Jennifer Lopez

This Is Me… Now: A Love Story

The Cell

Hello and happy August my dear readers, casual film fans, and obnoxious fellow cinephiles. After exploring some iconic works of iconic, beloved New Yorker Spike Lee last week, a little devil appeared on my shoulder and told me to investigate the works of another iconic, but far less beloved New Yorker—a vibrant Leo who just celebrated their 55th birthday last week: Jennifer Lopez. Where does one begin with Jennifer Lynn Lopez aka J.Lo aka Jenny from the Block aka Jennifer Affleck now aka just back to Jennifer? How does one attempt to tackle the illustrious, diverse, controversial, heavily-publicized and criticized career of an actress, singer, and dancer who does it all but can seemingly please no one? From her humble, strict-Catholic beginnings in a tiny apartment in the Bronx, Jennifer Lopez was born as an ambitious, daring middle child. She studied several forms of dance like ballet, jazz, tap, and flamenco—eventually becoming a dance teacher (who used to teach Kerry Washington.) After graduating high school, Jennifer leaned even more into dancing and became a backup dancer for the likes of MC Hammer, New Kids on the Block, and Dougie Fresh, additionally traveling with touring productions of Jesus Christ Superstar and Oklahoma! Lopez was unrelenting in her pursuit of success, once saying, “I'd dance in a piece-of-garbage rap or pop video for 50 bucks and make the money last a whole month.” Her big-dancing-break came in the early 90s, when Rosie Perez cast Lopez as a Fly Girl on the sketch show In Living Color. Allegedly, Lopez felt ostracized by the other Fly Girls because of her "voluptuous figure", and apparently also clashed with Perez. The Fly Girls were once planned to be a touring girl group that would rival The Spice Girls, but the deal fell apart. At this point in her career, Lopez was still backup dancing for major artists like Janet Jackson, but she began to shift more into acting—occasionally appearing on a handful of one-off or short-lived sitcoms. Her first major film role was in Gregory Nava’s 1995 Mi Familia, which earned J.Lo an Independent Spirit Award nomination, and two years later, Nava would cast Lopez in her breakthrough role as Selena Quintanilla in his 1997 biopic Selena. Roger Ebert, who I was surprised to learn was a massive J.Lo fan, described it as "a star-making performance" and wrote: "She has the star presence to look convincing in front of 100,000 fans." The film was giant success and Gregory Nava apparently asked the heads of Warner Bros to fund an Academy Award campaign for Lopez, but was told the Academy would "never nominate a Latina." In the late nineties, J.Lo would star in one of my favorite creature features, Anaconda, as well as a Steven Soderbergh neo-noir, a horror movie with Sean Penn, and as she dipped a toe into voice acting and product endorsement, she became a national spokesperson for Coca-Cola and L’Oreal. Her performance in Selena made J.Lo miss the stage, which sparked her career as a singer. Some would say that Lopez’ least-successful facet of her multi-hyphenates would be her singing career, and yet she’s sold over 80 million records, has sold out multiple tours, and has topped the charts more than once with hits like “Waiting for Tonight”, “Let’s Get Loud”, “Love Don’t Cost a Thing”, “Jenny from the Block”, “On the Floor”, and several others that I do not know the name of but I’m sure I’ve heard on the radio or in a grocery store. In 2001, she became the first woman to simultaneously have the number one album and film in the United States with her second album J.Lo and her romantic comedy The Wedding Planner. So why, then, is J.Lo so scrutinized, so objectified, so ridiculed? Well the consistent public embarrassment that is her career is very much still occurring—even recently, when comedian Ayo Edebiri’s anti-J.Lo comments on a podcast resurfaced just ahead of them appearing on SNL together—but this began long, long ago. The moment J.Lo became famous, it seems that the vicious and toxic tabloid culture of the time completely latched onto her, for better and for worse. J.Lo is literally the reason why Google Images exists, because in February 2000, Lopez and then-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs attended the Grammys, with Lopez wearing the famous plunging green Versace silk chiffon dress. The dress generated so much global attention and became the most popular search query in Google's history, which led to the creation of Google Images. In the early oughts, J.Lo also started multiple clothing lines, a perfume brand, and her own production company, all while her short-lived marriage to her backup dancer Cris Judd fell apart. She steadily became known as a glutton for attention, and a bit of a diva, having fired both her personal long-time manager Benny Medina and her publicist around this time. As Jennifer Lopez’ star kept rising, so did her ubiquity in the media, and nothing could’ve placed her further in the spotlight than her very public romance and break up with Ben Affleck. In 2003, Lopez met Affleck while starring