Of course, this proposition is not without its contradictions. Whereas in fact, the shows that we get to watch are mostly just smug, triumphalist patter - you sniveling idiots, you thought there was a rabbit there, god you make me sick - that feels vaguely eroticized in context, but would also be deployed whatever the trick in question was. It shouldn't work, because we would expect to be utterly unimpressed by obviously-fake footage of, for example, Isla Fisher stepping into a bubble, or Jesse Eisenberg making rain go upwards. At their core is a bizarre proposition, which the mostly-lukewarm reviews mentioned but didn't quite understand, which is that cinema can perfect stage magic using CGI. I went to see them both with my wonderful Cliff when they came out, and the first time in particular we were so struck by the film's sheer intensity. Grace : I'm so glad you liked these movies, I agree they're both absolutely fascinating. There's so much more to be said – Jesse Eisenberg's wig-swap from the first movie to the second feels like a much bigger character change than switching Lizzy Caplan for Isla Fisher, not to mention the fact that his magic routine appears to have developed an atheist-evangelism component Woody Harrelson's performance as his own gay twin brother is one of the most hateful things I have ever seen in my life and I honestly think he should have been arrested for it I love the version of mental vulnerability that exists in these movies, where all it takes to be rendered perfectly hypnotized/knocked out/forced to reveal your most shameful secrets is for someone to say something like "WATCH my WATCH and SLEEP," like everyone's got a psychic fontanelle something about how much it felt like watching a Scientology video.īut I'll leave off for now, because we have all the time in the world. Magic is what happens when I have you distracted.and I just distracted you again." When you realized I wasn't doing what I was doing, that's when you were the biggest idiot of all, because that's when I was doing the opposite, backwards, seven times. Everyone gets to deliver at least one version of the speech that goes something like: "You're an idiot for thinking I've been doing what I was doing. There's absolutely no reason for either of them to have withheld that knowledge (not just on one, but several occasions) except for the fact that it's fun as hell to say, "Surprise, I could always speak Mandarin." And that's really it, I think, when it comes to the movie's commitments and interests. There's a bit in the sequel where two characters interact, where seemingly one only speaks English and the other only Mandarin later, and separately, it is revealed they both speak both languages. The priority is always, and delightfully, the twist, above all else. I think I described them to you as feeling like the best possible version of Threat Level Midnight that Michael Scott could ever have written in whatever universe where he absolutely maxes out on professional training, editing, and self-improvement without ceasing to be Michael Scott. Danny: This weekend you showed me both Now You See Me and Now You See Me 2 - movies I’d always had mixed up in a general, hazy sense with both 2006’s The Prestige and The Illusionist, plus that old Kevin Spacey movie 21 about those MIT students who count cards (none of which, by the way, I have ever seen).
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