A by-the-numbers story becomes the incidental backbone of one of the most visually arresting films of recent memory.
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01/08/10
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The Cell (2000)
46
%
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Reviews Counted:140
Fresh:64
Rotten:76
Average Rating:5.3/10
Consensus: The Cell offers disturbing, stunning eye candy, but it is undermined by a weak and shallow plotline that offers nothing new.
Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins
Genre: Science-Fiction/Fantasy
Box Office: $17,515,050
Synopsis: A wild ride inside the mind of a serial killer, THE CELL is a movie that leads viewers on a strange visual and psychological journey. Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is a child therapist working... [More]
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D'Onofrio, Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Director: Tarsem Singh
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Reviews for The Cell
The dream sequences are so well-done that it’s easy to forgive the film’s lack of dramatic punch.
08/07/08
Lopez wades through many nonsensical, pompous, gradually annoying dream-logic scenes.
09/24/07
What could have been a by-the-numbers serial killer mystery becomes a beautiful tour de force of film magic.
07/14/07
Lopez is hard to take as the empathetic psychologist who uses a synaptic transfer machine to penetrate the comatose killer's tortured psyche in hopes of finding his latest victim.
02/09/06
Visually stunning, but rather pedestrian.
12/31/05
It's excellent.
12/06/05
Tarsem uses the dramatically shallow plot to create a dream world densely packed with images of beauty and terror that cling to the memory even if you don't want them to.
03/07/05
Top CriticIt's not the villain but the director who seems most interested in these grisly spectacles. He was certainly uninterested in his characters.
01/15/05
The Cell may be another repellent serial killer movie, but at least it tries something different.
01/07/05
The cop/serial killer part of the story (written by Mark Protosevich) offers absolutely nothing of interest.
06/24/03
Writer Mark Protosevich and director Tarsem Singh, both making their feature debut, have crafted the year's first masterpiece, an insanely ambitious movie that miraculously fulfills every one of its ambitions.
05/22/03
This is a mind-bending acid trip of a movie -- fresh, disturbing and inimitable.
05/14/03
D'Onofrio proves that his performance as the bug-wearing-an-Edgar-suit in Men in Black was no fluke.
02/08/03
An amazing, courageous, and thoroughly dark visualization of what the inside of a deeply troubled mind might look like.
01/10/03
With little room for either narrative detail or character development, Tarsem's exploration of a deranged mind soon loses momentum.
12/02/02
This movie is bad in so many ways that it’s difficult to know where to begin.
10/30/02
The movie looks so good that its dazzling appearance hides some shortcomings.
10/15/02
In the end, maybe The Cell isn't about much, and it could have been deeper and all but as it stands, it's still a must-see.
09/10/02
The plot is a formulaic ditty where the cop uses a beautiful woman as bait to trap the killer. It has very little to do with surrealism or desert photography.
08/21/02
Latest News for The Cell
October 03, 2008:
Exclusive: The Fall - Tarsem's Visual Companion - Part 1
Its otherworldly story split critics down the middle, but none can argue with the power of its imagery. Opening in the UK this week, Tarsem's The Fall is one of the year's most... More...
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December 01, 2006:
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In this week's Ketchup, the campy classic "Starship Troopers" may finally get a proper successor with Casper Van Dien returning for "Starship Troopers 3"... More...
September 25, 2006:
Toronto Wrapup: Senh, Jen And Tim's Raves And Rants From The Festival
We saw some great movies, some of them big ("Babel") and some tiny ("The Patterns Trilogy"). We saw some interesting failures ("The Banquet") and... More...
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