Since the release of OZ: The Great and Powerful it's been over five years since Sam Raimi has directed a movie. Shockingly, for a guy who has been in the movie business technically for 37 years, he has only directed 14 movies, with four of them being sequels. So while he most likely is not done filmmaking, how would you rate his output up to this point?


Personally I would say it was excellent overall. He was able to do what Craven and Carpenter were unable to do, which is do movies in several different genres successfully without being pigeonholed into one of them. Here's my ranking of his movies:


Excellent: Evil Dead 2, Darkman, Army of Darkness, A Simple Plan, Spiderman, Spiderman 2.


Good: Evil Dead, Drag Me To Hell, OZ: The Great and Powerful.


Average: For Love Of The Game, Crimewave

Poor: The Quick and The Dead, The Gift. Spiderman 3.

For me I consider it excellent overall because he tends to have more hits then misses and even the ones that are good or average can still be entertaining.

I love the Quick and the Dead, spiderman 1& 2, i even like spiderman 3 with all its flaws, really liked A Simple Plan. Oz was fun and enjoyable. For The Love Of The game was good too. but I know my opinion on his horror movies isnt the popular one but I find the evil dead movies horrible and Drag Me to Hell just average.

Evil Dead 5/5
Evil Dead 2 5/5
Army of Darkness 4.5/5
Darkman 4.5/5
A Simple Plan 4/5
Drag Me To Hell 3.5/5
Oz: The Great and Powerful 3.5/5
Spider-man 2 3/5
Spider-man 2.5/5
Quick & The Dead 2.5/5
Spider-man 3 2/5

Crimewave?

I really liked the original Evil Dead. The rest of his movies fall squarely in “mediocre” territory.

I generally agree with your assessment regarding his movies. I'd rank them as follows:

1. A Simple Plan - I just love this movie. Especially the relationship between the brothers, played by Billy Bob and Bill Paxton...I think Holly Hunter was the lead actress in this a she was great...Kind of neo-noir...

2. Evil Dead - Really broke the mold and was very innovative, given it's meagre budget...Just a great late night movie to watch, which I usually check out every couple of years...

3. Evil Dead 2 - I would also put this on the same level as the original, but obviously it was very similar...I still enjoy this one quite a bit...

4. Spider-Man - I remember thinking this was okay when I saw it in theatres, but I've since watched it a couple times since then and don't feel it holds up that well...That said, I did like Raimi some of the same camera tricks he used for the Evil Dead movies, so the action/camerawork was generally pretty good...

5. Army of Darkness - I'm surprised I don't quite understand why some people hold this in such high estimation (and it's like I hate it, I have the poster up on one of my walls). It's a solid, unique movie. And I like Bruce Campbell. Just felt this is a tad overrated...

6. Drag Me To Hell - It was better than I expected, but still not that great. I don't really care to watch this again...

7. Darkman - Bought the Scream Factory a while back and did not enjoy this one at all. I thought that the only good thing in the movie was Liam Neeson...

8. Spider-Man 2 - I remember the critics were pretty laudatory about this one when it came out, but I just didn't get it. Didn't care for this one at all.

9. Spider-Man 3 - I'll be honest, I pretty much hated everything in this movie, and I think I turned it off like halfway. Just trying to pack too many things into one movie...I usually prefer a single villain or, at most, maybe two...

I'd also say that I'd rank guys like Carpenter, Craven, and Cronenberg way ahead of him. While it's true that Raimi definitely branching out from his early days where he was still largely considered a horror movie director, but Carpenter also tried (you could argue with Starman and Memoirs of an Invisible Man...Those movies weren't very successful so he went back to horror movies; I think he genuinely knew that that was primarily where his talent was, so just basically went back to those movies was so successful with)...Craven had that music movie with Meryl Streep, which I could've sworn got some pretty scathing reviews, so he ends going back to the horror genre), and Cronenberg has I think had the most success out of the three, at branching out (M. Butterfly, A Dangerous Method, History of Violence, Eastern Promises, etc.).

Haven't seen it. Haven't seen For Love of the Game either.