Brilliant and touching

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Blistering performances.

This story would be much better without any FBI investigations. If they just showed this beautiful outer world of imagination. May be with some love plot: a monster and a girl. But trying to bring some sceince and law enforcement into the picture hurts its value.

Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn and Vincent D'Onofrio star in this 2000 thriller. Lopez (Enough) plays Catherine Deane, a psychologist who helps FBI agent, Peter Novak find a kidnapped girl. Her process, is to get inside the mind of her abductor, a comatose, serial killer, Carl Stargher (D'Onofrio) who is the only one that knows. This is a bizarre film that reminds me a bit of "Manhunter" & "Red Dragon" with a decent cast and neat effects. I'd check it out at least once if you're into psychological thrillers.

For a movie such as this, it's all about the imageries. The images here are very nightmarish, horrifying and creative. However it's a movie that tries to be artistic but lack true artistic elements. So the plot is about diving into the mind of a mentally disturbed culprit by using a machine that allows people to dive into the mind of a patient. It sort of reminded me of the Animus machine from Assassin's Creed. Anyways the process is to find the location of the killers latest victim. So you as an audience witnesses what is going down within the mind of a serial killer. And the demons and abusive past the killer dealt with in the past. However the drawbacks to this film is how it doesn't really delve into connecting the imagery to the story. What I mean is, you just don't get how some crazy images in this connects with why the killer is the way he is. Which in a way makes the journey lack substance and can become pretentious from time to time. However the crazy, bizarre and yet stunning imageries made this movie a somewhat worthwhile watch. Even if it lacks any real substance.6/10

Tarsem Singh is certainly a photographer at heart and the surreal imagery of this movie is definitely gallery worthy.This is a suspense/ thriller that delves into the mind of a serial killer that seemingly euthanized his victims not out of spite, but out of pity. This is illustrated when as a child, he drowns a small bird before his abusive father can defile it. It was more humane to kill the bird than to let it live in such an ugly world filled with pain, and this was emphasized with Carl (the killer) even at a young age.Much of the movie is shot from the perspective of Carl as a child, no doubt to gain sympathy from the viewer while he sets in an animated reversion of sorts while communicating synaptically with Lopez's psychotherapist character. It was interesting to see him speaking of his first messy inexperienced endeavor with misty reminiscence, and also to view the symbolism of the white dog, or of how he hung himself from the chains. Better than the story, though, was the cinematography. It was stunning.I was taken back to this film when I viewed the "Bodies" display at the Tropicana, which I believe is now showing at the Luxor in Las Vegas. (For those of you haven't been, these are actual humans preserved in silicone on display actively posed for easy viewing of vascularization, musculature, organ systems, etc…) In the film it was a horse with transverse cross sections between plated glass. The attention to detail with regard to the succinct slices showing the yet operational organs made my twisted little heart soar.It's interesting to me that Singh hasn't released much since "The Cell," but he does have "Immortals" and "The Brothers Grim: Snow White" in the works. If you haven't seen this movie, see it, especially if you dug "Se7en" or "Red Dragon". It has a similar "cop hot on the trail" feel to it, and much like the others, the villain is a shining enigma with a troubled past and a demented message of sorts. While "Se7en" gets kudos for creativity and "Red Dragon" has Fiennes, "The Cell" still has the unmatched scenery that makes me consider it to be ever so slightly better than the aforementioned.If you love gore, such as an excruciating spooling of Vince Vaughn's intestines slowly onto a wheel, and you want to be visually dazzled, this is your flick.