Episode 205 - Cellular (w/ Ike Barinholtz, Erin Gibson)

[RyanSz 3140]

It's weird hearing that the same guy made both this and Phone Booth as it seemed he didn't know which version of this story would work, protagonist talking to hostage or protagonist talking to antagonist. Phone booth works in that it's basically a morality discussion between Colin Farrell and Keifer Sutherland with some people popping in sporadically, along with it being just slightly longer than Chopping Mall so there's no feeling of extra fat being put into the film. Cellular on the other hand feels bloated at 90 minutes and is ridiculous with the amount of people they put into he gang of dirty cops and their over complicated plot to get a video camera.

[WatchOutForSnakes 807]

17 hours ago, The_Other_MikeD said:

Chris Evans knows he's been calling a landline because KB says that she has put the phone back together. The line he calls back (KB's) is then presumably a landline even though Statham either has it call forwarded or is using a cordless phone. Don't forget that, for whatever reason, this house has a phone that has several connecting lines which was shown when Dmitri (?) finds out KB is on the house line.

 

I am still confused. Wouldn't his phone have shown the phone number KB called from? Unless it was blocked? Also, what about fucking *69? 

More thoughts on this one:

When Captain America was in the stairwell in the police station and was about to lose the signal, why not just put the phone down somewhere and go up the stairs to find someone? 

I'm fully convinced WHM is the main character. He's the only person we learn anything about (other than that KB is a "science biology" teacher). We see him living his life, dealing with the nitty gritty of opening a day spa and testing products with his wife. He gets the "save the cat" moment, even if it's a fish. He's the one I wasrooting for the whole time to figure it out and finally get Captain America some help. He was the only good thing about this movie. He was everything. 

This was only marginally better than Perfect Stranger. Only just. 

 

[grudlian. 4725]

1 hour ago, RyanSz said:

It's weird hearing that the same guy made both this and Phone Booth as it seemed he didn't know which version of this story would work, protagonist talking to hostage or protagonist talking to antagonist. Phone booth works in that it's basically a morality discussion between Colin Farrell and Keifer Sutherland with some people popping in sporadically, along with it being just slightly longer than Chopping Mall so there's no feeling of extra fat being put into the film. Cellular on the other hand feels bloated at 90 minutes and is ridiculous with the amount of people they put into he gang of dirty cops and their over complicated plot to get a video camera.

This is what I was thinking. Cellular could be a much better movie if it were entirely from Chris Evans perspective which is what Phone Booth basically is.

Imagine the movie starts with the scene of Chris Evans on the beach. We haven't seen Kim Basinger get attacked so we are right there with Chris Evans from the beginning. Is this a joke? Should we take her seriously? This puts us in Chris Evans shoes. It's immediately a better movie and that's just chopping off the first five minutes of the movie.

I think a little bit of rewriting to keep it focused on Chris Evans (even just editing out the existing scenes with side characters) could make a solid action thriller. More like Phone Booth or Sorry, Wrong Number where is much more psychological from the person on the phone.

[Cameron H. 23786]

I’m still super unclear about the role, Bayback, Jason Statham’s female accomplice,  was playing at Kim Basinger’s house. I get cleaning up evidence. I get searching the house for additional tapes. And I get being there in case the husband came home or something. What I don’t get is why she was cosplaying as Mrs Ricky Martin Sr. 

I mean, when Bill Macy knocks on the door, she really has no idea who he is. For all she knows, he could be a neighbor, a relative, or a friend of the family. And I get that he initiates the conversation by asking her if she’s Mrs Martin, thereby tipping his hand that he doesn’t know who she is, but why take the risk and open the door at all? If it’s nobody, they’ll just leave. And, being a cop herself, she should know that if the plain clothes gentleman at the door is a police officer, he won’t be able to enter without a search warrant. 

Answering the door just puts the whole operation at risk. I mean, had Macy been someone who could identify her as a fraud, what was her plan? Shoot him on the stoop in broad daylight?

