Cheap Cell (2000) (Spanish) (Video) (Tarsem Singh) Price

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Customer Reviews of Cell (2000) (Spanish)

Not for the faint of heart
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). <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>But do watch it.

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Visually stimulating.
Jennifer Lopez confirms what a bad actress she is in this movie. Vince Vaughn gives a rather flat, cliched, one- dimensional performance. Donofrio is very good in it nevertheless... the story line is rather weak: a sick man who drowns girls to later turn them into dolls... sorry but after watching The Silence of the Lambs I don't find this very disturbing. <
>The reason why I give this movie 3 stars: Special effects are truly stunning! The use of color and detail are utterly amazing. This movie shows that special effects can be considered a form of art. Nice to watch on a 29 inch flat screen digital TV...

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A very positive but cautionary review.
Is the cell a prison? If so for who? For the killer's victims only? Or is it the prison of the mind for each of us? Perhaps it is the prison of our own past conditioning and genetic dispositions... our nurture and nature. Can we escape that prison and be more fully autonomous? (If we just are our own nurture and nature, then who exactly is it that does the escaping from it?) Supposing we can escape, where do we flee to? How do we choose so strange a destination as a new self? Perhaps most importantly; once free, how do we help others escape? <
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> Extending this metaphor of nature & nurture: Is the cell the womb? Does the killer's choice of method (a tank filling with water) represent a returning to the womb? What does his choice of victims represent? I think "his mother" is too obvious an answer. More generally, what are the fundamental relations between men and women of all ages and how can they go horribly wrong? <
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> To its credit, this movie doesn't attempt to explicitly address these or similar questions, but does confront them head on cinematically. It has a spare plot and competent acting, but absolutely lavish visuals... make up, costume, set design, camera work, etc. These really make the movie. Some of the scenes were really very disturbing: I grimaced and had to look away for a time. You have been warned! I felt that, to some extent, this was just another case of the inflationary process of Hollywood trying to get a reaction by outdoing all the other "shock-horror-suspense" films. But I also felt that, ultimately, the scenes were not gratuitous but that each served its purpose. <
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> Similarly, the outstandingly beautiful visuals of the finale, with Jen in her salvific role, can be viewed with the cynical eye according to which we are meant to derive the melodrama's moral of "love-conquers-hate", or it can be viewed as a natural counterpoint to and relief from all of the profound ugliness that had gone before. This scene is very well done and is really a capstone that holds the movie together in my opinion. It's almost worth watching just for this! <
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> By the way, I think Jennifer did a really fine job. I also suspect that anyone who rated this film really low did so because, as has already been noted, some scenes can be positively repulsive. But I think they missed the point if that's the case. <
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> I'm a very hard judge so I give it only four stars but I think it's a very good movie. It's definitely worth seeing if you can take it, and worth buying if you are into suspense/horror, are a big movie collector, or are a J-Lo fan. <
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