Jones). It was a fantastical creation, giving us a tongue in cheek insight to a shady government agency that has been on the lips of conspiracy theorists since the Roswell incident of 1947. The 2002 sequel was a bit of a mis-step, failing to capture the essence of the original but hopes were high that this entry into the series would recreate the entertainment value of the series debut.

When a time travelling alien, Boris the Animal (Clement) goes back to the ‘60s to kill K and resultantly stop the MIB creating a global defence system, therefore enabling his race to mount a full scale invasion in present day, J pops back to the decade of flower power to try and save the day. Teaming up with a younger version of K (Brolin), they must thwart Boris’ plan and ensure the survival of the human race.

Whilst MIB3 is nowhere near as irritating as its predecessor, there are a number of issues. Boris makes an interesting and potentially nasty adversary, but in order to keep the PG rating, his evil abilities are mostly left unfulfilled – there is a real body horror element that would have David Cronenberg dancing on the ceiling. The time travel element has its flaws in logic and storytelling, as it always does. Jones and Thompson (playing Agent O) are given minimal screen time due to the fact that the majority of the running length is set in the past, although to be fair it is starting to look like Jones really should consider a second MIB retirement.

The good news is that Brolin channels an almost flawless impression of a younger K, before he became so cynical. Smith is his usual affable self, still playing for laughs and mugging for the camera. The aliens, especially the ‘60s versions, are brilliantly visualised, enabled as always by the work of Rick Baker.

But there’s something missing. Maybe the camaraderie of Smith and Jones from the first film was the proverbial lightening in a bottle and the writer and director just can’t seem to put their finger on that special mixture. In these fiscally frugal times, perhaps it is time to cut the governmental budget of the MIB and close them down for good.

Extras: Gag Reel, Partners in Time – The Making of MIB3, ‘Back in Time’ Music Video by Pitbull

Review: Die Nibelungen / Cert: PG / Director: Fritz Lang / Screenplay: Fritz Lang, Thea Von Harbou / Starring: Paul Richter, Margarete Schon, Theodor Loos / Release Date: October 29th

Metropolis (1927) is still widely regarded as one of the seminal s-f movies. But that film’s director, Fritz Lang, was a crack hand at sword and sorcery too: witness Die Nibelungen (1924). Based on an ancient Germanic poem and consisting of two parts, Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge, this mammoth five hour saga laid the groundwork for fantasy flicks as we know them today. If you haven’t seen it already, the release of this stunning 2-disc set is the perfect opportunity to catch up with one of cinema’s neglected gems.

The early part of Siegfried deals with the eponymous hero’s rise to fame and fortune. After slaying a dragon and uncovering a hoard of treasure, he falls in love with Kriemhild, sister to the King of Burgundy. The future looks bright, until Siegfried becomes embroiled in the wimpish King Gunter’s domestic squabbles with the ultra-butch Queen Brunhild. Kriemhild’s Revenge follows directly on and chronicles Kriemhild’s attempts to avenge the wrongs done to her, to which end she marries the barbaric King Attila, who has an army of warlike huns at his command.

Both films give rise to some classic set-pieces. An early standout is Siegfried’s battle with the dragon – a 60-foot-long, fire-breathing articulated puppet that makes Ray Harryhausen look like he wasn’t even trying. But even better is his subterranean descent with Alberich, King of Dwarves – a creepy, shadowy scene that clearly provided visual cues for the Mines of Moria sequence in Peter Jackson’s Rings trilogy. And the whole thing ends in a siege of such fiery intensity that you can almost smell the smoke and heaps of bodies.

As Siegfried, Richter, with his Michael Heseltine-ish mane of blond hair and his athletic physique, is nice eye candy for the girls (especially when he bathes naked in the dragon’s blood to render himself invincible). And Schon really comes into her own in the second film, playing a woman strangely ennobled by the purity of her hate. But the most remarkable performance is Rudolf Klein-Hogge’s as King Attila. With staring eyes and a heap of crowns balanced on his misshapen pate, he’s one of the silent era’s finest monsters (not to mention an obvious inspiration for Jackson’s gaunt-faced trolls).

