To the '90s and Beyond! Film Podcast

This Japanese remake of the 1997 Canadian thriller depicts several strangers awakening in a prison of cubic cells, some of them booby-trapped, not knowing how they got there or why. The prisoners must use their combined skills if they are to escape alive.

A group of strangers awakens with very little memory of who they are and finds that they have been involuntarily placed in a maze containing deadly traps. Meanwhile, a young technician watching over the Cube grows appalled at what he sees and endeavors to rescue a woman he finds a connection to who is trapped within.

In this follow-up to the 1997 futuristic cult thriller, Cube, another group of strangers find themselves transported into a maze of cube rooms for unknown reasons as they try to make their escape.

Set in the post-world financial demise of the year 2019, The Running Man stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as law enforcement officer and helicopter pilot Ben Richards, who ends up getting framed for instigating the murder of a crowd of innocent civilians engaging in a protest for food in Bakersfield. Richards and a couple of benevolent jail mates spring out of prison and go on the run, only to be captured later and used as scapegoats for the massacre by becoming involuntary contestants on the most popular television show in history, the government-supported 'The Running Man', whereby convicted murders are put into a glitzy game show where they must battle for their lives and the hope of a pardon while being hunted by a rogues gallery of skilled costumed assassins, all for the entertainment of a rabid public fan base. Richard Dawson has a major supporting role as the show's charismatic host, Damon Killian, who is as pleasant as can be when the camera is on, but is an unscrupulous, cutthroat businessman behind the scenes. Killian gets ever more averse to the depiction of the truth as Richards not only manages to stay alive far longer than any previous contestant, he is also in danger of becoming a national hero.

Without knowing how they got there or why they were there, several strangers awaken in a maze of cube-like rooms, some of them containing deadly booby traps. There's tough cop Quentin (Maurice Dean Wint), doctor Holloway (Nicky Guadagni), young math whiz Leaven (Nicole de Boer), escape artist Rennes (Wayne Robson), autistic savant Kazan (Andrew Miller) and architect Worth (David Hewlett). The cube inhabitants must rely on each other's strengths if they are to have any chance to escape.

The remains of a crashed spaceship, over three centuries old, is found on the ocean floor somewhere in the South Pacific, and a psychologist and his crew of scientists are selected to investigate. On board the ship, they encounter a strange spherical object, and after one of them enters the sphere, strange and not-too-pleasant things begin happening to them.

In the year 2047, a crew of American astronauts is sent to Neptune to try to save the crew and ship called the Event Horizon, which had mysteriously disappeared several years before. They find the Event Horizon but what they find inside is something more than they expected. Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill star in this Paul W.S. Anderson sci-fi/horror mesh.

Jodie Foster stars as scientist Ellie Arroway, who has dedicated her life to searching for possible intelligent lifeforms outside of Earth and our solar system. An orphan from an early age, her faith in God has wavered since the days of trying to futilely contact her mother in heaven through the radio, replaced by a firm belief in science and facts as the pinnacle of what's true and right. While her faith that we are not alone in the universe is unwavering, as a scientist, she won't rest until she has absolute proof. Scanning the skies for radio waves of intelligent extraterrestrial origin, she and her team at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) wait diligently for a message. That day finally arrives when they pick up a repeating signal emanating from Vega, a star system 26 light-years away. As the scientists work diligently to try to decode the message, the Earth erupts in a series of science vs. religion debates on what this all means, and who should be the one who represents our interests should we come face to face with the originator of the message.

During a burial dig early in the 20th century, a stargate is found but the technology didn't exist to understand the complicated mechanism. Fast forward to the 1990s, and experiments have begun again, this time enlisting the services of Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader), a professor of Ancient Egypt who believes that man could not possibly have been responsible for the civilization which existed over 5000 years ago. The stargate is operated which is a gateway to another world on the other end of the galaxy. Jackson and a troop of soldiers are sent there to investigate and find a civilization similar to that found in Ancient Egypt. Kurt Russell, Jaye Davidson, and Mili Avital co-star in this Roland Emmerich/Dean Devlin film.

