How do we categorize ambition in a film?
It has to mean more than scope or scale — Avengers: Age of Ultron is big and bold but what new does it attempt in terms of storytelling, apart from maybe giving Hawkeye something to do?…
Tag: magic
There’s no real trick to Now You See Me
I’ve always been slightly puzzled when people talk about the magic of cinema.
Sure, cinema can amaze and enthrall – Orson Welles called it a ribbon of dreams – but, unlike magic, it needs to be explicable.
However much The Prestige went on about the final act, the denouement, being the most important, it only works if it feels like what’s preceded has built up to it.…
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is a feat of cinematic mediocrity
Stage magic has been something of a gift to cinema in recent years.
2006 saw both Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, based on the book by Christopher Priest – which followed the exploits of rival magicians Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale – and Neil Burger’s The Illusionist, set in fin de siecle Vienna and starring Edward Norton as the eponymous conjurer who seeks to tear his love, Jessica Biel, away from a corrupt nobleman using feats of prestidigitation.