I recently purchased the box set of the entire series with some trepidation - it is expensive, especially when NZ dollars have to be converted to British pounds. Half way through the first episode, I said to my husband, "I remember this series as being good, but I hadn't realised just how good it is." Several discs further on, I have had no reason to revise that judgement. The writing is tight, the characters brilliantly conceived, written and portrayed, and the whole thing a great pleasure. The creation of the time and place is faultless. James Bolam - wonderful in everything he does - is superb, as are Susan Jameson, and Jean Heywood as her mother Bella. (It is great to see Bolam and Jameson again in the current 'New Tricks'.) They do NOT make 'em like this any more! This was money well spent.
Reviews
2 Reviews
The Cell
(2000)
Gratuitous and misogynistic rubbish
20 January 2001
It is only the fourth week of the year and already I have seen the worst film of the year.
At least, I hope it is. I would not want to have to sit through another two hours of material as dire as this again.
At the end, I had only two questions: why would anyone want to make a film like this, and why would they think for one minute that anyone would actually want to go and see it??
Apart from some pretty smart cinematography - the opening scenes take place in a landscape with the beauty and clarity of a surrealist painting - this film has no redeeming features.
It is full of pseudo-scientific and pseudo-psychological claptrap (there is a stronger word, but this is a family paper) that masks a paper-thin story on which is hung some of the most distasteful material it has been my misfortune to see.
A serial killer, with a penchant for kidnapping and torturing young women is caught but the whereabouts of his final victim is unknown. Psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) uses an experimental technique to enter the murderer's mind to see if she can learn her location.
All of which is a thinly disguised opportunity for scenes, endless and offensive, of young women being murdered and tortured, of gruesome mutilations and so on. The purpose, I assume, is to illustrate how sick this guy is. Well, I think the sick people here are the director and screenwriters.
The censor's certificate says that this movie "contains violence, sexual themes and content that may offend."
I was offended. Deeply.
At least, I hope it is. I would not want to have to sit through another two hours of material as dire as this again.
At the end, I had only two questions: why would anyone want to make a film like this, and why would they think for one minute that anyone would actually want to go and see it??
Apart from some pretty smart cinematography - the opening scenes take place in a landscape with the beauty and clarity of a surrealist painting - this film has no redeeming features.
It is full of pseudo-scientific and pseudo-psychological claptrap (there is a stronger word, but this is a family paper) that masks a paper-thin story on which is hung some of the most distasteful material it has been my misfortune to see.
A serial killer, with a penchant for kidnapping and torturing young women is caught but the whereabouts of his final victim is unknown. Psychologist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) uses an experimental technique to enter the murderer's mind to see if she can learn her location.
All of which is a thinly disguised opportunity for scenes, endless and offensive, of young women being murdered and tortured, of gruesome mutilations and so on. The purpose, I assume, is to illustrate how sick this guy is. Well, I think the sick people here are the director and screenwriters.
The censor's certificate says that this movie "contains violence, sexual themes and content that may offend."
I was offended. Deeply.
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