The real surprise, though, is how well Lang builds to the climactic moments (especially in the superb second film), showing the characters entangling themselves in webs of dark passion until they’re incapable of getting free. It’s thanks to these raw, adult themes (more akin to Game of Thrones than The Lord of the Rings) that Die Nibelungen can still compete for attention in an age of CGI blockbusters. For a movie that’s nearly 90 years old, it shows a ferocious vitality.

Extras: An hour-long documentary: The Heritage of Die Nibelungen, Illustrated booklet featuring the words of Lang, rare archival imagery, Newly translated optional English subtitles for the original German intertitles, Original Film Frame Rate and Aspect Ratio, expert HD restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung

Review: Alcatraz / Cert: 15 / Director: Jack Bender, Paul Edwards / Screenplay: Steven Lilien, Elizabeth Sarnoff, Bryan Wynbrandt / Starring: Sarah Jones, Jorge Garcia, Jonny Coyne, Parminder Nagra, Sam Neill, Leon Rippy, Jason Butler Harner / Release Date: Out Now

Executive produced by J.J. Abrams, Alcatraz looked set to be a monster hit when it debuted on our TV screens. But dwindling ratings led Fox to cancel the show after only one season, a fact which lends an air of melancholy to this boxset. Such a shame, because while it lasted it was a very decent exercise in Twilight Zone-style spookiness.

Back in 1963, the Rock’s 302 inmates and guards mysteriously vanish without a trace, only to start popping up in San Francisco in the present day. Tasked with tracking them down is a small team comprised of enigmatic black suiter Emerson Hauser (Neill), SFPD cop Rebecca Madsen (Jones) and Alcatraz expert Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge).

Each episode consists of the team’s pursuit of one or other of these inmates (known as 63s), each more deadly and cunning than the last. As a setup, it’s way random (although not so random that it doesn’t bear a striking resemblance to CBS’ beam-of-white-light show The 4400). But the creative talent handle it with considerable skill. Crucially, the baddies are, for the most part, impressively scary – a child murderer, a sniper, a poisoner. Regular flashbacks to 1960 provide humanizing backstories, but these only serve to make them seem even more chillingly hard-wired for mayhem.

Looming over everything, exuding Gothic gloom, is Alcatraz itself. The team operate (somewhat unbelievably, but it makes for good TV) out of a nifty high-tech HQ under the prison (cuing a nail-biting episode wherein two particularly thuggish 63s suddenly materialize in their midst). Meanwhile, in 1960, the well-spoken but deeply sinister Warden (Coyne) is using the prisoners as guinea-pigs in secretive experiments.

Weird science, brainwashing, locked chambers, hidden treasure… You just know that, had the show continued, these story arcs would have eventually gotten out of hand. But here, in the first season, their B-movie vibe is the perfect complement to the part-period setting. Adding weight are some intriguing themes and subtexts. The 63s, with their smart haircuts and deep neuroses, read like unwelcome visitations from a repressive period of American history. This chimes in with a peculiar dynamic among the leads. Soto is an awkward man-child, Madsen a glib, heartless tomboy – both seem to be suffering from a kind of traumatic arrested development. And reining them in like a tetchy headmaster is Hauser, a one-time romantic dried up by his long acquaintance with Alcatraz.

What exactly did happen to the 63s? What was the Warden up to in his secret cellar? And how can Madsen be such a crack marksman with her fringe constantly flopping over one eye? Chances are, these and other questions will never be answered. But let’s be grateful for the series that raised them.

