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February 2001
Download the word version, perfect for printing and handing out on street corners!
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That's it. Stop the presses and cancel the Oscar rush. There's only one
movie worth considering for Best Picture this year, and it's The Gift. Now,
I'm not going to say that it's the best movie of all time, since people
stopped listening to my opinions after I claimed that Mystery Men was the
greatest story ever told, but it's definitely a fine film. The Gift is, of
course, the latest film from Sam Raimi, a brilliant director who was
recently touted by the American Film Institute as being 'better than
Jesus'. If you don't recognize his name from the classic Evil Dead trilogy,
collectively the greatest work of art in the history of the world, you most
certainly will after his new Spider Man movie hits theatres in 2002.
Provided you live that long, of course, because ignorance of the Evil Dead
movies can only mean that you're busy wasting resources in some variety of
brain-dead comatose state in the intensive care ward, and someone's bound to
pull the plug sooner or later. Anyway, The Gift has it all: an all-star,
highly talented, Oscar nominated cast, Keanu Reeves, barely intelligible
dialogue, and plenty of other fun stuff. Plus, you get to see Katie Holmes'
goodies. Granted, she's dead and bloated at the time, but I've become a lot
less picky ever since Baywatch went off the air. The plot consists of a
murder mystery in a backwater Southern town full of people who are
distinctly not Southern, including Australian Cate Blanchette, Lebanonian
Keanu Reeves, and Giovanni Ribisi, who may actually be Southern, but it's
kind of hard to tell through the mouthful of paste he seems to have
swallowed. Blanchette plays a psychic who begins having visions about the
disappearance of Greg Kinnear's wife, played by Holmes. Why the fact that
someone married to Greg Kinnear disappeared would be considered a mystery is
beyond me, but apparently no one else was bored to tears by his performance
in As Good As It Gets. At first, the chief suspect is Keanu Reeves, based
entirely on the fact that it's relatively easy to convict someone so
clueless they think patchy facial hair is attractive. But, as is generally
the case with movies of this sort, all is not what it seems and soon
everyone starts looking guilty. The list of suspects quickly narrows itself
down to either Greg Kinnear or Greg Kinnear, and the rest of the movie
focuses on Blanchette trying to decipher her confused visions while
withstanding the wrath of townsfolk who label her a witch merely because
she worships the devil through her evil pagan Tarot cards. Also she eats
babies. Raimi handles the material with his usual "look, I'm all growed up
now!" brand of subtlety, keeping the movie relatively free of zombie
carnage. But there are a few Raimi-esque touches, like the hyper-kinetic
editing of the dream sequences, and the inventive camera work during the
scene where Blanchette lops off her hand at the wrist and replaces it with a
chainsaw. Blanchette proves herself quite the capable actress during the
film, but the best performance comes from Giovanni Ribisi, who shows so much
proficiency playing retards I'm beginning to wonder how he feeds himself.
The retard in this case is a car mechanic being counseled by Blanchette. The
idea of a half-wit mechanic is about as comforting as a proctologist with
Parkinson's, but Ribisi manages to become a sympathetic character
nonetheless. Together with Blanchette, they manage to carry the film through
Keanu's goofy bumbling and some familiar plot turns, and in the end we're
left with a satisfying Southern ghost story that survives its faults to
become, yes, the greatest thing of all time. Ever. And you can quote me on
that.
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