Spider-Man 2 (2004)
DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
CAST:
Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons, Bill Nunn, Donna Murphy, Dylan Baker, Cliff Robertson, Willem Dafoe
REVIEW:
I can see no reason why fans of the first Spider-Man should not enjoy the second. Continue reading
Spider-Man (2002)
DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
CAST: Tobey Maguire, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Cliff Robertson, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons, Bill Nunn
REVIEW:
Spider-Man represents just about the perfect kind of summer blockbuster comic-book movie- flashy, fast-paced, faithful to the spirit of its source material, competently-acted, and achieving a nice balance between its serious moments and others where it’s not afraid to lighten up and poke fun at itself. Continue reading
The Gift (2001)
DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
CAST: Cate Blanchett, Greg Kinnear, Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Giovanni Ribisi, Katie Holmes
REVIEW:
Sam Raimi’s The Gift functions equally as a supernatural thriller, a murder mystery, and a character drama, wrapped up in a strong sense of Southern Gothic atmosphere and overcoming some of the tropes and melodrama inherent within with Raimi’s stylish direction and a first-rate cast.
Continue readingThe Quick and the Dead (1995)
DIRECTOR: Sam Raimi
CAST: Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lance Henriksen, Keith David
REVIEW:
The Quick and the Dead is Sam Raimi switching gears from campy horror movie (his Evil Dead movies) to campy Western. To this end, Raimi proves he’s intimately familiar with Western tropes and cliches which he both gleefully satirizes and pays affectionate homage to. The result is a movie that’s style over substance, often feeling like little more than a vehicle using a flimsy narrative skeleton to move from one gunfight to the next, but it’s still often a lot of campy fun until never really seeming to amount to very much and eventually running out of gas with an underwhelming conclusion.
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