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SickMonkey
Reviews
The Cell (2000)
If you like 2 hour music videos...
After reading Vincent D'Onofrio boast that "this movie is gonna make people vomit" in a summer film preview issue of Entertainment Weekly, I decided that I should place The Cell atop my August films priority list. After all, the premise seemed foolproof: Jennifer Lopez and the two talented Vinces (Vaughn and D'Onofrio) starring in a terse psychological thriller set amidst slick, bizarre special effects. Can't go wrong, I thought.
I saw it opening night, and I can say in all sincerity that I never once came close to vomiting. In fact, I never once came close to even having a clue why this film got all the hype it did. After we got out of the movie, my friend and I spent the next hour and a half picking it apart, plot hole by inconsistency by ill-advised choice.
Basically, it breaks down like this: 2 hours of eye candy does not a good movie make. Yes, the special effects were beautiful, and yes, they were sufficiently bizarre to garner interesting reactions from my fellow audience members, but when it came down to it, The Cell was just another rehash of the tired old serial-killer genre. The whole thing started off interesting enough but about halfway through, the movie lost its edge, and I found myself wishing I'd gone to see Spike Lee's new flick instead. And while I'm on the subject of disappointments, Vince Vaughn, a normally phenomenal actor, seemed to be reading off cue cards the whole time. Sigh. So much for the saving grace.
Multi-Facial (1995)
Eye-opening piece of work
You know, before I got the chance to see "Multi-Facial," I knew of Vin Diesel only as the big Italian guy from "Saving Private Ryan" that got killed about 30 minutes into the movie--I was never too impressed. But after seeing this short, which Diesel wrote and directed, I was overcome with a new-found respect. This is simply one of the most touching, profound, and well-produced short films in the course of American film in the last 10 years or so. The acting is superb--Diesel goes above and WAY beyond the token ethnic he portrayed in the otherwise WASPish SPR. While watching this however, we get the feeling that this is more than just an entertaining story about a lost soul, searching for an identity (which others are more than willing to give), this is in fact a piece of Diesel himself, immortalized in film. I also watched some director's commentary afterwards and was amazed at the depth and intelligence possessed by this man. Do yourself a favor, and stay away from his shallower, mainstream work like SPR and the upcoming "Boiler Room," et al. If you watch this, you will be convinced of two things: 1) Vin Diesel will always have work in Hollywood, and 2) American short film is still alive.