A series of nuclear explosions in the South Pacific creates a titanic lizard monster that's born pregnant and destroys Manhattan. With over 200 eggs laid, the human race faces extinction if a biologist (Matthew Broderick), a couple of reporters, the French CIA, and the military can't kill them all before they all lay eggs of their own.

Activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard_ is still leading the Dinosaur Protection Group to break up illegal breeding operations. Claire's partner, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), captures and relocates stray dinos before they're slaughtered by poachers. They live in a cabin in the Sierra Nevadas with 14-year-old experimental human clone Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), raised as their surrogate daughter in secret to protect her from exploitation. The velociraptor raised by Owen, Blue, lives in the nearby woods with her asexually created younger hatchling, dubbed Beta by Maisie. Maisie is unhappy in isolation and occasionally strays beyond her parents' border, ultimately getting captured by mercenaries, who also kidnap Beta. Meanwhile, genetically modified locusts begin consuming and destroying farm crops in America's heartland and will soon be a global threat. Paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) discovers that crops from Biosyn seeds remain unaffected, suspecting foul play to monopolize the world's food market. She consults former paleontologist colleague and romantic partner Alan Grant (Sam Neill) for help. They discover that the locusts have been genetically modified using Cretaceous period DNA. Their detective work finds them joining forces with Claire and Owen to infiltrate Biosyn, where Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is currently employed, to expose the greedy corporation's plans to the world.

This 5th entry in the Jurassic franchise sets the story following the closure of Jurassic World, where its dormant volcano, Mt. Sibo, has become active, threatening all life on Isla Nublar. Humankind debates whether the clone dinosaurs should be saved or return to extinction. Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) has become a conservationist advocate for the Dinosaur Protection Group, feeling an overwhelming responsibility to save the dinos she once considered merely a commodity. After John Hammond's billionaire associate Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) is on his deathbed, his assistant, Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), pitches a plan to Claire to fund the relocation of the dinosaurs from Isla Nublar to a sanctuary island. Claire gathers a team including velociraptor whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), super-hacker Franklin Webb (Justice Smith), and paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniela Pineda). The team is stunned to discover find mercenaries on the island gathering dinosaurs to bring to the mainland for greedy, nefarious purposes.

Siblings Gray (Ty Simpkins) and Zach (Nick Robinson) are sent on vacation to visit their Aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is the manager of operations at the Costa Rica island resort known as Jurassic World, a tourist attraction funded by mega-billionaire named Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) that takes its basic idea from the original Jurassic Park but seeks to do the formula right (i.e., more profitably). In addition to the assortment of dinosaurs, the corporation is looking into creating their own hybrid dinos through experiments in genetic engineering that are sure to draw in even more interested visitors year after year. Their biggest creation is the Indominus Rex, a creation that splices the T. Rex DNA with a hodge-podge of other predators of various strengths, that just might be the most deadly creature that has ever roamed the Earth. (I suppose it's not a good sign that 'indominus' is Latin for 'untamable'.) Navy vet Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) is a behavioral research consultant and talent trainer at the facility, looking into the ability of these dinosaurs to learn from human instruction, and he's especially made progress at whispering to velociraptors, which may prove to be a much-needed thing now that Indominus Rex has gotten out of its cage and is prepared to hunt and kill whatever it can on the island, which ultimately could mean the slaughter of 20,000 visitors trapped in the theme park. Colin Trevorrow directs.

Jurassic Park III starts off with a man and a young boy that go paragliding only to have a forced crash landing on the island of Isla Sorna, the infamous second Jurassic Park island. The boy's parents, played by William H. Macy and Tea Leoni, travel to the island in hopes of rescuing their son, dragging along Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill, from the first film), who is none too happy about being thrown among the ruthless predators again. Golly gee, you don't think their plane might crash causing them to have to deal with dino-angst for 90 minutes, do you? Joe Johnston directs.

It's four years later, and the chief creator of Jurassic Park sends an expedition of four people to check on "Site B", a secret place where the dinosaurs were developed and which now sports dinosaurs roaming free. The quartet is supposed to document the goings-on, but soon discover they will not be alone on the island, as the creator's nephew envisions Jurassic Parks across America and wants to capture some dinos to exploit for profit. Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, and Vince Vaughn star. Directed by Steven Spielberg.

