Weekly Cinemeh

Hello and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh. This week we decided to do another director theme week and went with Sam Raimi. Sam Raimi is famous for his horror, (particularly the Evil Dead franchise) and Spider-man movies and this week we decided to go with a horror movie version of a super hero, a movie where everyone makes the wrong decisions constantly, and a movie about an unwilling psychic detective. I love Sam Raimi's work for the most part because he is good at making the world just a little bit odd in his way (usually via delightfully over the top special effects). Anyway, to the list!

1:Darkman
Darkman is a movie about why confirming your kill is important, especially if you are a sadistic, evil, motherfucker. Darkman is a superhero who is unable to feel any pain after a non-consensual experiment to save his life after his lab is blown up by a bunch of drug dealers who are trying to get incriminating evidence that was left there by Darkman's SO. Darkman decides that he should avenge himself and his lab assistant by murdering all those involved, either directly or by copying their face (via a machine he was working on in his lab that creates skin to help burn victims) and setting them up to fail at not being fragged by their buddies. Its a good movie about an antihero who just stops caring if he can come back from his fall. I love Sam Raimi for the special effects in this movie. Its so fucking good to see a skeletal hand type on a keyboard when it is not made of CGI. It looked fantastic. Raimi is also a great director for this type of movie, and manages to get the most out of his actors when he needs them to portray their characters as acted by Darkman. Liam Neeson seems a little wasted for a lot of this movie, what with other actors playing his part for half the movie. But I digress, its a fun movie and well worth the watch.

Eshi: Man for movie starring Liam Neeson there is really not a lot of him in this. Even when he isn't "impersonating" someone else, half the stunt scenes where Bruce Campbell doing a hilarious Liam Neeson impression. Really, Neeson is only ever on screen so we can see his face melt, which seems morbid. That said, it was pretty damn good. Nobody manages the line between the uncanny valley and the camp-ass hill quite like Sam Raimi.

2:A Simple Plan
A Simple Plan is about 3 guys driving in the boonies when they stumble across a crashed plane full of money and decide to split it up. This goes about about as well as you could imagine. I don't want to steal Eshi's thunder to much, but as we watched this movie he mentioned that it should be called "Bad Decisions: The Movie" and I couldn't agree more. Greed has a way of making people act stupidly and this move embodies that. The cast is good, but to no one's surprise, Billy Bob Thornton stands out. His character has the most depth of any in the film, partially because he is constantly being forced into situations he doesn't want to be in by other people, and partially because Thornton is a fantastic actor. Raimi's direction is good, he gets a lot out of his actors, particularly in the soul crushing ending. I have wanted to see more Noir lately and this movie fills that gap nicely. The Femme Fatale is particularly well done. I would like to see Raimi do more noir. Its a good movie, watch it.

Eshi: There are just so many terrible people in this fucking movie. BBT's character is just kind of an idiot, makes a bad decision and spends the rest of the story getting dragged into further stupidity. Bridget Fonda's character is just straight up evil at pretty much every opportunity and Bill Paxton is a weird combination of spineless and unnecessarily extreme. Brent Briscoe plays That Guy and Rule # 4 gets put off for too long. I agree with Brian that I'd like to see Sam Raimi do more Noir because, as with all good Noir, the fact that everyone is fucking awful doesn't meaningfully detract from the film.

3:The Gift
The Gift is about a woman with psychic powers helping the police to find a woman after she goes missing. When the evidence puts the wrong man in jail, she continues to try to find out who the real killer is using her powers. Cate Blanchett was great as the leading actor of this movie, she adds a lot of depth to a character that could have been kind of flat. Also, I don't know if I have ever wanted to see a Keanu Reeves character get murdered more than his racist, wife beating character in this movie. Sam Raimi dips a little into his Horror roots with some of the stuff, and it pays off well. Its  pretty good, and lent some odd context to something I saw a while ago.

Eshi: Keanu Redneck is the worst Keanu. The fact that his character isn't subject to glorious shotgun violence is an affront to decency. Also, Zener cards =/= Tarot cards, no matter how apt you try to make the squiggly one. Katie Holmes is unnecessary, which isn't a good trait for the corpse in a murder mystery. I enjoyed The Gift, albeit grudgingly, and much of that joy derives from Giovani Ribisi's character. Don't rent it, even if you couldn't get it on Netflix.