Rating: 
Summary: "The Gift" will surprise you....
Review: in a relatively simple tale of crime in rural Georgia, writer Billy Bob Thornton, and director Sam Raimi give the viewer a suspense filled murder mystery that hasn't had enough play in theaters or the rental market. Raimi sticks to the formula of evil in the cracker south that has worked so well for him in prior flicks - his casting is excellent!Giovanni Ribisi (who has not failed to be brilliant in any of his roles -- please don't count Mod Squad!) is phenomenal in a supporting role as a garage mechanic on the edge of madness. Ribisi can convey insanity better with just his facial expressions than most actors on the screen today. The only positive influence in his life is small-town psychic Annie (Blanchett), a widow with 3 children who treats her psychic gifts as a legacy, and stays true to them, even when confronted by constabulary scorn. Ribisi's scene with his father is truly shocking. Blanchett carries the lead role well, and is believable both as a mom and as a woman who cannot escape from her premonitions about the murder of the town's richest girl, Jessica (played by Katie Holmes). Greg Kinnear, as Jessica's fiance and the school principal, once again contributes the quiet everyman performance that makes him a natural supporting actor. In a related story of domestic abuse, Keanu Reeves and Hilary Swank are cast as a couple who place Annie directly in the middle of their tumultuous marriage. Swank is believable, but just so, Reeves was miscast and particularly so, when you learn of his romantic involvement with Holmes. Had this role gone to Robert Downey Jr. or Kevin Bacon, the film would have increased its believability and marketability. Not sure who wants to pay to see Keanu in a dramatic role. Although you will be able to figure out the eventual discovery of the murderer's identity, you will be engrossed in getting there in both characterization and scenery.... A win for Sam Raimi.
Rating:
Summary: Gets Too Predictible but Front and Middle Are Great
Review: This highly atmospheric alternate reality thriller, with Cate Blanchett in the star role of the woman with psychic gifts, is very good most of the way through. Blanchett really shines in this role and the way director Rami presents her visions is beautifully and artfully done. However, the murder of a local woman takes over the storyline steadily and the all too familiar, predictible Hollywood type plotline comes into play. Believe me, anyone can figure out "who done it" in this film very early on and that whole aspect to the story is very heavy handed. Had writer Billy Bob Thornton skipped putting a murder at all in this film, it probably would have been brilliant. The troubled mechanic, who is Blanchett's friend, was a much more interesting storyline, for one, and he certainly presented some high conflicts going on within his own life for added film tension. Blanchett's character and her way of life, with the visions, set in this gothic southern atmosphere needed no other props. I would bet that it was the money people who demanded, and unfortunately got, the whole heavy handed murder inserted into this story. I give Keanu Reeves a lot of credit for playing a villainous role that is quite at odds with his major leading man star status.
Rating:
Summary: BLANCHETT, SWANK AND RIBISI SHINE!!!
Review: In this movie co-written by Billy Bob Thornton (with Tom Epperson), director Sam Raimi successfully produces an enjoyable often edge of the seat part courtroom, part psychic gothic thriller, starring the excellent Aussie actress Cate Blanchett and a fine ensemble cast. Set in small town Georgia, Blanchett plays Annie Wilson, a financially struggling, recently widowed, lonely single parent who uses her card reading psychic ability to pay the bills. Among her clients are a battered wife, Valerie Barksdale (wonderfully played by Hilary Swank) and a traumatised local mechanic named Buddy Cole (brilliantly played by Giovanni Ribisi), who is struggling to hold onto his sanity. Traumatised by recurring visions surrounding the death of local tramp Jessica King (Katie Holmes), she sets out to help the police find the body and find the killer. The prime suspect is Donnie Barksdale played by Keanu Reeves, who gives a passable performance, as Swank's violent wife-beating bully of a husband. He was known to be having an affair with Holmes and previously threatened to kill Annie and so starts the courtroom drama that dominates the middle of the film. The strength of this gothic noir movie really is in the suspense, the expectation of doom and the excellent performances from Blanchett, Ribisi and Swank, with good support from Katie Holmes. It is subtly directed by Raimi and he expertly brings a southern gothic feel to the whole movie. However, Keanu Reeves and Greg Wise (as Holmes fiancée) are not quite as strong and I felt the movie tailed off slightly at the end, with the inevitable slightly predictable 'twist', which most people will see coming a mile off. That said it's well worth a view, definitely above average and a bit of a must for Blanchett and Raimi fans particularly.
Rating: 
Summary: Lucky Find
Review: If you enjoy good thrillers then you will like this. Suspenseful, scary, but with a reasonably good story line- this movie is a lot better than most of the teenie booper screamers out there. Keanu Reeves is actually pretty convincing in his role. If he has good work then this is some of it. The rest of the cast does a great job too. It's no "Elizabeth" but it's worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: The Gift- A Good Rental
Review: This is a good movie about Cate Blanchet who tries to solve a murder case with her phsycic powers. The creepy fiddler scene is garanteed to send chills up your spine! That part is worth the rental alone! On a negative side, this movie has some old cliches, but what doesn't these days??!! But it still has an original plot, and the cast is real good. Like I said above, look out for that fiddler scene. I really dont like this 5 star rating system, 4 is much better in my opinion where you can use 3 1/2 because that is how many I would give it out of 4. This is a very wierd movie with an original genre of court drama and horror. Be sure to watch twice 2 get the full understanding!