opposite him in the romantic comedy Gigli, which was a box-office flop and is regarded by many as one of the worst films of all time. Rex Reed of The Observer criticized the lead actors, calling them "pathetically incompetent in both craft and talent". The two worked together on the music video for "Jenny from the Block" and the film Jersey Girl—where her scenes wound up cut in half. Her 2002 album This Is Me... Then was dedicated to and inspired by Affleck, and proves J.Lo’s patience and prophetic ways of thinking. As a child of the late nineties and early 2000s, I recall their relationship being so extensively publicized that it was impossible to ignore. Tabloids dubbed the couple as “Bennifer”, a portmanteau that Vanity Fair described as "the first of that sort of tabloid branding." They were engaged in November 2002, but their planned wedding in September 2003 was postponed with four days' notice because of "excessive media attention". They ended their engagement in January 2004. Years later, Lopez said Affleck's discomfort with media scrutiny was the major reason for their split and described it as her first real heartbreak, going on to say that "I think different time, different thing, who knows what could've happened, but there was a genuine love there.” This tumultuous journey of love, loss, love again and loss again brings us to tonight’s first film—a disgustingly-expensive expression of all of J.Lo’s hopes, dreams, neuroses, and appreciation for her muse, Ben Affleck. Hardly at the start of her vast acting career and far from the end of it, in early 2024 J.Lo had the nerve to create an intensely personal, chaotically-artistic, multimedia spectacle that involved her ninth studio album (This is Me… Now), a documentary (The Greatest Love Story Never Told), and an accompanying film whose title is just as succinct: This is Me… Now: A Love Story. After potential partners backed out, Lopez financed the film herself for $20 million before Amazon subsequently purchased it, and seemingly gave her carte blanche to do whatever depraved or stupid thing she wanted. Described as an "autobiographical musical rom-com action sci-fi", This is Me… Now: A Love Story comes from the twisted mind of Jennifer Lopez—a mind tormented and distorted by years of both unfounded and founded criticism, this is a half-baked but fully-ambitious film that could’ve only come from the number one Puerto Rican princess. This is Me… Now: A Love Story opens with J.Lo’s voice, explaining a Puerto Rican fable about star-crossed lovers, just before we’re thrust into a frantic and overwhelming dystopian future where J.Lo is working in a bronze-tinted, steampunk “heart factory” that is going through malfunctions. Cue our first musical number, where J.Lo and the rest of these factory workers dance to a well-choreographed, albeit disorienting piece where J.Lo is of course the only person who can stop the malfunction. Cut to J.Lo, now sitting in her therapist’s, Fat Joe (yes, the rapper Fat Joe), office, where he says something to the effect of, “All these dreams, zodiac end of days fantasies, they must mean something.” To which J.Lo, credited in this film as “The Artist” responds, “You’re such a Taurus.” Now, listen, I love astrology just as much as the next white girl with access to the internet, however, I will say that an investment in the zodiac is not proof of profundity, but rather the first, base level of an interest in philosophy and human psychology—but I digress. No matter how obsessed we are currently with our horoscopes, J.Lo proves herself to be even more obsessed, as the film shortly introduces us to the “Zodiacal Council”, composed of 10 of the 12 astrological signs (all played by MAJOR stars like Jane Fonda, Trevor Noah, Kim Petras, Keke Palmer, Jenifer Lewis, Sofia Vergara, Post Malone, and Neil Degrasse Tyson [in case you needed any more evidence that he’s a sellout]), who are all shaking their heads at J.Lo/The Artist’s life decisions. Now, I could go into even greater, excruciating detail about this “film”, a “film” that’s really just an extended music video that clocks in at about 50 minutes with some credits, I could tell you about the exquisite and no-doubt egregiously-expensive CGI implemented as J.Lo rides on the back of one of her husband’s motorcycles, I could mention that there’s an incredibly-timely and now-outdated Vanderpump Rules reference, I could recount all of the genuinely stunning cinematography, set design, and costuming used in this project—but this blog post would be fifty pages long. This “film” placed me into a mesmerizing, trance-like state, where my fingers couldn’t type my notes quickly enough and my brain could scarcely process all of the overstimulating exposition and characterization being constantly dumped upon the audience while still failing to tell a story at all. If I really went into detail, I’d only end up shitting on this passion project, which, as much as I’m shitting on it now, I do not intend to be the sole-takeaway from my review. I will, instead, compliment this “film”: how J.Lo put her heart and her hormones on her sleeve and fully, at