Cube (1997)

People trapped inside the Cube wake up to find themselves in a cube shaped room with nothing but a door on each wall linking to other cubes. Each person stuck in the Cube seems to have a special ability to help the team make their way out of the cube. With no food or water, they must find their way out or slowly die of dehydration.

"Well they have to feed us, don't they?"

I remember watching this in junior year of high school and having nightmares for a few days after. It's not the idea, but the execution of the movie that invokes such emotions of desolation and despair.

Some cube rooms are trapped, and these traps come in a variety of fashions. For example, the sushi machine:


Walking into this trap causes razor sharp wire to surround the victim and constrict in a spiral motion, shredding flesh to ribbons.

In the Acid Trap, a faceful of acid is sprayed at the victim, causing permanent rhinoplasty.

The spike room causes spikes to shoot out from the walls in all directions. Be quiet, because it's triggered by sound. And if you think you can just climb onto the spikes, the spikes have spikes on them. The characters eventually figure out to throw their boots into a room before entering a room to check for traps, but not all traps use motion sensors.

There's other traps, like the fire trap and dicer wire trap, but after playing Wilderness Survival, my mind wonders how people in the Cube can use these traps to their advantage. Since everyone in Cube has no items other than their clothes, boots, and removable door handles, you have to be creative. For example:

Boot = Trap Detector

Boot + Shoestring + Shoestring = Reusable Trap Detector

Coat + Coat + Pants = Rope

Boot + Fire Trap = Glue

Rope + Door Handle + Door Handle + Glue = Grapple

Door Handle + Door Handle = Spear

Spear + Acid Trap = Acid Spear

Door Handle + Coat + Fire Trap = Torch

Human Corpse + Wire Dicer Trap + Door Handle + Fire Trap = Kebab


With no other setting than the Cube and its many rooms, the movie is highly dependent on character interactions. Just watching these characters fumble around and argue is fun by itself. Each character eventually takes on a role. There's Quentin, the policeman who takes on the role of leader and strong guy, Worth, the construction engineer, Leaven, the high school math student, Holloway, the doctor, Kazan, a savant, and Rennes, an escape artist. If they can all work together, maybe they can figure a way out of the maze. Just don't get your head stuck in a door:


And as always, occasionally check your teammate for rape face:


Rating: A

The Children of Huang Shi (2008)

Another movie about Chinese people? Not quite. This is about a European journalist named George Hogg who pulled off a mission of mercy during the Japanese occupation of China.
In wartime, many children are packed in dilapidated orphanages for their own good. The sight of orphans threatened by a creeping warzone in the Sino-Chinese war in Northern China led Hogg to commission the Red Cross to secretly transport the children to the safety of Southern China. So basically, these kids are alive thanks to this charismatic foreign journalist, who they mirthfully named "Mr Pig" for lack of better English language skills. For its sheer boldness, this exodus became a heroic journey that both the Kumintang and the communist rebels would come to aid.

This is sort of like a Chinese underground railroad.
Rating: 50%

Hercules in New York (1970)

"Arnold's first movie" this is also called. Way before he was a famous bodybuilder and before Pumping Iron, he was just another ordinary buff guy starring in D class flicks. Arnold plays the demigod Hercules who goes to New York out of boredom and pisses off a bunch of irritable New Yorkers. His voice has been dubbed over by someone who speaks perfect English, and his name on the screen is "Arnold Strong" rather than Schwarzenegger because it was deemed too provincial at the time. Everything pretty much sucks.

Arnold wrestles a guy in a bear suit.
Rating: 20%

No Country for Old Men (2007)

This is sort of a modern version of a Western movie but with a botched drug deal and some Mexican cartels running around looking for stolen drug money. The highlight is this huge menacing psychopathic outlaw that goes around killing people in Texas. He basically goes around messing with people to decide whether to kill them or not and genuinely enjoys the selection process.

About halfway through, I realized that there had not been any music in the entire movie. None. No Country for Old Men relies on the hardness of the action and the perplexity of the conversations to move the story along without any embellishment. That, and a huge menacing South American hitman with a deep croaky voice.

This movie doesn't have a fucking ending.
Rating: 50%

Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee (2007)

This movie sucks fucking kong balls. What the fuck.

What is this about? The plot is some shit about Bruce Lee somehow related to a bunch of under-appreciated Asian people and about how many Asian people you can cram into a shitty movie. The cast is comprised of the cast of Better Luck Tomorrow PLUS any other Asian people and unemployed actors they could find dressed in faggoty costumes. For 84 minutes, they give mock interviews about shit nobody cares about, they whine and complain on camera, they dredge up racial issues.

As I watched it, I felt this....feeling...sort of a mixture of boredom and the feeling you get when you watch really pitiful acts of desperation. I'd had enough. I just couldn't finish it. After about half an hour, I ejected it and dumped it in the trash.

Satire doesn't work if what you're showing isn't funny and you are just bitching a lot instead.
Rating: 5%

Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (2008)

More HK movies. This one has Andy Lau in it, which automatically means that the plot is about deception and being witty, which it is.

It was nearly the end of the Three Kingdoms Period in the war between the states of Cao(or Tsao) and Liu. The generals of the time were shrewed strategists, resulting in many surprising upsets in battle. In an attempt to end the war, the Kingdom of Liu executes a plan to crush the cities of Cao and sends their greatest general (Andy Lau) to do it. But the plan is cut short by the scheming granddaughter of emperor Cao, driving the armies of Liu into the hills where they are annihilated.

At the prospect of his impending death, Andy Lau reflects upon his lifetime spent on warfare. "What have we accomplished in our pursuit to unite the kingdoms? Where is the peace we fought for?", he asks.

This same idea is the theme of the movie Hero. It says that you must sacrifice your own ideals to allow "One China" to exist, which, surprisingly enough, is how Chinese people justify killing Tibetan monks, torturing political dissidents, and other crazy things. It is considered noble and wise to give up in the face of futility. Funny isn't it, how eagerly Chinese people are used as pawns?

Ending line: "The long united must divide and the long divided must unite."
Rating: 70%

China will grow larger.

OMG CHINA




Chinese propaganda is convincing...






China wins by blowing shit up. How do you defend against that?!

China wins.

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

GAY okay so this is another Wuxia movie with famous Chinese celebrities that dress in ridiculous armor, but with a twist: They throw in one white guy.

The story starts with a dumbed down version of Sun WuKong for kids, but instead of being imprisoned by the palm of Buddha, the Monkey King is defeated by this "Jade Warlord". The white guy falls into possession of Sun WuKong's magic staff and must use it to resurrect him. The problem is that he keeps getting stopped by imperial soldiers with ridiculous armor and is hunted by an Asian dominatrix with wispy white hair.

Jet Li and Jackie Chan are there to protect whitey with idiot-style shaolin arts and to teach him how to "get some Gung Fu". After kicking him around for a little bit, he goes to fight the Jade Emperor. Fighting ensues, and after a protracted battle, a blundering idiot with a stupid face saves China from tyranny.

However, the story does not end there. After being returned to his own dimension, he uses his newfound fighting power to put down a gang of thugs that has been bugging him. Then he makes friends with the owner of a Chinese pawn shop and gets noticed by the reincarnation of an orphaned girl whose life he failed to save in the timeline that he was in and blah blah blah

"Bullshit. If a white guy appeared in ancient China, they would've thought he was a ghost, killed him, and made dumplings out of his flesh."
Rating: 40%