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT THRILLER/MYSTERY
Review: The movie was definatelty worth watching. It left me on the edge through out it and jumpy making me guess, guess, and guess again til the end. It is a drama full of thriller and a very well made mystery. I gotta say, if you haven't seen this movie yet, you should go out and rent it. I'm gonna purchase it on DVD this weekend. Cate Blanchett plays Annie Wilson who is a physic who sees things before and after they happen. She tries to help out one client played by Hilary Swank when her abusive husband Donnie played by Keanu Reeves gets in the middle and threatens Cate to stop. And then threatens her kids. When a local women Jessica King Played by Katie Holmes disappears after having an affair early that evening with Donnie. Donnie ends up getting accused. From then on the movie will leave on your seat wondering if Donnie is innocent or not? I know the answer to that only cause I seen the movie. So what are you waiting for. Go out and rent the DVD.
Rating: 
Summary: Bet you didn't see that coming!! Oh wait, you did...
Review: I vaugely remember telling this story around the campfire back in my girlscout days. Didn't impress me much then, either. Remember when you watched 6th Sense, and you almost passed out from the ending? What a suprise! What a plot twist! What a perfect oppisite from this movie. I'll throw it an extra star due to the fact that the cinematography was nice. It's pretty hard to have a good movie with a cardboard plot, though.
Rating:
Summary: Blue Diamonds, Yellow Clovers, Pink Moons...
Review: It's more fun staring at a box of Lucky Charms than watching this movie. At least Cate Blanchett looks much hotter in this movie than in others she's been in.
Rating:
Summary: Vonni and Blanchett and Reeves, oh my!
Review: The Gift (Sam Raimi, 2000) Poor Sam Raimi. It doesn't matter what he does to try and avoid being labelled a horror director; every film he makes will be compared to The Evil Dead. But then, in a perfect world, perhaps every review of every film ever made would contain a comparison to The Evil Dead, which is possibly the world's best example of what you can do with fifty grand and a whole lot of beer. So if you're going to get compared to The Evil Dead for the rest of your life, do what Sam Raimi did: go back to the Evil Tree motif. Gotta love evil trees. In this case, the evil tree stands in the yard of Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett), a fortune teller in a small town in Georgia. Wilson has a seemingly-thriving business telling fortunes for local folk, dispensing a kind of half-presaging half-advice to her clients. When her oldest child gets into trouble in school, she meets the principal, Wayne Collins (Greg Kinnear), and his fiancee Jessica (Katie Holmes, looking as much like Ashley Judd as cosmetics can make her). Jessica soon goes missing, and Annie, psychic that she is, starts having some rather nasty visions. Imagine the twisted branches of the tree as a cinema screen and away you go. The plot and characterization are pure Billy Bob Thornton; lots of Sourthern redneck drawl, lots of mental defectives, lots of people doing incredibly stupid things that they don't think through that come back to haunt them. The film is perfectly cast, including a number of choices that seem odd on the surface (especially Blanchett; hard to imagine Queen Elizabeth as poor white trash, but it works), but that click quite well. The cast is high-caliber from soup to nuts, and they all play their roles to the hilt, including Giovanni Ribisi as an on-the-edge mechanic, Keanu Reeves as the jealous, abusive husband of Hilary Swank, and Gary Cole in his usual slimy role, this time as the town's prosecuting attorney. J. K. Simmons (Dr. Skoda on Law and Order) turns up as the town sherriff and shows us once and for all that he really isn't the open-minded psychiatrist he's typsecast as. This one didn't get nearly enough screen time when it came out. Now that it's available on video, do yourself a favor and rent it. ****
Rating: 
Summary: A poised Blanchett helms this suspense thriller
Review: Cate Blanchett gives heft and grace to this psychic thriller written by Billy Bob Thornton and directed by Sam Raimi. Blanchett portrays the widowed mother of three young boys whom she supports by giving psychic readings to the local townfolk. Her visions are creepy in a similar fashion to the chilling images in "The Sixth Sense" where commonplace reality is hyper-realized and given a bit of Edgar Allan Poe ghoulishness. *** It's Blanchett's poise that keep you watching however. Filling out the cast, Keanu Reeves and Hillary Swank play a white-trash couple in an abusive marriage; Katie Holmes and Greg Kinnear are imperfect spouses-to-be; Giovanni Ribisi is a disturbed mechanic teetering towards violence; and Gary Cole plays the over-slick attorney with a secret. When a murder is committed, Blanchett becomes a reluctant investigator and everyone is a red-herring suspect. Most film critics weren't impressed, but "The Gift" is solid storytelling.
| 
