News for
Tarsem Singh

photos

board

add

contact

details

IMDbPro offers the latest entertainment industry news from the Hollywood Reporter. Sign-up for a two-week free trial today. Click here for a free trial!

Movie Reviews: The Cell
18 August 2000 (StudioBriefing)
No doubt about it, critics agree, Cell, The (2000), in which the lead character, played by Jennifer Lopez, literally enters the mind of a serial killer, is visually stunning. They part company on virtually everything else about the movie. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post observes: "If looks could kill, this would be the best movie of the summer. But beneath the considerable eye candy ... Cell, The (2000) is an awfully generic variation on the overworked serial-killer genre." Writes Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Never has a sick dude who kidnaps women and slowly drowns them in a giant tank before he has necrophiliac relations with them boasted reveries that looked so, well, arty." Too arty, says Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News: "When every shot in a movie is meant to wow you, none of them really does the job." Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times had this take on the film: "There is powerful and unforgettable imagery in The Cell, but it's nihilism under glass, reminiscent of the honeyed yet grim tableaus of a Nine Inch Nails music video." Tom Sime in the Dallas Morning News also takes note of the fact that the film's director, Tarsem Singh, comes from the world of music video. "This time, " Sime says, "This time, he's hawking not a song or a product, but schizophrenia. And it's a good pitch. ... Mr. Singh [tries] to get the feel of what a schizophrenic actually endures: a flood of hallucination indistinguishable from reality." And Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times concludes: "For all of its visual pyrotechnics, it's also a story where we care about the characters; there's a lot at stake at the end, and we're involved. I know people who hate it, finding it pretentious or unrestrained; I think it's one of the best films of the year." Kenneth Turan the Los Angeles Times critic is clearly one on those who hated the film: "Some movies make you sorry you've seen them, " he writes, "and Cell, The (2000) is one of those.