However, the dumbest part of the scene is after Macy leaves, Bayback tells Statham that a cop was asking questions, but she’s “taken care of it.” What she neglects to tell prominent Angeleno Jason Statham is that the cop told her that a woman named Jess Martin called the cops and said she was kidnapped!!!! If you were the leader of a band of rogue cop/kidnappers, I think knowing that the person you kidnapped has made a successful outbound call to the police might be a tiny detail you’d want to investigate.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Paul seemed confused by why the school’s security guard had his car parked out front of the school. The reason for that is simple: parents were parked out front to pick up their kids. The security guard was parked where he was to keep the parents to one lane and prevent people in the back of queue from cutting ahead if they picked up their child first. As a group, parents can be a bunch of self-centered jack offs with little concern for the safety and concern of other people’s children, and if left to their capricious whims, will 100% create confusion and delay (and danger) in an effort to shave two extra minutes off their commute.

What you were witnessing in Cellular, Paul, was an orderly car line! And trust me, it’s something you’ll appreciate when your kids are ready for elementary school.  

[SideofMcG 225]

Apparently Macy rewrote his character in this movie (according to an IGN interview). It was originally written as an older fatter character with characters telling him to take it easy or he'd have another heart attack. So he himself floated the idea of the day spa and wrote a few scenes and sent to them to the writer! 

So that's why his part is so good. It was written by him!

Link to the interview.

 

[Cameron H. 23786]

Paul mentioned it a bit on the show, but the biggest parenting “win” in Cellular has to be when Ricky Martin Sr. tells Junior to “look at him” so Basinger can choke a motherfucker to death. It was a brilliant, unspoken moment between partners that underscored the rich intimacy these two individuals obviously shared. Clearly, they knew each other inside and out.

I think the biggest parenting “fail” is when Basinger has successfully liberated her child and is getting away when she gets herself and her son recaptured because Statham stands in front of her getaway car with a gun to her husband’s head. I’m sorry, if it’s ever a choice between my life and my kid’s, 100% you better mow my ass down and get my kid the fuck out of there.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

Off topic but HOT DAMN does June look AMAZING in Grace and Frankie. Truly the woman is a GODDESS.A GODDESS! 

[Sharky86 15]

22 hours ago, taylorannephoto said:

I'm confused as to how WHM didn't recognize that female cop hiding out in KB's house. I understand that the LAPD must be large and not everyone could possibly know everyone, however he seems to know Emmerich and everyone on the fourth floor. That would be her department, no? Didn't they all work together or were they a little more spread throughout LAPD in order to cover all bases? It just doesn't make sense to me that Emmerich would continuously offer a job to WHM and WHM have no clue who is on his squad.

I got the impression WHM was more of a desk jockey and the dirty cops seemed to be in narcotics so it's possible he wouldn't have known her especially if she was from a different precinct. 

 

I do love how WHM is much older, had not seen much action in his years on the force, and was very much thinking about retirement, but he's a perfect shot. Is able to leap through the air and aim and fire his gun perfectly, he beats up a guy at least 15 years his junior, and even knows how he can distract Bayback in the house by knocking over the fish bowl and he's able to slide out from cover to do it. For having never needed to even draw his weapon in 27 years, he displayed skills that John Wick would be impressed by.

 

Also, I could listen to Los Angelino Jason Statham for hours!

[RyanSz 3140]

8 hours ago, grudlian. said:

This is what I was thinking. Cellular could be a much better movie if it were entirely from Chris Evans perspective which is what Phone Booth basically is.

Imagine the movie starts with the scene of Chris Evans on the beach. We haven't seen Kim Basinger get attacked so we are right there with Chris Evans from the beginning. Is this a joke? Should we take her seriously? This puts us in Chris Evans shoes. It's immediately a better movie and that's just chopping off the first five minutes of the movie.

This was actually an episode of Law & Order SVU where the detectives were getting a call from a child who claimed to be in the process of a kidnapping, but when they trace the call it's bouncing all over the city and the girl's answers to their questions are creating a lot of doubt about the reality of her claims. It's a tense as hell episode because you the viewer are starting to get the same questions and wondering if this isn't some kind of scam.

[Cameron H. 23786]

The most ludicrous thing about this entire movie isn’t that Basinger was somehow able to place an outbound call from a demolished telephone, but that after all her random futzing, almost right off the bat, she somehow managed to connect to a local number. I mean, damn. That sure is lucky.