Extras: None

Review: Apartment 143 / Cert: 15 / Director: Carles Torrens / Screenplay: Rodrigo Cortes / Starring: Rick Gonzalez, Kai Lennox, Fiona Glascott / Release Date: Out Now

A bunch of paranormal investigators are invited to the home of a family – Dad, moody teen girl, four year-old boy – who are being plagued by nightmarish beyond-the-grave style spookiness. Mom has recently died and there’s an unavoidable tension within the family dynamic; the investigators are on the scene with all their fancy gizmos to record any and all examples of supernatural shenanigans in an attempt to find out if the family really are being troubled from beyond the grave or whether their problems are of the more domestic variety…

Your enjoyment of Apartment 143 very much depends on how much the Paranormal Activity franchise floats your fear boat. At first blush Apartment 143 seems almost scandalously derivative of the long running series; found footage format, camera equipment recording goings-on, things moving about in the night of their own accord. But Apartment 143, clearly inspired by the Paranormal Activity series, soon heads off in a radically-different direction. Where the PA films are slower, more atmospheric affairs, teasing out their shocks and scares and leaving the audience breathless with anticipation, Apartment 143 just cracks on and starts throwing all its supernatural toys at the screen in the first ten minutes. The apartment is quickly rocked by supernatural seismic shock, things start to bang and rattle, and shadowy figures appear on photographic images. By the time the film fizzles out we’ve gone the whole hog with levitation, possession and – the film’s best shock moment – a flash photography sequence which sees something faintly hair-rising suddenly standing in the middle of the room.

Tempting as it is to write Apartment 143 off as just a cheap and timely rip-off (Paranormal Activity 4 is out this month and, of course, Halloween is just around the corner) the film’s actually got a decent pedigree (writer Cortes directed Buried a couple of years back) and the script has a couple of nice touches which make it clear that Paranormal Activity is more of a launching-point than a rigid template, recognising the self-imposed limitations of the PA series which can never be quite this visually-explicit and travelling down a different, less ambiguous road. Interesting, if inessential but, at just seventy-five minutes, worth a look if you fancy a few reliable ghostly thrills.

Extras: Trailer, making of featurette.

Review: The Maze / Cert: 18 / Director: Steve Shimek / Screenplay: Katy Baldwin, Timothy Gutierrez / Starring: Shalaina Castle, Brandon Sean Pearson, Kyle Paul, Tye Nelson / Release Date: Out Now

Post-Cabin in the Woods it’s a bit difficult to take seriously any movie about a gang of teens who wander off into some remote middle-of-nowhere wilderness (where they can’t get a mobile phone signal) because Joss Whedon’s witty and wonderful movie deconstructed and laid bare all those clichés and, in theory, made teens-in-peril slashers off-limits – at least for the foreseeable. Someone should have told the makers of The Maze what Whedon was up to because, if nothing else, we’d have been spared this deeply-dreary, unimaginative offering which we’re a-mazed (yes!!) ever got off whichever sorry drawing board it was conceived upon.

So here we go again. A group of college friends (get out, this lot won’t see twenty-five again) decide to break into a closed corn maze in the middle of the night (as you do) for a game of tag. But wait! There’s some bloke with a knife wearing a red hoodie (how low was the budget again?) in the cornfield with them and before long he’s… well, he’s just stabbing them, one by one.

The word ‘derivative’ barely does this one justice so we’ll try ‘boring’ and ‘pointless’ too and see where they all get us. As murderous mysterious rampaging psychopath movies go, The Maze just doesn’t get off the starting blocks. The script is lifeless, the acting is listless and the killer is just this guy in a coat who doesn’t even come up with gross or inventive ways of killing his victims. The Maze is so bereft of ideas it actually runs out of maze-based steam halfway through and the rest of the film shifts into an only slightly more suspenseful gear as the survivor of the group becomes embroiled in a cat-and-mouse battle of wits with the killer who’s determined to finish the job – whatever it was. I certainly had no idea what his motivation was but with murder methods as dull and unimaginative as these I’d have been minded to advise him to give it up as a bad job and take up something only marginally less tedious – accountancy perhaps.

The Maze is just one big bore. There are no characters to invest in, no sense of excitement, no thrill of the last-minute will-they/won’t-they escape. The corn maze itself is a visually dreary setting and the half-time switch to a cramped Police station just barely saves The Maze from the box marked ‘instantly forgettable’. Lame.

Extras: None

Review: Arachnoquake / Cert: 15 / Director: G.E. Furst / Screenplay: Paul A. Birkett / Starring: Tracey Gold, Edward Furlong, Bug Hall, Ethan Phillips / Release Date: Out Now

In Arachnoquake a freak earth tremor in the New Orleans area releases a race of vicious, albino giant spiders which have been evolving at the centre of the earth for millions of years. They also spit fire and walk on water. Really. We’re not making this up.

