The Cell [Blu-ray]

I love this movie and own the original copy on DVD. So when I saw a deal on Amazon for it on Blu Ray i jumped on the chance. It was well worth the price and came in great condition. Better than other movies I've been sent by mail through other companies. The visual effect on this movie were so lovely and the story telling was great.

As far as I'm concerned, The Cell is criminally underrated. The visuals are stunning, the acting is great, and the story is kind of heartbreaking. I find myself coming back to rewatch it once a year or two, which is why I finally just decided to buy it. It's definitely one of my favorite films.

I love this movie. Has a bit of a silence of th lambs feel to me though it is way more of a fantasy thriller. It's very original and unforgettable to me. Jennifer Lopez did well on this though I'm not a big fan of hers, in this she was pretty good. Vince Vaughn did a great job in this film. The atmosphere is beautiful and it is a visual masterpiece in my opinion. I'd love to see like a good sequel to it. The sequel was real bad. This story and idea has a ton of potential and is actually borderline believable. Great movie

The plot of The Cell is simple enough to follow. Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is a child psychologist who uses newly developed technology to enter the minds of her patients in order to help them solve their problems. Her attempts to coax her latest patient, a boy who almost drowned, out of his coma aren't going so well, which means that the organization overseeing the project wants to cut the funding. Perfectly on cue, enter Carl Rudolph Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio).Stargher is a serial killer with a decidedly troubled past who traps his female victims in a cell and slowly fills it with water over a forty-hour period until they drown. He is captured without much ado after going into a coma of his own in the beginning of the movie, leaving the whereabouts of his latest victim unknown. FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) knows she is trapped in the cell, but he has no way to determine the location of Stargher's fully automatic death trap. Perfectly on cue, enter Catherine Deane.The rest of The Cell deals mainly with Catherine's journey into the interior of Stargher's mind - a fascinating place if there ever was one, replete with several different versions of Stargher including one as a demon king and another as a child, the mutilation of a horse and the painful removal of Novak's intestines. Bambi this movie is not. There is blood and guts aplenty, none of which is superfluous in my opinion, and all of which help the viewer to see the wonderful, surreal horror of Stargher's mind all the more clearly. It's stunningly beautiful in a sick sort of way, especially since some of the scenes may strike a chord within you of your own nightmares.The Cell is visually amazing. At times the images seem bleached, in reflection of what Stargher does to his victims once they are dead, yet at other times the colour saturation is enough to almost make your eyes hurt. The stylized world is enthralling and repulsive, especially Stargher's outlandish costumes - like the weirdest king who never lived. The entire sequence in his mind is grotesque, nightmarish, as though seen through the eyes of a child in an exaggerated burlesque of wonder. The world of Catherine's mind is more serene and less frightening, or at least until Stargher begins to assert himself within it.Exquisite sets, crazy/beautiful costuming, astonishing makeup...and the acting isn't bad either. Some have deemed Lopez's acting terrible, but the fact is that The Cell is not about plot. It is about pure eye candy - the movie is like the craziest acid trip you'll ever take. Lopez acts the part of Catherine just fine, in my opinion, and besides, your eyes probably won't be on her anyway. Or on Vince Vaughn, who is competent as ever as the dependable FBI agent Novak.Vincent D'Onofrio, on the other hand, is breathtaking. His ability to act so many different characters - or rather, different facets of the same complicated and twisted character - is definitely deserving of praise. His body language, his facial expressions and all the quirks and tics he brings to the character of Stargher combine to strengthen the image of D'Onofrio as one of the best character actors of this day. I may have seen him in bad movies, but his acting is always superb, and The Cell is no different. His acting, however, is not the saving grace of an otherwise bad movie. It is actually the rather large cherry on the top of a recipe that will make your head spin in vast and increasingly dizzy circles.The bottom line: it's wild and it's weird but it's outstandingly beautiful. I don't recommend it for most people below the age of eighteen or above the age of twenty-five, though, so don't watch it with your children or your parents.But do watch it.

