BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "The Gift" is an 8.5-minute live action short film from 2014 and so far the only filmmaking effort by Ivan Petukhov. And to see that he got Oscar-nominated actress Uma Thurman to play the central character here is quite something and the reason is that this is another entry to the series of Jameson short films, a project supported by actor Kevin Spacey that helped aspiring filmmakers in getting their stories to the screen. Spacey has starred in some of these himself and another actor you find participating is Adrien Brody. Anyway, back to this one here: It is basically a 2-people movie if you don't count the old lady early on. We got Thurman playing a really talented gift wrapper trying to help a magician with his ideas. It is a bit predictable es, but this really wasn't the main problem here. It may have been the script. Thurman definitely elevated the material at times, but I still found it difficult to care for any of the characters and what would happen to them next. I am not sure what it was. It wasn't really funny, so not a comedy, it certainly wasn't dramatic, so not a drama and the romance element was not enough either in both quantity or quality to call it a little romance piece. Maybe you could just call it a character study. But not one that was good enough for me to recommend it or give me hope that Petukhov returns to filmmaking soon sadly. Only worth seeing for the very biggest Uma Thurman fans. Everybody else can skip it and they will not be missing out on a lot here.