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The Cell - New Line Platinum Series

The Cell - New Line Platinum Series

List Price: $14.97
Your Price: $7.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Intellectually Empty
Review: Fifth grade level dialogue and plot. Visual popcorn. Other than Jennifer Lopez, there was nothing worth watching. BAD to the bone.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Remarkable film; wonderful on DVD
Review: I hadn't seen this film in the theater, and my first viewing was the other day on my new DVD player and TV. It's incredible--really overwhelming--and if you can stomach the subject matter you'll be rewarded with imagery and scenes that will take your breath away. Much of the thematic work is borrowed, and part of the fun is seeing the influences of Caravaggio, Simon Larbalestier, Tarsem's early video work, and many others all thrown together in visuals ranging from horrific to exquisite.

The story itself is robust, and the acting's great (yes, Jennifer Lopez is good). Vincent D'Onofrio is one of the best actors ever--between the two, you'll see as good a representation of Mary and the Devil as you'd ever hope to see. Some of the settings and costumes allow these two actors to take on nearly iconic power and presence.

Throw out all of your preconceptions before you watch (and get your kids out of the room). This is surreal, nightmarish film is unforgettable.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Music Video turned movie- but done suprisingly well.
Review: Given, this movie can be directly compared to Silence of the Lambs (getting into the killers mind to find a missing person)it is still well done. Lopez wasn't fabulous- Vaughn wasn't either...but I suppose this film wasn't exactly about great acting- obviously more time was spent perfecting the visuals than the actual characters. Taking that into consideration and leaving flat performances aside- this movie is beautiful. Tarsem- whose experience in directing music videos shines through in the cell does a fine job in making a film that is basically disturbing eye candy... Compared to Natural Born Killers (another music video turned film)the Cell is much less annoying in its overuse of absurd visuals and much more effective.

If you are looking for plot- you won't find much here.

If you're looking for a visually stunning piece of art turned motion picture- you'll be happy.

The violence/disturbing images are outrageous- mouth watering even for fans of the wickedly gorey...

... and in the end you have a beautiful tapestry of cg fx, gorgeous scenery (from the open dessert, to D'Onafrio's hellish paradise), and a 100 + minute music video that is more than tolerable.

A director's cut would've been a nice suprise...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Watch this with the sound turned down
Review: The pop psychology is embarassingly bad. Jennifer Lopez can't act to save her life. The plot seemed like a minute or two's work. But who cares? Cinema is a visual art form and this is wonderful art. I won't give this movie a 5 for two reasons: (1) The director used to make music videos. He should have made this movie a video too. Throw out the dialogue that distracts from the excellent images and give us some good music instead. (2) It shows that the director is used to working with video and not film. In the cinema the image quality seemed a bit rough. Beuatiful images like these need to use all of the resolution and dynamic range that film has to offer. I guess on DVD that's less of a problem.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Bad Sci-fi
Review: This movie is like one big music video. Admittedly, the movie has phenomenal special effects. The story line and acting however is not close to par. Watch Matrix for depth and Silence of the Lambs for thrills and suspense. This movie was marketed as a combo of these two. It is not close in calibur. Big disappointment.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: GIVEN MORE HYPE THAN WHAT IT IS WORTH!
Review: This movie starts out weird and continues throughout the rest of the movie. This movie wasn't anything that I thought it would be. Jennifer's acting in this movie could have been better. It was okay enough to continue watching but not a great movie at all.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Gorgeous but empty
Review: Visually stunning -- no, REALLY visually stunning "psychic detective thriller" about a woman who enters the mind of a comatose serial killer to find out where his last victim is. Incredibly promising ideas, fantastic set/costume design, great use of CGI -- but it's all a lost cause, since the characters are ciphers (Jennifer Lopez as the female lead is particularly pointless) and the story turns out to be a giant red herring; none of the effort expended by the characters turns out to be of any use to the plot. The movie also wallows, SE7EN-style, in the depravity that it pretends to "understand" or maybe even condemn, but anyone with an IQ over 40 won't be fooled -- it's mostly just fetishistic and nasty.

With a tighter, more cohesive story this could have been brilliant, but it stands merely as a pretty-looking curiosity. Director Tarsem [Singh] directed many music videos before this feature film; it shows.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The Smell
Review: Hey What's that smell? Oh I know it's another rotten knockoff of Silence of the Lambs. Now I'd like to start by saying the Effects are all that make this movie watchable, and that grows pretty tiresome by the 90 min mark. The story is pretty basic. The acting for the most part is uniformly BAD. Jennifer Lopez and her whisper are growing mighty tiresome, And what happened to Vince Vaughn?....... I can only recommend this movie if you can smoke a Fatty And enjoy the imagary. If not skip it and Rent the Much Superior Collecters Edition of 7, or The Criterion Collection Version of Silence of the Lambs.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Visually stunning, plot needed some work
Review: Gorgeous special effects, a highly interesting premise, and even a good start... but near the end, it gets sappy, uninteresting, and predictable. Wish that the writers hadn't run out of steam. This had a lot of potential. Worth seeing once for the effects, at least.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Visually interesting..plotwise lacking...
Review: I really wanted to like this film. I really did. The visuals were strange but very captivating. I found myself always glued to the set whenever J-Lo would enter the killer's mind. The only problem I had with the movie was that it never really went anywhere interesting other than visually. It didn't really make me care whether the last victim lived or died. I did find the portrayal of the killer's thoughts interesting, but that's about it. For some reason, J-Lo's performance here was also a bit flat. Not quite up to par as she was in Selena. I'd recommend the dvd for its visuals, but if you're looking for great entertainment, you might be disappointed with this film.


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