Vince goes in-depth on all of the history, trivia, and behind-the-scenes action of 1993's JURASSIC PARK, directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the best-selling book by Michael Crichton. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough star in this thrilling adventure of an eccentric billionaire who builds a theme park attraction full of cloned dinosaurs that doesn't go according to plan.

Super Mario Bros. features the emergence of an alternate dimension caused by (what is now known as) Brooklyn being struck by a meteorite millions of years ago. In this alternate dimension, humans evolved from lizards, rather than monkeys, as believed in our own realm. There is also only one city, Dinohattan, surrounded by endless desert, and currently presided over by the evil Koopa (Hopper, Red Rock West). President Koopa (Dennis Hopper) is out to get a powerful rock crystal, a fragment of the original meteorite, that he needs to merge the two dimensions, giving him more realms to conquer. Here is where we meet our heroes, a couple of plumbers named Mario Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi Mario (John Leguizamo), who, in pursuit of a kidnapped new friend in a paleontology student named Daisy (Samantha Mathis), who happens to have the rock in the form of a necklace, find a portal into the Dinohattan dimension. Dangers lurk all around, as the brave brothers must battle the mighty Koopa and his lizard horde to rescue Daisy and thwart Koopa's evil plans to destroy their world.

Set in the futuristic year of 2007, in a city dubbed New Angeles, after having been reconstructed after a giant earthquake that happened a decade before in Southern California, where gangs and criminals mostly have their run of the city streets at night. Outside of the ineffective New Angeles Police Department, a vigilante group called the Power Corps, with direction from a teenage girl named Marian (Alyssa Milano), is the only organized force willing to take on the evil forces around the town. She knows talent when she sees it, so when she stumbles across a couple of martial-artist orphaned brothers named Jimmy (Mark Dacascos) and Billy (Scott Wolf) Lee, she recruits them for the cause of good. Their top adversary is a megalomaniac tycoon named Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick), aka 'The Shadow Master', who has become quite powerful in all but taking completely over the streets, utilizing his ability to change into shadow form and take over the bodies of others. The Lee brothers and their guardian Satori (Julia Nickson) have half of a powerful, mystical ancient Chinese medallion, while Koga has the other, and he'll do whatever it takes to get his avaricious hands on it.

In this animated adventure expanded from the video game, M. Bison is a megalomaniacal warlord from Thailand with dreams of world domination. Bison runs a super-secret organization of drug smugglers, weapons runners, and an international terror and crime syndicate called "Shadowlaw". Fueling Shadowlaw is a massive drug-running operation and a diabolical plan to become the most military force in the world through the use of ultra-powerful street fighters. Bison has his tech team devise a squad of cyborgs to do reconnaissance to find the best fighters in the world to recruit into his organization as part of a super army better than any individual nation's. Because the Japanese Shotokan karate master named Ryu has bested Sagat in the Street Fighter Tournament, it marks him as perhaps the world's best, and someone from which Bison can build an army of super-street fighters. Ryu's best friend from San Francisco, Ken Masters, another street fighter who studied the same master (making him the closest fighter to being Ryu's equal) is kidnapped by Bison for brainwashing experiments to convert street fighters to his political assassins, starting with his effort to try to take down the world-wandering Ryu. Vengeful Chun Li and her colleagues at Interpol are trying to take down the operation, as does US Air Force Captain Guile, who is out to take down Bison for killing a friend.

In the Southeast Asian country of Shadaloo, where General M. Bison (Raul Julia) has been waging a war with the A.N. (the Allied Nations -- a U.N.-like military force) after he has taken several dozen A.N. hostages, putting them up for a ransom of $20 billion dollars. Leading the A.N. counterattack is United States Colonel William F. Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a headstrong and gifted fighter that Bison can't wait to challenge in hand-to-hand combat. Many others would converge at Bison's stronghold, including television reporter Chun-Li Zang (Ming-Na), arms dealer Victor Sagat (Wes Studi), and a couple of roguish martial artists named Ken (Damian Chapa) and Ryu (Byron Mann).