least metaphorically admitted to being self-obsessive and addicted to love, all while revealing parts of herself that I was not previously-aware of, like her love of Barbra Streisand and how she has the whole script of The Way We Were memorized. And I do admire that good-for-nothin’ Ben Affleck, for agreeing to be donned in horrific prosthetics to play a disgusting, Fox News-esque talking head, all for the sake of letting his on-again off-again lover express herself. I applaud J.Lo, for writing lines that are almost maybe clever, like, “Flowers don’t grow in the Bronx.” and following it up with “Sometimes they do.” And while you could make fun of J.Lo for a myriad of things she’s done—just in this movie, alone—you cannot claim that she cannot act, because her scenes alongside Fat Joe really proved that she can. I did, however, struggle to like even a single song in this “musical”, which is disappointing, but not surprising. Had there been at least one good song, like there was in her Owen Wilson romcom Marry Me two years ago, I would’ve enjoyed this experience much more. But I’m more of a music snob than I am a film snob. And because of this, I wish J.Lo would’ve been even more outrageous and self-obsessive with this “movie”! She would be a hilarious comedian, if only she intended this “movie” to be funny. She would be an absurdist camp icon like Nic Cage, if only she would let herself in on the joke. But because she takes herself so painfully seriously, we end up with earnest portrayals of her charmed yet heavily-critiqued existence like This is Me…Now—a project that will forever live as both the encapsulation of her frenetic relationship with Ben Affleck, and potentially the reason for their second split-up. This “film” did accurately depict J.Lo’s obsession with love, or the idea of it, given the fact that she’s been married four times and is on the precipice of her fourth divorce. I’ve spent much of this blog post poking fun at J.Lo, but I really, genuinely do respect her—for her persistence and her chameleonic ability to keep bouncing back after each flop or failure. She completed her first ever tour while she was pregnant with her and Marc Antony’s twins, she opened a restaurant, and all the while continued to make both memorable and forgettable films. I mean, this woman has starred in so many films, it’s staggering. There are truly dozens of others I could’ve chosen to watch instead like: Selena, Out of Sight, Maid in Manhattan, The Wedding Planner, U Turn, Monster in Law, Gigli (out of sick curiosity), The Boy Next Door, and likely others I’ve forgotten or have yet to read about. Not to mention Hustlers, which I’ve already seen, but is the closest Lopez has come to an Oscar since Selena. And to say nothing of her 2020 Super Bowl performance with Shakira, where she performed “Let’s Get Loud” while cloaked in a large Puerto Rican flag, with children in cages positioned on the field—a clear criticism of Trump’s cruel immigration policy. Then there’s her humanizing appearances on several seasons of American Idol, her years of philanthropic work, and her dedication to the Democratic Party—which led her to performing her iconic, self-serving renditions of “This Land is Your Land” and “America the Beautiful” at President Biden’s inauguration in 2021. J.Lo is an enigma with conflicting attributes. She is undeniably talented, but also undeniably into herself. She allegedly has fired back-up dancers because they were Virgos, but has raised millions of dollars for Palestinians and AIDs research. She has written a children’s book with Jimmy Fallon, she has fallen deeply and publicly in and out of love again and again and again and yet she is still friends with Jennifer Garner. J.Lo never begs for attention, but her storied career and life almost demand it. Our culture depends upon strong, talented, complex women who share their triumphs and their failures with the world, and J.Lo is one of the many poster-children of this femininomenon. Her image as a contradictory public figure persists, as does her movie career. We may love her, we may hate her, we may be confused by her, and one film in her impressive resume that really embodies our wishy-washy feelings toward J.Lo, is the polarizing psychological horror movie The Cell. Tarsem Singh’s 2000 film The Cell opens on J.Lo, wearing an elegant, flowy garment, as she rides a horse through a seemingly-endless desert. After sometime, she finds a young boy, who she seems to know. The little boy is afraid of the boogeyman, and J.Lo tries to placate him, until the boy’s face turns demonic, J.Lo presses a small button on her hand, and she is suddenly back in the real world. J.Lo stars as child psychologist Catherine Deane, who has been hired to participate in an experimental virtual reality treatment program for coma patients. Monitored by two doctors, Catherine travels into patient’s minds using a device called the Neurological Cartography and Synaptic Transfer System, where she and the patient are clothed in red, ribbed, muscular-system-style body suits as they suspend from wires in the ceiling. The parents of this little