The Gift (2000)

Sam Raimi avoids the camp of the "Evil Dead" trilogy to deliver some serious scares in "The Gift," a Southern-Gothic ESP thriller that stars Cate Blanchett in the role of Annie, a psychic living in a small town.

   When local flake Jessica King (Katie Holmes) gets murdered, Annie's sixth sense acts up, leading the authorities to one man: resident wife-beater and town redneck Donnie Barksdale (Keanu Reeves). Of course, Donnie's not the one who done it, and with her power under scrutiny, Annie must find the real killer before she, too, becomes a victim.

   The strength of this movie is that it avoids the pitfalls of modern horror films. First of all, Annie isn't the usual ditzy, flaky, slutty heroine, who along with her group of dumb friends has a total IQ of 50. She behaves in an admirable and most of all, INTELLIGENT way.

Gypsy (1993)

The first part of this film, led by a manic Bette Midler, plays like "Toddlers & Tiaras" for the Great Depression era. Mama Rose (Midler) spends so much time immersing her daughters in showbiz and sick infantilism, insisting on making them wear little girl's clothes well into puberty, that she forgets what is best for her girls altogether.

   Though not as dark a musical as Tim Burton's "Sweeney Todd" or Lars Von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark," "Gypsy" emanates a diseased kind of wistfulness, marked by broken dreams and shattered egos. Meanwhile Bette Midler plays Mama Rose as if it was her last performance on earth, but backed up by the stagy sets and old-timey attitude, her performance is actually a strength, not a deterrent.

Open Range (2003)

When my dad tried to get me to watch this movie, my response was "A western? I hate westerns! Blech-arg!" But considering the psychological mind-fuck films he had watched at my request, I figured I owed him recommendation-wise. So begrudgingly, I watched "Open Range" with him.

I didn't expect to like it. Heck, maybe I didn't WANT to like it, just so I could look at him all squinty-eyed, sigh and say "See? Westerns suck. Now I don't have to watch one ever again!"

But, to my surpise, I found myself engrossed in the plot and the characters, not to mention the unconventional casting choices (Annette Bening playing a character who ISN'T a stuck-up bitch? Michael Gambon playing a stone-cold killer?) If you, like me, claim to hate westerns, "Open Range" might be a good place to start.