You’ll not be too surprised (we hope) to learn that this is another Sy Fy ‘monster of the week’ TV movie and, despite its general idiocy and ineptness, it’s actually not that bad. Giant spider movies are always fun – who hasn’t enjoyed a quick shriek at the likes of Tarantula, Kingdom of the Spiders and even Eight-Legged Freaks? – and Arachnoquake, whilst hardly in the same league, has a few worthwhile gross-out thrills and a nice sense of self-awareness with its tongue planted very firmly in its cheek. The low budget fun begins when an unconvincing CGI spider scuttles out of a crevice in the ground following an unexpected earthquake in Louisiana. Before long – Arachnoquake doesn’t hang about – hordes of giant arachnids of various sizes are racing across the city (which looks oddly under-populated) and terrorising a bus load of tourists and their slacker tour guide Paul (played by the brilliantly-named Bug Hall), a swamp tour boat piloted by Paul’s sister Annabel (Megan Adelle) and a busload of cheerleaders driven by Charlie (Terminator 2 star Furlong).

Determinedly cheap and cheerful stuff, Arachnoquake happily barrels along in a rush of decent action set pieces which do the job if you can turn a blind eye to the low-grade special effects and hammy, over-earnest acting. The spiders belch flame, attack victims with some sort of stinger and, in an amusingly-overambitious sequence, rush across the water with their little legs spinning like paddles. Inevitably the giant queen spider is drawn from her underground lair and sets off on a King Kong-style assault on New Orleans, spinning her web between two skyscrapers as a handful of military types run around shouting and firing guns at her.

Arachnoquake is too hilarious and good-natured to be offensive and, for Sy Fy, it’s a quantum leap in quality from last year’s dire Camel Spiders and is cautiously recommended for lovers of unpretentious throwaway big insect movies.

Extras: None

Review: Puppet Master III – Toulon’s Revenge / Cert: 18 / Director: David DeCoteau / Screenplay: C. Courtney Joyner / Starring: Guy Rolfe, Richard Lynch, Ian Abercrombie, Kristopher Logan / Released: October 22nd

The third instalment of the Puppet Master series is a prequel, giving us the long-awaited backstory of Andre Toulon (Rolfe), a puppeteer with the power of bringing his creations to life. It’s World War II, Berlin, and Toulon is doing his bit against the Axis by sneaking anti-Nazi propaganda into his puppet shows. This draws the attention of a Gestapo officer, who notices that Toulon’s puppets seems to be moving around without strings, as if by magic – news which greatly excites Nazi boffin Dr Hess (Abercrombie), who has been trying and failing to come up with a formula to reanimate corpses for service on the Eastern Front. The ensuing raid on Toulon’s flat results in the death of his beloved wife, Elsa (Douglas). The puppet master escapes, vowing revenge. Cue the patter of tiny feet and the flashing of knives.

Going back in time fifty years was a risky move, but it works very well. Shot on the Universal Studios backlot, the film has a sleek, Indiana Jones-ish period feel, with sinister black cars prowling the streets and anything that doesn’t move draped in massive swastikas. It also boasts a superior array of baddies. As well as the bumptious Dr Hess, there’s vicious Gestapo heavy Major Krauss (a typically fine turn from the late Richard Lynch) and his boss, the urbane, brothel-creeping General Mueller (played by Walter Gotell, better known as General Gogol from the James Bond movies).

Rounding out a strong cast is Guy Rolfe, taking on the role of Toulon. A tall, distinguished actor in the Christopher Lee/Basil Rathbone mould, his dignified but steely performance at last makes sense of a character who until that point had been a bit of a muddle – a suicidal Geppetto in the first film, a brain-eating ghoul in the second. Rolfe paints him as a decent man in the grip of moral outrage, determined to exact poetic vengeance.