And the truly insane thing is that it had to be random. If her character possessed the deftness and alacrity required to manipulate the phone’s copper lines so that she was only placing local calls, then there would have been absolutely nothing stopping her from calling the police herself, or at the very least, a family friend or relative. But, no, out of the 250 million plus active telephone numbers in America, she somehow managed to reach a the one dude currently traveling within her local pizza parlor’s delivery radius.

[Cam Bert 8145]

I was called out (not by name but I am the one that mapped Escape From L.A.) to map this movie but I've had a busy weekend and didn't have time to do it. I did a brief searching from a few of the locations I remembered in the movie and sadly it seems to be not as crazy as they think. Here's the catch though. If we go by what the movie says it's not that crazy if we go by where actual scenes take place then it gets crazy. For example the school is in Brentwood(ish) area and the chase is suppose to be down Sunset Blvd but in reality it is down by LAX. As I am no Jason Statham and haven't been to Los Angeles since I was 13 so I'm not sure if the route this time is as interesting. My next two nights are free so if there is actual interest in the maps I'll do them.

[Cam Bert 8145]

To me one of the craziest parts of their plan was why lock Kim Basinger in an attic with a phone in the first place. They are in a large house and not every room has a phone in it right? So why pick a room with a phone in it? Why not a bathroom or kids room that would be phoneless. That way you wouldn't have to worry about these things. Or why even put her in a room alone? Nobody is around, why not just tie her to a chair in the living room with everyone else? This also begs the question why even move her to a second location. Why not tie her up in her own house? That way you can search it and keep an eye on her. Also if you search the house you might be able to find where their kid goes to school in the first place and not have to worry about her not telling you. Clearly these cops turn to shaking down drug dealers because they are terrible at their jobs if they missed all this.

[Cameron H. 23786]

6 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

To me one of the craziest parts of their plan was why lock Kim Basinger in an attic with a phone in the first place. They are in a large house and not every room has a phone in it right? So why pick a room with a phone in it? Why not a bathroom or kids room that would be phoneless. That way you wouldn't have to worry about these things. Or why even put her in a room alone? Nobody is around, why not just tie her to a chair in the living room with everyone else? This also begs the question why even move her to a second location. Why not tie her up in her own house? That way you can search it and keep an eye on her. Also if you search the house you might be able to find where their kid goes to school in the first place and not have to worry about her not telling you. Clearly these cops turn to shaking down drug dealers because they are terrible at their jobs if they missed all this.

I don’t really have an issue with the attic and its attic phone, but smashing the phone (obviously) doesn’t do anything to prevent making and receiving phone calls. It would have been far more effective to either sever or disconnect the POTS (“plain old telephone service”) line from the NID (“Network Interface Device”). Typically, this is a grayish box on the side of the house that serves as the DMARC (“demarcation”) that connects the phone provider’s loop to house - thus providing the DT (dial tone). 

Of course, we’re shown that the house has multiple lines which might suggest - although doesn’t necessarily guarantee - the presence of a PBX (“private branch exchange”) phone system. If that’s the case, depending on the system (“Mitel, Nortel, Allworx, etc) it might just be a simple matter of removing or deactivating the copper pair that connects that line to that particular phone.

My point is: destroying that phone was wasteful and an ineffective way to prevent phone calls being made as it did nothing to disrupt the actual dial tone.

This has been Telephony 101  

[Cam Bert 8145]

2 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

I don’t really have an issue with the attic and it’s attic phone, but smashing the phone (obviously) doesn’t do anything to prevent making and receiving phone calls. It would have been far more effective to either severe or disconnect the POTS (“plain old telephone service”) line from the NID (“Network Interface Device”). Typically, this is a grayish box on the side of the house that serves as the DMARC (“demarcation”) that connects the phone provider’s loop to house - thus providing the DT (dial tone) to the house. 

Of course, we’re shown that the house has multiple lines which might suggest - although doesn’t necessarily guarantee - the presence of a PBX (“private branch exchange”) phone system. If that’s the case, depending on the system (“Mitel, Nortel, Allworx, etc) it might just be a simple matter of removing or deactivating the copper pair that connects that line to that particular phone.

