Now You See Me (2013)

I actually saw Now You See Me several days ago, but I had a detour in Las Vegas, where money magically disappeared from my wallet.  While in Vegas I thought about the last movie based on magicians I saw, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, which was set in Vegas, whereas Now You See Me varies the locale throughout the film.

Despite having a few days to reflect on the film, I find I don't have that much more to say about it, or that my opinion has changed all that much.  I did, however, realize that despite that Now You See Me wasn't a comedy, I actually laughed more than I did while watching Burt Wonderstone.

Now You See Me is an example of a movie that I was expecting to be so awful that I'm probably giving this a little more credit than I should simply because it wasn't a disaster.  The setup alone was already something that was making me cringe a little.  Four magicians of various skill sets - played by Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson - are brought together by an unknown benefactor.  A year after meeting they perform in Vegas rebranded as "The Four Horsemen".  During their performance, they are able to rob a bank in Paris, giving the money back to the audience in attendance.

FBI Agent Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) is brought in to investigate along with Interpol Agent Vargas (Mélanie Laurent).  They aren't able to make anything stick to the Four Horsemen, and charging them with the crime would indicate that the FBI now believes in magic.  Knowing there's an explanation for all of this, Rhodes and Vargas meets with Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), and ex-magician that makes a living by exposing the secrets of other magicians.  Bradley explains to Rhodes how they pulled off the first trick, but that the Four Horsemen have been planning for a long time and will likely always be a step ahead of the FBI.

You'll find that the story spends more time focusing on Mark Ruffalo's and his Keystone Cops antics than the Horsemen.  His character also seemed to be excessively angry at times, although some of that made a little sense by the end of the film.  Overall, the plot gets little muddled as it goes on and inconsistencies pop up.  I felt like resolution of the film wasn't very satisfying and a few things were left unanswered.  Oddly, this didn't bug me that much, and that's probably due to the fact that I had enjoyed the movie so much up until that point, that a few inconsistencies weren't enough to ruin it for me.

The main reason why I enjoyed the film so much is that the dialog is actually very snappy and funny.  I was really expecting a much more serious film, so the humor was a pleasant surprise.  The pace of the film is also very brisk with more action and chases than I expected.  I didn't realize going into Now You See Me that it was directed by Louis Leterrier, who's directed films like the first two Transporter films and Unleashed.  It looks like he went into his bag of tricks to add some action elements and it served the film well.  You know what I just realized?  Louis Leterrier directed Edward Norton's The Incredible Hulk, and directed Mark Ruffalo in this film, who was The Avengers' Hulk.  Does mean we should expect Eric Bana in Leterrier's next film?

Another really strong element of the film was that there's great chemistry between the Four Horseman.  The cast, especially Woody Harrelson, seemed to be having a lot of fun together and you really feel that on screen.  Despite the good chemistry, there's not a lot of character development.  At the end of the film, we really don't know nothing about this group of people. Again, I wasn't terribly upset by this, but fleshing out the foursome would have been nice.

Now You See Me is a surprisingly entertaining film, that has a great pace, funny dialog, and a good cast that plays well off each other.  The story is definitely the weak point, but I think you'll have enough fun with the film that you won't notice or bug you too much.  I think it's worth a matinee.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - First Impressions

Hey everybody.  I just got back from seeing The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX.  I'm still recovering from surgery, so I need to lay down after the length of the film, but I thought I'd just get some initial thoughts up.  I'll get a more detailed up review once I'm feeling better.

First off, see it in IMAX if you can.  The sound was amazing!  There was a moment where an explosion went off in the background and the ground shook a bit, well, it also shook in the theater.  It made for a nice effect.  A good portion of the film was actually shot in IMAX format, so many of the best action sequences take full advantage of it.  I think I might have to enjoy this in D-BOX once I'm feeling up to it.

The performances are all great.  I was especially impressed with Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway.  For those of you worried about how Hathaway would do with Catwoman, you can stop worrying.  She's sexy as hell, but they gave her character some depth and more to do than just vamp and look hot in the catsuit.  I also really enjoyed Joseph Gordon-Levitt and liked what they did with his character.

I did think Tom Hardy was good as Bane, but you will hardly recognize him.  Even with them re-dubbing the voice from the trailer (it didn't even sound like Hardy's voice), I still thought there were a few parts of this dialog that were hard to understand.  Also, while I thought Christian Bale was good, I wish he would have toned down his Batman-voice.  You can see how he manipulates his mouth to do the voice and it's still a little off-putting.

As much as I was looking forward to Bane, I didn't think he was that memorable.  Heath Ledger's Joker is just too hard of an act to follow.  He's not one dimensional, but between not being able to see his face and the voice, it was hard to really get into his character.  Bane does have some really great moments to show you how brutal and driven he is.

It is a little long and I felt there were a few things that could have been trimmed, but the movie had a good pace to it.  When you consider the pain I'm in when sitting down, that I never felt bored or had the need to check my watch should tell you something.

There really aren't any surprises here as far as the story.  It's pretty straightforward.  However, I did feel like they skipped over things, and there were encounters that happened that were too convenient.  You might find yourself going, 'Hey, where did you come from?' or , 'How'd you get there so fast?'  Characters seem to be in multiple places at once, and I have to think this was due to poor editing.

Hans Zimmer's score felt a little repetitive and like it was beating you over the head a bit.  I didn't hate the score, but it was a little much at times.  Sometimes you don't have to have music punctuating every single scene.

Overall, I still thought The Dark Knight Rises is a very good and entertaining movie.  It's not perfect, but it's a fitting conclusion to the Nolan trilogy and did good job of tying the previous two movies together.  I watched both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight again leading up to this, so they were fresh in my mind and I think it helped with keeping everything straight when watching TDKR.  I would say The Dark Knight is a better movie, but could anything really live up to the expectations set by that?

4 (out of 5) Death Stars for now...