Prolific director David DeCoteau (98 directing credits on IMDb!) moves things along briskly, and the SFX (a combination of stop-motion animation, cable controls and hand puppetry) are the slickest of the series yet. There’s a colourful new addition, a six-armed cowboy called Six Shooter, who delivers one of the film’s standout moments when he goes clambering up the wall of General Mueller’s favourite brothel. And two old favourites, Blade and Leach Woman, are endowed with surprising origin stories.

In fact, the whole film benefits from the sense of being part of an ongoing saga, deepening our understanding of what has gone before and shedding new light on characters we thought we knew. Like its predecessors, it looks stunning in this new transfer. That’s three excellent discs released so far. Anyone fancy popping round for a Puppet Master marathon?

Extras: Commentary by David DeCoteau and C. Courtney Joyner, original Videozone making of featurette, introduction by Charles Band, trailer, two rare toy commercials, Full Moon trailer park, reversible sleeve incorporating original art.

Review: Rasputin, the Mad Monk / Cert: 15 / Director: Don Sharp / Screenplay: Anthony Hinds / Starring: Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews, Dinsdale Landen, Richard Pasco / Release Date: October 22nd

Hammer have been a bit busy of late knocking out their classics on Blu-ray and DVD and the latest batch includes this rather curious slice of Hammer Horror: Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966). Sorry, did I say ‘horror’? Well, on paper, you could argue that this is historical melodrama but ultimately we’ll always be filing this under Hammer’s horror output. Not only was it made at the height of their horror period (in fact, back to back with Dracula: Prince of Darkness with whom it shares some of its cast and most of its sets – Castle Dracula becomes Saint Petersburg’s Winter Palace) but it is very much in the same style. After all, this is a telling of the Rasputin myth rather than any serious attempt at history, which is fair enough when you consider Rasputin was still a fairly mythical character in 1966. The film’s plot is largely based on Felix Yusupov’s 1927 book in which, among other things, he explained his involvement in the murder of the Russian mystic, Grigori Rasputin. However, his account is now pretty much regarded as a load of politically expedient tosh to cover up British Intelligence’s role in discrediting and disposing of a man at the heart of Russian power who wanted his country to pull out of World War I. Fascinating, I’m sure, but you’re quite right, I’ll get back to the film (in which Yusupov is substituted by Ivan as a central character).

There’s everything you’d expect from a mid-‘60s Hammer here; from the luxurious colours to the pretty good, if occasionally hammy, acting. In fact the cast of Hammer regulars are all in fine fettle with some excellent performances from Francis Matthews, Barbara Shelley, Dinsdale Landen and Richard Pasco. But the real attraction of Rasputin is a magnificent piece of scenery chewing from Christopher Lee; he’s obviously having a ball and clearly pleased not to be doing Dracula for a change. To be fair, if you’re casting Rasputin and Christopher Lee is available, you’re unlikely to be doing any other auditions; he was born for this one. Looking like a young Saruman (back in the days when he was at Hatfield Polytechnic and formed his own, unsuccessful, prog rock band), Lee is 6’ 3” of licentious intensity with mad staring eyes and a voice that is utterly convincing as a sexual dominant who can get a posh girl like Barbara Shelley to do anything he likes. You can believe that this is a man who wants to give God ‘sins worth forgiving’, as writer Anthony Hinds so eloquently puts it for him. It’s just such a pity that they obviously got a stunt dancer in; what would we give to see Big Chris do the Barynya?

There are some minor criticisms here though. On at least one occasion Lee makes an entrance with a stance and a fanfare that just makes you think he’s Dracula in a wig; under the circumstances director Don Sharp should have been a bit more careful. Despite the best of intentions, you never get that feeling of ‘epic’ with a Hammer budget and the trappings of horror are also a bit too incongruous: There is an early fight that results in a very rubber-looking severed hand that gets bandied about in a distinctly non-historical manner when Rasputin is admonished by his abbot back at the monastery. In typical Hammer fashion, they paid for that hand and they’re damn well going to get their money’s worth out of it. The studio’s habits had obviously been hard to shed. But then this works to the film’s advantage in a tremendous scene in Rasputin’s darkened house with Peter (Landen) and Rasputin stalking each other among bottles of acid in the pitch black. This would be the highlight of the film if it wasn’t for a particularly delicious confrontation between Rasputin and the foppish Ivan (Matthews) as the latter uses his sister as bait to lure the dastardly monk to a trap. Shame that the big fight at the end was edited to leave Ivan’s later dishevelment a bit of a puzzle.