boy are frustrated with the lack of results thus far, and plan to pull him out of the program, much to Catherine’s disappointment. She goes home, defeated, and does my favorite cool-girl thing of early 2000s movies, where she smokes a joint by her old MacBook while wearing just a t-shirt and underwear. We are then introduced to the next patient that Catherine will brain-invade: a depraved and meticulous serial killer named Carl (Vincent D’Onofrio, who was hot, just once, in Mystic Pizza) who has a peculiar way of killing his victims. Carl targets women, traps them in a glass enclosure of a cell that slowly fills with water by means of an automatic timer, then uses a hoist in his basement to suspend himself above their bodies, while watching a recorded video of their deaths. D’Onofrio’s Carl is a terrifying beast, with an aesthetic and M.O. that seems to have inspired works as recent as Longlegs, and seems to want to be caught after leaving the body of his seventh victim very much out in the open. Carl kidnaps his eighth victim, sets her up in this torturous cell, and then randomly succumbs to a rare (and fictional) schizophrenic disorder that causes his body to seize before going into a coma. The FBI, led by Vince Vaughn, have Carl surrounded, but have no idea where his latest—and not yet dead—victim is. Their only hope is Catherine Deane, who trepidatiously agrees to travel inside Carl’s mind, to see if she can convince him to reveal his victim’s location. As she is thrust into Carl’s psyche, we witness a dizzying montage of doll heads, blood, wires, darkness, a boy being baptized, until we are finally shown the main lair of this coldblooded killer’s subconscious. Catherine looks around this cavernous place full of stairs that lead nowhere, rooms full of dank darkness, and windows that offer visions of each of the women Carl killed, all posed like dolls in artistic renderings of how they met their demises. Though unconscious, Carl has a lot of power within his mind, and appears to Catherine as a sort of kinky Satanic prince donned in horns and silk. With only forty hours until his victim’s cell completely fills with water, it’s up to this therapist extraordinaire to unlock the secrets of this killer’s mind to save the day, and herself. The Cell is a surprisingly captivating and completely creative psychological horror movie, one that blends aspects of sci-fi and psychology pretty effortlessly. The cast is amazing, and the effects and set design are pure magic—well, perhaps a nightmarish form of magic. Even though its psychedelic visuals sometimes mirrored old computer idle screens, the terror driving this plot comes through quite effectively, and is driven by its lead performances. Vince Vaughn was the perfect, sloppy kind of dedicated detective who sleeps in his office and brushes his teeth with coffee, Vincent D’Onofrio was truly frightening with his balance of aggression and unhinged tenderness, and J.Lo was absolutely wonderful and believable as the super-psychologist who comes to the rescue. In Amy Taubin’s review of this film in The Village Voice, she noted that J.Lo appeared to be engaged "in some kind of pouting competition" "in lieu of acting” but I firmly disagree. The Cell is one of those bizarre but beautiful movies that was released in a time when we weren’t ready, and yet J.Lo approached this role with the same passion and precision she always does. I felt that she was actually pretty understated and mild in this role, which was exactly what was required. Audiences didn’t quite know what to do with this cerebral, fetishistic, art-horror movie back when it was released, but as time has gone on and more audiences have seen it, The Cell has been praised for its unique, stylish, boldness. Costumed by the famous designer of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Eiko Ishioka, and set-designed after the works of artists like Damien Hirst, Odd Nerdum, H.R. Giger, and the Brothers Quay, The Cell is a gorgeous and disturbing film that I just knew I would like—and I did! While I did a fair amount of shit-talking this week, and far too much talking in general, I really enjoyed the experience of both of these films. They really convey just how diverse and bizarre and fascinating J.Lo’s film career has been, and they prove that this artist is always dedicated to working hard, and leaving an impression. Her art is not always the most cohesive or coherent, which I can relate to, but at least its entertaining. J.Lo is an inspiration to many, a punching bag to many, but no one can say that she doesn’t try. I always say that the worst thing a famous man can be is Kevin Spacey, Jeffery Epstein, or Harvey Weinstein—predatory and monstrous and dangerous—and the worst thing a famous woman can be is J.Lo—a little bit annoying. If we ever get to a point in our society where we could just let this woman be happy, delusional, and a little bit cringe, then I think humanity would be just fine. Gracias for reading along this week, my amigos, amigas, and amitheys, and thanks for always supporting me. Because, after all, I’m still Lili from the blog. Adios!