My point is: destroying that phone was wasteful and an ineffective way to prevent phone calls being made as it did nothing to disrupt the actual dial tone.

This has been Telephony 101  

These are all valid points and consider my issue retracted but I have one question. All the phones in this appear to be rotary dial phones as well. Overlooking the painfully obvious crack that this is 2004 and why would a modern house have exclusively rotary dial phones, does the fact all the phones are rotary dial play into this?

Using the internal functions of a rotary phone she could tap the wire thus replicated the pulses that signal the digit being dialed. If this were a touch tone phone the phone could not be operated in the manner in which she uses it correct? Therefore if this were a touch tone phone smashing it would have been a viable option for rending the phone unusable.

[Cameron H. 23786]

39 minutes ago, Cam Bert said:

These are all valid points and consider my issue retracted but I have one question. All the phones in this appear to be rotary dial phones as well. Overlooking the painfully obvious crack that this is 2004 and why would a modern house have exclusively rotary dial phones, does the fact all the phones are rotary dial play into this?

Using the internal functions of a rotary phone she could tap the wire thus replicated the pulses that signal the digit being dialed. If this were a touch tone phone the phone could not be operated in the manner in which she uses it correct? Therefore if this were a touch tone phone smashing it would have been a viable option for rending the phone unusable.

That's a great point as we're now talking about the difference between pulse (rotary ) and touch tone telephones. I might need to more research, but my gut tells you're correct as the means to generate and send tone would be pretty much impossible without a working modern telephone. So, yes, if the movie gave her anything other than a rotary phone, she would have been all but screwed. Of course, there's always the possibility that a phone technician on a repair job to that house might have accidentally left his butt set in the attic - which, provided there was sufficient voltage, would be capable of generating it's own tone. In which case, she could have simply connected the alligator clips to the IW (internal wiring) and placed a call to wherever she wanted, but....that might have been a bit too far-fetched.

  

[grudlian. 4725]

5 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

To me one of the craziest parts of their plan was why lock Kim Basinger in an attic with a phone in the first place. They are in a large house and not every room has a phone in it right? So why pick a room with a phone in it? Why not a bathroom or kids room that would be phoneless. That way you wouldn't have to worry about these things. Or why even put her in a room alone? Nobody is around, why not just tie her to a chair in the living room with everyone else? This also begs the question why even move her to a second location. Why not tie her up in her own house? That way you can search it and keep an eye on her. Also if you search the house you might be able to find where their kid goes to school in the first place and not have to worry about her not telling you. Clearly these cops turn to shaking down drug dealers because they are terrible at their jobs if they missed all this.

If I had to hold someone hostage for hours, I'd think a bathroom would be a better place.

1. You don't have to worry about moving the person when they inevitably have to use the bathroom.

2. A lot of bathrooms don't have windows. So, you can't look outside and try to identify where you're being held captive.

3. A lot of bathrooms don't have landline phones.

1 hour ago, Cameron H. said:

That's a great point as we're now talking about the difference between pulse (rotary ) and touch tone telephones. I might need to more research, but my gut tells you're correct as the means to generate and send tone would be pretty much impossible without a working modern telephone. So, yes, if the movie gave her anything other than a rotary phone, she would have been all but screwed. Of course, there's always the possibility that a phone technician on a repair job to that house might have accidentally left his butt set in the attic - which, provided there was sufficient voltage, would be capable of generating it's own tone. In which case, she could have simply connected the alligator clips to the IW (internal wiring) and placed a call to wherever she wanted, but....that might have been a bit too far-fetched.

  

So, are we positing that Kim just clicked the wires together at the right intervals to equal a digit in the phone number? I know old pulse phones had an audible click for each number (1 click for 1, 2 clicks for 2, and so on). I'm not even remotely close to being a phone expert but I assume this is what she did (or what we're supposed to believe happened). I'd be very surprised if touching two wires would be able to connect a phone call any other way.

[Cameron H. 23786]

5 minutes ago, grudlian. said:

So, are we positing that Kim just clicked the wires together at the right intervals to equal a digit in the phone number? I know old pulse phones had an audible click for each number (1 click for 1, 2 clicks for 2, and so on). I'm not even remotely close to being a phone expert but I assume this is what she did (or what we're supposed to believe happened). I'd be very surprised if touching two wires would be able to connect a phone call any other way.