All in all it’s an enjoyable romp and a must for any fan of Christopher Lee. But if you’re a real fan of Hammer there’s another point of interest. Michael Ripper may appear to be absent but listen carefully to Bartlett Mullins as ‘Little Father’. Yep, for reasons best known to Hammer, they got Michael to overdub his lines. Perhaps they knew that, one day, some of us would be waiting to ‘chug a beer’ whenever he made his inevitable Hammer appearances and, as far as I’m concerned, voice-overs count. Oh, and did you know that, as a young boy, Christopher Lee met Felix Yusupov? Of course he did. I expect Yusupov talked about it until his dying day.

Extras: Among the usual fare there are also two excellent documentaries – Tall Stories: The Making of Rasputin, the Mad Monk and the surprisingly interesting Brought to Book: Hammer Novelisations.

Review: Top Cat / Cert: U / Director: Alberto Mar / Screenplay: Timothy McKeon, Kevin Seccia / Starring: Jason Harris, Chris Edgerly, Bill Lobley, Ben Diskin, Matthew Piazzi, Melissa Disney / Released: 15th October

Never trust reviews of children’s movies. The problem is that they’re nearly always written by adults. That’s why films like the Toy Story trilogy are (rightly) lauded while gems like Cars (2006) are only regarded as so-so. The Toy Story movies were packed with references and jokes that were aimed entirely at adult audiences that enabled families to enjoy them together and made sure that the critics showered them with praise. But poor old Cars was aimed entirely at (young) children and left adult critics unable to see how its simple story of life priorities was ideal for those of a certain age and that its use of vehicles as characters perfectly suited a child’s view of the world; especially a child on the autistic spectrum for whom these mechanical characterisations can actually be easier to relate to than people, animals or even Space Rangers. All of which makes Top Cat a particularly tricky thing to review.

We’re all filled with a rosy sense of nostalgia at the mere mention of Top Cat so the idea of sitting through a modern reimagining of this much-loved telly show of the ‘60s is a pretty attractive one. But what you may not know is that Top Cat was particularly popular in Central America where it is still repeated to this day; hence this Mexican production which has been translated into about every language imaginable and sold across the globe. From the opening credits, as the familiar theme song plays and we see T.C. indulge in his familiar fake limo passenger routine and the old coin-tied-to-hand tipping gag, you’d be hard-pressed not to raise a smile of familiarity. But all this goodwill soon wears off.

For a start, there is something odd about the animation. Apparently it uses cheap Flash animation but (despite reading about it on Wikipedia) I can’t really tell you what that means other than it’s going to look a bit rough. However, after a while you’ll begin to notice that while the backgrounds are actually 3D models (in that the figures sit in the sets); the characters themselves use regular 2D animation. While this was just about acceptable with 3D glasses in the cinema, on your flat telly, it’s just plain odd. But let’s say you can get over this. Top Cat was based on the Phil Silvers Show and the scheming T.C. and his brilliantly named gang of Spook, Choo Choo, Fancy, Brains and Benny are still the streetwise retro New Yorkers you know and love. Except that here they have smart phones and make jokes about Windows Vista. It looks like it’s supposed to be set at the same time as the original series but it clearly isn’t. In fact the whole plot is based around the idea of cats vs. technology as the villain replaces the police force with robots and criminalises the whole city in a story that reminded me of Judge Dredd’s The Day the Law Died. I suppose there’s only a limited number of stories in the world but, trust me, Top Cat and Judge Dredd are not interchangeable characters and nor are their stories. Mind you, Dredd in the Dibble role could have possibilities but I’m digressing enormously.

