poliphilo

The Gift is the movie Sam Raimi made before he was handed the Spiderman franchise.

I like Raimi's style. His films have nice clean lines.

And I adore him for creating Xena.

And for the Evil Dead (especially part II)

The Gift is a whodunnit with added spooks. Ever since I started writing fiction myself, I find I watch this kind of thing with a technician's eye, analysing plot-lines, anticipating twists. This ain't bad, but Agatha Christe would have done it better.

Cate Blanchett is wonderful. That goes without saying.

She's a psychic. She's tormented by her ironically named "gift". Beat-up, decomposing, drowned people turn up in her bathroom and she doesn't like it one little bit. Psychics in filmland are always tormented by their gift- as opposed to real life psychics (like Derek Acorah) who are sleek and flourishing.

Is Derek Acorah ever bothered by beat-up, decomposing, drowned people manifesting themselves in his bath-tub? I doubt it.

The beat-up, decomposing, drowned person is played by Katie Holmes- Tom Cruise's latest squeeze. I was wondering what she looked like.

(This paragraph has been suppressed out of respect for the Church of Scientology.)

Keanu Reeves plays racist, wife-beating, redneck scum. I applaud him for wanting to broaden his range. I don't understand the popular prejudice against Keanu. OK, his facial muscles don't work, but he fills the screen; What more do you want from a film star?

I guess the writers (one of whom is Billy Bob Thornton) had seen The Sixth Sense and thought, "We'll have a slice of that."

Formulaic. I wasn't going to say it, but now I have and I'm not going to take it back.

I had fun. But not as much fun as I had with The Evil Dead. Those films are demented!