The Gift: A Look Inside (2001 Video) User Reviews

interesting bunch of interviews

[zimbo_the_donkey_boy · 7/10 · 27 November 2012]

This is a fairly regular "look inside" video. The stars of The Gift were interviewed plus director Sam Raimi, those individual chats being chopped up into little clips and mixed around, with a few little clips from the film (The Gift) itself thrown in, too. Cate Blanchett's interviews were used the most, though I see that she's not included in the cast list here at all, for some reason.

This is not that long of a video, which I take it is likely why it has rated so low (4.7)--it's informative and enjoyable but there's only so much that they could cover in such a brief "special edition" added-on short. I am glad though that they did make this and add it onto my videotape (and I assume also onto the DVD), as it does offer some insights into The Gift and the experience of working on it.

Ribisi's acting skills

[SlayerCommaThe · 7/10 · 21 November 2005]

The plot of this movie was pretty standard. In fact there really wasn't anything in this movie that was surprising. But the acting was absolutely spectacular. I lived in a tiny east Texas town for half my high school days, and let me tell you, H.S. and K.R. were pretty dead-on. The absolute jewel (no pun intended)in this movie was Ribisi, who was cast in what has become in this day and age of severely jaded movie-goers a "typical" role with a "typical" childhood ("typical" meaning we've all seen it before, not in the sense that it's happened to all of us specifically) and turned it into an Oscar-worthy performance. The script was written well too, and skillfully led to the backyard scene that had never brought me to tears before when confronted with this "typical" storyline in any other movie. All in all, a movie worth seeing if for no other reason than to see Buddy's story, and Ribisi's acting it.