But surely none of this matters. Top Cat is just supposed to be funny and the story can’t really be that important even if it does have to carry the movie’s 392 minutes of running time (or so it seems when you’re watching it). But the humour is simply all over the place. Attempts at cleverness sit next to the plain silly, interrupted by misplaced pieces of surrealism. It seems like it was written by thirty or forty people who have never met and had no means of communication during what must have been a tortuous writing session. Yet IMDb tells me there were only two screen writers involved. Neither is Mexican so maybe they had to just write a new script to layer over a movie that had failed to translate well. There seems to be little other explanation for this hideous lesson in how not to make entertainment.

However, I am apparently wrong. You see I just checked with my eight year old son as to what he thinks of it. But he wouldn’t tell me as he was utterly engrossed in his tenth viewing of the damned thing. He loves it. I was trying to get him to proffer an opinion on the film’s artistic influences or an analysis of the mise-en-scène but all he could do was roll around the settee in rapturous laughter at the sight of a giant gorilla smashing up the surrounding neighbourhood of T.C.’s beloved alley. Personally I thought the scene rather reinforced my point that the spirit of Top Cat might have been missed here but, apparently, it’s just funny.

This is, of course, why you shouldn’t take much notice of reviews of films written by people who were never the intended audience. We haven’t got a clue. If you want to watch this with the kids then be prepared to visit your ‘happy place’ for the duration but your best bet is to stick the kids in front of it while you go and do something useful like knock out a review for Starburst on the laptop. It’s a mess, but if your age is in single figures, it would appear that you’re not going to care. On the other hand, they’re right about one thing: Giant gorillas are quite funny.

Extras: None

Rating from Me:

Rating from My Son:

Review: Cube / Cert: 15 / Director: Vincenzo Natali / Screenplay: Andre Bijevic, Vincenzo Natali, Graeme Manson / Starring: Maurice Dean Wint, David Hewlett, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Gaudagni / Release Date: October 15th

A low-budget Canadian film about maths. Doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for success, does it? But Cube, now appearing on Blu-ray for its 15th anniversary, also happens to be a classic sci-fi thriller. It’s beautiful, scary, weird and as perfect as an equation.

The setup is genius. Six characters, dressed in army-drab boiler suits, wake up to find themselves trapped inside a series of interconnected boxes. These include Quentin (Wint), a burly cop who quickly becomes the group’s alpha male; Holloway (Guadagni), a tightly wound doctor who badly needs a cigarette; Leaven (de Boer), a cute, bespectacled student; and limply defeatist Worth (Hewlett), who moans that he “wasn’t exactly bursting with joie de vivre” even before winding up in this surreal prison.

Opinions differ as to why this is happening to them. Quentin thinks it’s all some “rich psycho’s joke”, while Holloway, a conspiracy theorist, points the finger at a nebulous military-industrial complex (“No one’s ever going to call me paranoid again!”). One thing’s for sure, getting out won’t be easy, and not just because of the bewildering scale of the three-dimensional maze; there’s also the small matter of the deadly booby traps lurking in some of the rooms.

Eventually, as they learn more about their mad environment, Leaven notices underlying patterns and starts to apply mathematical logic to the problem. Best not say any more about that as we don’t want to spoil the fun, but the script (by director Vincenzo Natali and others) develops these twists and turns with consummate elegance, intercutting them with the slow fracturing of the group and the revelation of individual secrets.

Most movies inevitably date in some way or other, even if it’s only in small details, but Cube looks like it could have been made yesterday. Glowing like Chinese lanterns, the giant boxes through which the characters troop give the film a striking visual coherence. The SFX are sparing but impressive, with some nerve-tingling slice ‘n’ dice and a jolting face-melting moment. And, working in what were presumably quite confined circumstances, cinematographer Derek Rogers does a spirited job of throwing around the camera for a gutsy, dynamic feel.

A far cry from the plastics who usually inhabit low-budget shockers, de Boer brings grit as well as sweetness to the part of Leaven. Meanwhile, Hewlett – known to fans of Stargate Atlantis as the lovable Dr. Rodney McKay – delivers a typically smart, nervy performance.

A whiff of symbolism about the human condition only adds to the mythic appeal of a story which has been imitated – most notably in Saw – but never bettered. And anything that makes maths cool has to be good.

Extras: None