Yes, she was on the ground tapping wires together just prior to the call connecting to Evans. But, like I said before, if she had the wherewithal to do that, then there's absolutely no reason to believe she couldn't have just called 911 or any other familiar number. Basically, she possessed the know-how to manipulate a pulse-style phone to dial out, but not the common sense to not call a random stranger. 

[grudlian. 4725]

1 hour ago, Cameron H. said:

Yes, she was on the ground tapping wires together just prior to the call connecting to Evans. But, like I said before, if she had the wherewithal to do that, then there's absolutely no reason to believe she couldn't have just called 911 or any other familiar number. Basically, she possessed the know-how to manipulate a pulse-style phone to dial out, but not the common sense to not call a random stranger. 

Ok. You answered my next question of, "if you can figure this out, why not call 911?"

It's possible she was just touching the wires randomly and got Chris Evans or his number could have a phone number similar to 911 (like 912-9119 or whatever). I think the latter is a real stretch though.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

What if we switch all this phone shenanigans around so Chris Evans is someone who's supposed to be getting an emergency phone call: a 911 operator! Kim Basinger can still manipulate the pulses of the smashed phone, but DOES call 911 and it's Chris Evans who answers. 911 operators are obviously people who are supposed to be responsible and punctual, etc., qualities that Evans has been accused of not having. So you automatically connect his personal and professional life. Maybe his unreliability has put him in hot water with his boss as well as his ex-girlfriend, so he is close to being fired.  When he gets a call from Basigner, his immediate supervisor tells him it is a prank and to not waste time and resources following it up and to GET BACK TO WORK. But Evans takes note of the number and decides to call it himself on his CELLULAR phone when he shift ends (maybe he just pulled a 3rd shift so he is getting off work right around the time kids are being taken to school, thus adding an element of lack of sleep and therefore stress to his character). When he calls the 911 switchboard after discovering that the kidnapping is, in fact, real, we discover that his boss is ALSO in the pocket of the dirty cops, who recruited him/her to curtail any possible incoming 911 calls in case Basinger, her son, or her husband were reported missing (or if anyone saw them capture the husband in broad daylight). I realize this takes away some of the point of the movie, that it's a random stranger who gets a call and has to decide to help that person, but we still get a random 911 dispatcher getting the call and having to step-up, defy authority, and become a hero. Plus, it gives us an opportunity to either defy stereotypes of phone operators being women OR cast a woman in the lead role who immediately connects with another woman in peril, even if her male supervisors (and male police officers) are telling her to forget about it.

[The_Other_MikeD 68]

9 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

To me one of the craziest parts of their plan was why lock Kim Basinger in an attic with a phone in the first place. They are in a large house and not every room has a phone in it right? So why pick a room with a phone in it? Why not a bathroom or kids room that would be phoneless. That way you wouldn't have to worry about these things. Or why even put her in a room alone? Nobody is around, why not just tie her to a chair in the living room with everyone else? This also begs the question why even move her to a second location. Why not tie her up in her own house? That way you can search it and keep an eye on her. Also if you search the house you might be able to find where their kid goes to school in the first place and not have to worry about her not telling you. Clearly these cops turn to shaking down drug dealers because they are terrible at their jobs if they missed all this.

It wouldn't have been as dramatic as a sledgehammer but Statham could have just unplugged the phone from the wall or taken the receiver.  Then the best she could have done was tap the wires together calling randos with no way to talk to them.