THE FILM: Tarsem Singh has basically made his career on films that emphasize style over substance. Prior to this, I only saw a couple of his more recent efforts: MIRROR MIRROR, which I liked well enough, and IMMORTALS, which felt like Zack Snyder-lite and was a bit boring. I wasn't really expecting anything deep when I got this, and my expectations were met. Is it great? No, not really, but the potent cocktail of Tarsem's visual style combined with some (pop) psychological drama was enough to keep my interest throughout. The premise is that there is this technology which allows someone to enter the mind of another person. Jennifer Lopez plays a social worker who enters the mind of comatose patients to see if she can bring them back to consciousness. Vince Vaughn plays an FBI agent/profiler who is after a serial killer (Vincent D'Onofrio) who likes to do some pretty twisted things to his victims. Fortunately, he's captured, but in a comatose state, therefore he has to team up with Jennifer Lopez to enter the killer's mind and try to find the location of the latest woman before she dies. The film actually takes its time getting started, establishing (however lightly), the principal characters. However, once the plot is set in motion it rarely stops. Anyone looking for extensive character development and logical plot might as well give up because you won't find it here. What you will find is an intriguing debut film from a distinctive visual stylist. If I had to describe the fantasy sequences, it would be like Jodorowsky and Del Toro mixed together in the style of a Marilyn Manson or Nine Inch Nails music video. Put simply, those particular sequences were very dreamlike and surreal, with echo-chamber dialogue, jerky cuts/editing, and semi-heavy color saturation. By far, this was the most interesting part of the film. However, the performances weren't bad by any means. Jennifer Lopez acquits herself nicely, and Vince Vaughn shows some range. Vincent D'Onofrio as the villain doesn't get as much dialogue, but a lot comes through in the physical aspect of his performance. On a side note, his hairdo in this film made him look like Philip Seymour Hoffman in BOOGIE NIGHTS. Of additional interest is the score by Howard Shore. Given that this is a thriller, there is, to some degree, a reliance on bombastic music cues that match the action but are still a little over-the-top. The parts I liked best were the quieter moments that featured native Indian instruments (Tarsem Singh is from India). The weakest aspect of the film is undoubtedly the script, which has an overly simple story, thin characters, logical errors, and clichés. There's also a last-act choice that had little motivation other than that it was referenced early on, so they might as well have followed through with it. For what it's worth I was never bored because Tarsem conjured up plenty of cool imagery to take my mind off of the relatively unimportant plot. And for style over substance, THE CELL isn't half bad.THE EXTRAS: There is actually a decent amount of special features that delve into production aspects that should be of interest to people who care about such things. Seeing as this is primarily a visual movie, that's what all of the extra material explores. There's an 11-minute featurette on director Tarsem Singh where he talks about his vision for the film, and his collaborators talk about how great of a talent he is. Following this are 8 deleted/extended scenes that can be viewed with director commentary. My only quibble here is that, unlike the feature commentaries that are available (Director and Production Team), this commentary cannot be toggled on/off, instead having two separate menus. Tarsem is also not the most talkative or enlightening commentator. As for the scenes themselves, most were cut for pacing (as is often the case), but a little extra character bits wouldn't have hurt, in my opinion. He also reveals that there was some tension between him and the studio/editors as far as what to leave in and what to cut. Again, not surprising for a first-time director. My favorite extra was a series of vignettes that reveal how six of the film's special effects sequences were created. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they used a blend of practical, in-camera, and computer-generated effects, appropriate for each particular sequence. These little vignettes are also "multi-angle," meaning that while the person is describing the work, you have two separate in-set screens that show behind-the-scenes footage and storyboards for that particular sequence. Then, it repeats the segment with each in-set screen taking focus, something I feel would have been better handled by using the angle button on the Blu-ray remote. Finally, there are two different trailers for the film.OVERALL: There are plenty of filmmakers who have come from making music videos to directing feature films. David Fincher is one that comes to mind, and Tarsem Singh also came from this background. However, what distinguishes one from the other is the material they choose for their projects and the writers they use. Tarsem's films are unfortunately lacking in the writing department. Still, if one doesn't go in with the expectation of a deep or complex story and lets the visuals wash over them, a good experience can be had. The Blu-ray release is fairly solid, though. You have two feature commentaries and a decent array of featurettes to mull over, even if the menu structure is a bit awkward. Tarsem Singh fans will probably want to add this to their collection if they haven't already, and for non-fans I'd wager that this is the best one to start with, if so inclined.

This was brilliantly directed and acted. So much darker than I remembered though.

Excellent movie. Incredible concept. I was captivated. The story is so good that even JLo can't mess it up. Love this movie.

A stylish (and heavily stylised) sci-fi tinged thriller, this is a visual tour-de-force, big-screen debut from director Tarsem Singh.Singh`s experience of directing music videos and advertisements is clearly on show here, with many surrealistic dream-sequences and over-the-top design and make-up elements thrown into the mix.The plot is fairly basic; an experimental mind-melding technique is used to enable a psychologist (Jennifer Lopez) to enter the mind of a serial killer in order to locate his latest victim before she is murdered by an automated system the killer uses in his MO.Its a rather standard race-against-time scenario with the addition of flashy technical visuals and some – at times - misogynistic, fetishized and hellacious imagery, some of which has been taken from various contemporary art works (its kinda fun spotting them - Damien Hirst, Odd Nerdrum, Nancy Grossman – for example).It has an air of pretentiousness about it, but if you are prepared to just go along with the flow its an okay film.A reasonable stab at a mixed-genre, sci-fi/horror/thriller that entertains, dazzles at times, but ultimately doesn`t quite convince; a film flawed by its own excesses in a bid to be original.The DVD release has English subtitles (though you may have to compromise on the screen-settings of your TV to view them) and a range of extras, the main ones being a commentary, some deleted scenes and a short “making of” documentary extolling the genius of the director.3 ½ stars, ideally.

I can not understand how people can come up with such strange and awful movie plots. I also do not understand how Jennifer Lopez could act in this terrible terrible movie I would never watch again and goes into the trash. Out to lunch plot, costumes, everything. I kept waiting for it to get better or get a plot and it never did. Weirdo movie. Kay Fagundes

The dvd came within the given delivery period. It was also in good condition.The story of this movie is based on a scifi concept of cloning and that the mind of someone can penetrate the other person's mind. The story suggests that there is a world of 'thoughts' beyond the material world. Well, I did not find it very interesting. JLo is good but the film is a bit artistic. All in all, it is an okay film with good acting and a scifi story.

I boght this on the basis of an "if you liked this you'll like this" review of Tarsem Singh's "The Fall", which I found excellent. The Cell has many of the flambouyant Singh characteristics that you see in The Fall which do make it attractive, but it's spoiled by a rather predictable plot and some terrible wooden acting from JLo, who should stick to other things. The hairdo and makeup always perfect, but sadly the acting not.

Nice to see Jen in a tight fitting all in one and not a bad film she can actully act very surprised