The Cell - New Line Platinum Series

Rating:
Summary: J Lo Music VideO meets technO Thriller
Review: Beautiful imagery costumes effects and make up. The Story however may not be entirely Original and Lopez's character and the villain could have used a little more depth. The whole love interest with Vaughn seems like a case of "that's gotta be in the picture". However the ability to travel into someones subconcious or their dreams opens up vast possibilities of abstract visions and convoluted imagery. This flic at times is a real feast for the eyes although I was left feeling like my ears had been neglected. One thing though; much restraint was exercised by the leading men in the movie If Lopez appeared in my dreams... ratings would have to be changed!

Rating:
Summary: Not so great
Review: The Cell is a freaky movie. Very bizarre. I did not care for it and I think it is because I was disappointed. The images were so bizarre and abstract that it took away from the plot of the movie and the drama of finding the latest victim in time to save her life. I was very interested in seeing the movie when I saw the previews... the concept is great. The acting and the delivery were not great, however. The movie did not deliver all the suspense and drama and intensity that it promised.

Rating:
Summary: Note to self: 'Don't ever watch this one on acid.'
Review: The Profiler/Empath vs The Twisted Genius Serial Killer sweepstakes continues (Jonathan Demme, what hath thou wrought?!). Due to its stunning visual style, "The Cell" does manage to slightly edge out the other clone films that have spewed forth in Hannibal Lechter's wake. Jennifer Lopez (about as convincing as a psychologist/researcher as Raquel Welch was as a "scientist" in "Fantastic Voyage") helps the FBI race the clock and find a captured serial killer's imprisioned victim by means of an experimental device that puts her in the virtual reality of the comatose killer's psyche. As you can imagine, this is not exactly dinner with the Cleavers, and it is here that the movie's impressive, surrealistic visual imagination comes into play. Unfortunately,the script proceeds to trot out every predictable psycho-killer movie cliche,ruining any chance of true suspense or surprise. In the hands of a screenwriter like Michael Crichton, who virtually invented the "Medical Sci-Fi" genre ("Andromeda Strain", "Coma", "The Terminal Man"), this COULD have been a near classic. Instead, it's just a near-miss.

Rating:
Summary: A mesmerising psychological thriller
Review: Jennifer Lopez is a psychiatrist who has mastered a radical new form of interactive therapy, allowing the analyst/interrogator to resolve traumas by "entering" the mind of her patient and exploring its deepest recesses. Her skills are called into play by the F.B.I. who have apprehended a comatose schizophrenic psychopath responsible for imprisoning a girl in a glass-filled cubicle, and whose whereabouts remain unknown. Lopez is elected to carry out the hazardous mission, of entering the charnel-house mind of the killer, contending with his monstrous fears and repressions, in an effort to discover where he had hidden the girl before she drowns. What attempts to be a quiet, sophisticated serial killer film is redeemed by its novel premise, a number of suspenseful episodes and some unexpected twists of plot. Each simulated "paranoia", in which Lopez travels through the killer's mind is a brilliant amalgamation of startling visuals and surrealist montages. However, this is inferior to "Silence of the Lambs", which chillingly and expertly created a superb tension, or symbiosis, between the agent and the psychopath, a feature that might have contributed to greater suspense in "The Cell". And the music star Lopez, a lightweight, is no Jodie Foster.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves More Than Five Stars!!-Dazzling!
Review: This has to be one of fav. movies out there! The effects are just plain stunning, and dazzling, and very realistic. The acting was superb especially from the wonderful ALMA Award Winning Actress, Jennifer Lopez. Well, here's the main story. A serial killer (potrayed by Vincent D'onofrio) has fallen into a coma. But, before, he took a girl hostage, and in a few hours, she will be drowned. Now, J. Lo must go experimentaly go into the mind of this killer. But, she gets trapped. Does she escape? Does she die? Rent or buy this movie. It deserves more than five stars!! P.S. J. Lo doesn't die. But, some important person does.

Rating:
Summary: Too outrageous to ignore
Review: I want so badly to dislike this film but I find it just too difficult to dismiss. Don't get me wrong. There are many things wrong with this movie but the sheer ambitiousness, audacity and outrageousness of its fantastical mindscapes bludgeoned me into submission. The truth is, despite the problems, I was completely amazed that I was seeing such weird and bizarre imagery in a mainstream Hollywood production, and inside a plush googolplex to boot. In a summer filled with the most thoughtless dross in memory, what are we to make of "The Cell"? It's clear that Singh's images have been lifted from works of surrealists, fetishists, dealers of the macabre, sadists, etc., and they're spliced together for maximum discomfort. And yes, the individual parts may not be original, but the sum of those parts makes for a very unique film, because this is a take on what is found inside the mind of an insane serial killer -- the mind of someone who would actually seek out such images but lacks the perspicacity to have any deep perspectives on them. As for the rest of the film, well, it does not diverge far from other recent movies featuring serial killers, which brings up another problem. "The Cell", and other recent contributions to this genre, suffer from implausible serial killers who are just too exotic, too convoluted in their MO's. Watching "The Cell" reminded me of my experience watching "Seven". I was so preoccupied with being disturbed by the fact that the person who invented the killer actually writes for a living instead of being locked up in some mental institution, that I forget to have any real visceral fear of the serial killer on the screen. So instead of fear, there is only unease because the stylized and elaborately fetishized killings feel more exploitative than anything else. I long for those good old days when serial killers were normal and got their jollies simply from slashing, raping and strangling.

Rating:
Summary: All style, no substance.
Review: Okay, here's the low-down: The plot is uninteresting and the characters are shallow, so it's up to the film's effects to save it some shred of dignity; and even though the effects are pretty (and sometimes disturbing), they are not imaginative enough to bother sitting through this film to see. Unlike "Silence of the Lambs", which catered to a more intellectual audience, the relationship of "serial killer/heroine" in "The Cell" is grossly ignored, with the height of Lopez's performance being to merely strut around in D'Onforio's Jungian mental landscape dressed in the latest fashions. To the critic on this site that claimed that this film "makes you think", I need to ask "what about?" Some serial killers treat women as fetish objects? Well, so does this film, so go figure. Some serial killers were abused as children? That's no big surprise, and is probably the worst cliche that this film has employed (obviously the film's writer was either not creative enough, or too bored with his own script to devote the mental energy to come up with something interesting.) To me, this film is good for high-schoolers who grew up watching MTV and can't process anything more complex than mucho eye-candy. "The Cell" is not deep, not memorable, and certainly not worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Junk food for the mind
Review: Pretty, lotsa music video itty bitty bita movie. Yes you will enjoy this movie but no you will not be enriched in any way by it.

Rating:
Summary: Very well done, despite JLo's performance
Review: I enjoyed watching this film, although it was mostly a showcase for some very artistic CG constructs. It is by no means a masterpiece, and thankfully Jlo did not have too many lines (what a terrible actress!) but I was amazed by the director's depiction of the mind of the story's antagonist.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent movie!
Review: To start out with, this movie is not for everyone. There are some disturbing scenes in it. But the movie is great. The acting is supurb. The storyline is extremely origanal, and the graphics are jaw-dropping. The film is about a child psychologist (Jenifer Lopez) who must go inside a killer's mind (Vincent D'Onofrano) to rescue his latest victom before the clock stops ticking. The movie is disturbing, but it makes you think. As I listen to those who say how much they hate the movie, I realize that you must not just watch this movie for what it is worth. You must watch this movie for everything. For subtext, for character development... not just for enjoyment. The people who do these things love this movie. The people who don't, hate it.