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Reviews
Cube (1997)
The idea is better than the realisation
This movie was really disappointing as the idea sounds much better than the realisation actually is. The characters are rather stereotypical and the dialogues convulsively try to reveal some sort of psychological and philosophical truths (which are only platitudes in my point of view). One of the most overrated movies I have ever watched. One could have made so much more out of it...
*** SPOILERS: The worst thing about this movie is that three of the six caged persons are killed by the protagonist Holloway, who turns out to be some kind of psycho at the end of the movie. I really found it annoying to see those characters escaping all those sophisticated traps just to be killed by one out of themselves. That did not make any sense to me. And it was quite unsatisfying for me, since the common summaries suggest that the caged protagonists are fighting against the traps and NOT against each other. ***
The Astronaut's Wife (1999)
Not so bad at all
I rented this movie on video tape without knowing anything about it. I didn't even know that it existed before I watched it, and therefore I did not have any expectations. In my opinion this movie is not so bad at all. The idea is not new and the story reveals many similarities to Rosemary's Baby, but I really have no idea, why it has been compared to "Plan 9 from outer space"; I've seen many worse sci-fi-movies. I guess the trailers for the movie may have built up wrong expectations.
*** SPOILER BEGINS *** The story is about a psychically unstabile young woman (Jillian), who's husband Spencer is - guess what - an astronaut. After an "accident" during a routine mission, Spencer's partner Alex dies unexpectedly and his pregnant wife commits suicide. Spencer seems altered, too. He quits his NASA job and takes his wife to New York, where he joins in an obscure company, although being an astronaut had always been his dream.
After a party he brutally impregnats Jillian and soon she begins to feel that something's wrong. First she doubts her own psychical constitution, but after a medical doctor from the NASA contacts her, it becomes more and more obvious that her husband has been infected some kind of extraterrestrial organism - and she carries his extraterrestrial breed inside her body. *** SPOILER ENDS ***
The movie focuses on the wife's point of view and it makes absolutely no attempt to be a classical "sci-fi-shocker". It tries to build up excitement in a subtile way, and this attempt is quite successful. The behaviour of the protagonists is much more consistent than many other comments let you suggest (I've read them after watching the movie).
Unfortunately the end comes very suddenly and I must confess that I was not absolutely satisfied by the last scenes.
Nevertheless I'd give the movie 6 or 7 points. It's far above average from my point of view.