[grudlian. 4725]

4 hours ago, Quasar Sniffer said:

What if we switch all this phone shenanigans around so Chris Evans is someone who's supposed to be getting an emergency phone call: a 911 operator! Kim Basinger can still manipulate the pulses of the smashed phone, but DOES call 911 and it's Chris Evans who answers. 911 operators are obviously people who are supposed to be responsible and punctual, etc., qualities that Evans has been accused of not having. So you automatically connect his personal and professional life. Maybe his unreliability has put him in hot water with his boss as well as his ex-girlfriend, so he is close to being fired.  When he gets a call from Basigner, his immediate supervisor tells him it is a prank and to not waste time and resources following it up and to GET BACK TO WORK. But Evans takes note of the number and decides to call it himself on his CELLULAR phone when he shift ends (maybe he just pulled a 3rd shift so he is getting off work right around the time kids are being taken to school, thus adding an element of lack of sleep and therefore stress to his character). When he calls the 911 switchboard after discovering that the kidnapping is, in fact, real, we discover that his boss is ALSO in the pocket of the dirty cops, who recruited him/her to curtail any possible incoming 911 calls in case Basinger, her son, or her husband were reported missing (or if anyone saw them capture the husband in broad daylight). I realize this takes away some of the point of the movie, that it's a random stranger who gets a call and has to decide to help that person, but we still get a random 911 dispatcher getting the call and having to step-up, defy authority, and become a hero. Plus, it gives us an opportunity to either defy stereotypes of phone operators being women OR cast a woman in the lead role who immediately connects with another woman in peril, even if her male supervisors (and male police officers) are telling her to forget about it.

There is a movie where a victim calls a 911 operator. It's called The Call.

The victim is kidnapped by a serial killer and calls from the trunk en route to his murder dungeon. Halle Berry is the 911 operator and she works with the victim to find her location. I can't remember why but Halle Berry has to be the one to save her instead of the police. I remember the first half being okay and the second half being pretty ridiculous.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Something I still can’t work out is why the crooked cops need to bring William H Macy, a man recently wounded in a gunfight, with them to the pier. Ostensibly, he’s there to help them identify Evans, but once they get there, they don’t really need or use him. At best, he’s just going to get in the way; at worst, he’s going to just be another loose end they’ll need to “clean up.”

Furthermore, having already dealt with Evans before, corroborated his kidnapping claims, and already witnessed police corruption firsthand, in all of Los Angeles, he’s probably the one person most likely to listen and to believe anything Evans has to say. Maybe it would be better for them to just let Macy retire peacefully to his day spa than go through the hassle of having to explain how the suspect he helped ID at the beach mysteriously “disappeared.”

Then again, this is a plan cooked up by the same people who think it’s okay to loudly coordinate a murder over an open walki-talkie channel while the one honest cop among them is clearly still within earshot.

[Blast Hardcheese 636]

I love it when the dialogue in shitty movies is clearly speaking to the audience because it doesn't trust them to pick up on visual cues. This movie had an overabundance of this sort of gap-filling. My favorite example of this is when Kim Basinger's Mrs. Ricky Martin cuts the cop/goon/professional wrestler's arm with a shard of glass after he discovers that she's found a way to use the phone in the attic. She slices the inside of his arm and he gets all shaky and asks her what she did to him. She then proceeds to give this dying man a "science biology" lesson on the brachial artery and how he will bleed-out and 30 minutes. Time is of the essence and she needs to rescue her kid and get the hell out of there... and she's lecturing this dying goon on arterial blood flow?!? Had she skipped this One to Grow On, she would have had ample time to bust Ricky Martin Jr. out of the garage and escape before Angelino-American Jason Statham and his crew returned.

Then I read this comment on the movie's IMDB Goofs page:

When Jessica cuts the goon's arm she tells him that he will bleed 30 liters/minute. The blood flow through a brachial artery is nowhere near that much. During vigorous exercise the entire heart puts out a total of 30 L/min, but that's the sum total flow through every artery of the body. The flow though a single brachial artery is fraction of that. In addition, the goon was not vigorously exercising. At rest, the cardiac output is about 5 L/min.

[Cam Bert 8145]

The airport scene is further proof Jason StL.A.tham and crew are terrible at their jobs. Now his partner was not carrying a weapon when going through security and must have been aware that he didn't put a gun in the x-ray machine tub. I mean you think as a law enforcement office trained in firearms and their safety and handling you'd recall information like that. So upon being stopped by the TSA and identifying as a cop his first recourse was not figuring out who was ahead or behind him in line and could have done that but rather just go about their business. Don't you think he would remember Chris Evans cutting in front of him and do you think the TSA would just let him on his way without having to check why armed cops are going through security? Cop or not I think a gun would shut everything down for awhile.