Cube (dir:Vincenzo Natali) is about a group of people who find themselves trapped in a square room with tunnels on each side leading to another square room. The problem is that neither of them knows which room triggers a death trap. Cube is an intense suspense thriller that, instead of resorting to having the characters run around and be cut down randomly, takes a higer route. The characters actively plan and try to figure out how to get out and what room has a trap. Human Nature plays a big part in how the characters get along; desperation, violence and selfishness are all parts of the characters, the ones that don't keep these destructive qualities under control end up with a lesser chance of surviving. A view of Cube could be that it's an allegory for our reality: death could lurk everywhere and we have no idea who created this trap or how exactly to get out or understand it.

Pi (dir: Darren Aronofsky) is another thriller that has brains, dealing with a mathmatician, Max, who tries to use math to figure out the world. On his quest, he runs into a stock investor who believes that the mathmetician has found a way to predict the stock market perfectly, and a Jewish scholar who wants Max to help him find the name of God with his superior skills. At first a movie about math could sound boring, but the movie draws one in about Max belief's that math is how the world works. As Max gets closer and closer to the answer to the formula for the workings of the world, things begin to break down as the stock investor begins to hunt him down for the formula and the Jewish Organization demands that Max give them the formula. Max's paranoia gives the film it's thriller edge, not knowing who with or against Max or what real or hallucionary. Pi is a highly complex film that I recommend very much.

CUBE (Canada 1998) movie ** score **1/2

Initially intriguing, but ultimately disappointing fantasy has an assortment of mismatched characters attempting to escape from a booby-trapped maze of compartments within a giant cube.

The paper-thin storyline and inconclusive ending doesn’t do the movie’s concept or the good-ish special effects any justice – though a very bland cast seems well at home with such a lame and infantile script. This is the sort of movie that is very easy to make – the pointless ending makes all of the preceding events almost entirely worthless – anyone could have thought-up this witless and impotent exercise in vacuous Kubrickesque filmmaking.

This is the sort of movie that is reasonably entertaining while its on, but afterwards you wish you hadn’t bothered – in fact, CUBE wasn’t much better than an average episode of Voyager (according to my grandchildren).

Even the kiddies won’t be fooled into thinking CUBE is anything other than a waste of space – you have been warned.

One or two weeks ago I saw Moebius at the same cinema. Reminded me of Pi, the story is about a subway train that vanished in Buenos Aires' subway net. When a mathematician investigates, he finds out that the last extension of the subway net has made it so complex that it cannot be described mathematically anymore. He realizes that the subway train is moving on a Moebius loop and therefore cannot be found in the subway net. The movie gets particularly abstract in the final sequences, and while I cannot really interpret it after seeing it only once, I highly recommend watching it if you enjoyed Pi.

I hadn't heard of Cube before, but I'll make sure to watch it when I get the chance.

Cube was alright, but a little to art-filmy for my taste. Towards the end, it seemed like they were trying to abstract and anti-formulaic just so it could be considered "art".