The Prestige

[Hyun]

this movie has everything it has david bowie (who didn't sing ZIGGY STARDUST to my disappointment) the tesla tower and bitches who need some discipline. i don't know what category this movie is in but it should be mystery/humor because this is a good movie.

 

[fender]

The plot is good and keeps you hooked, pretty good cast as well.

 

[Sir Calumn]

As I said in the last movie you watched thread, I am very much looking forward to this. Not as much as The Illusionist though.

 

[Hopeunited]

this movie was excellent, miles better than the Illusionist.

 

[Shindig]

Still puzzles me how Michael Caine's Cockney accent sounds so forced. It'd be like my dad when he hears a Geordie on telly and then goes "Eeeeh, why man, it's a GeORDieeeeee!!!"

Come to think of it, the majority of cockney accents sound forced to me. Even if I met someone like Ray Winston I'd try to convince him that his voice wasn't his voice.

 

[Sir Calumn]

It amazes me that an actor with absolutely zero vocal range gets such a variety of parts, and always sound good in the part. ****, he even seemed perfect as a german officer in The Eagle Has Landed.

 

[Help?]

Christian Bale is simply amazing. Great movie, although you gotta love it how after The Departed i was walking out of the cinema laughing, while after this i was walking out really sad and gloomy, even though it was supposed to be more or less a happy ending and less deaths. Just shows how advanced Hollywood directing is.

 

[Sir Calumn]

Saw this movie, it's not as fantastic as I expected but still pretty good. The whole idea and atmosphere created is superb, felt really unique and engrossing, and the story is complex but satisfying to follow. The acting was good also, Michael Caine being pick of the bunch and Hugh Carlos*man surprisingly good also. Christian Bale wasnt quite up to their level in my opinion, he seemed to be playing his part almost as an imitation of other characters from other films and hence it didnt seem too original, but he was still perfectly suitable, and Scarlett was extremely hot.

SPOILERS - DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVENT SEEN THE MOVIE OR ELSE IT WILL BE TOTALLY RUINED FOR YOU

However, I found the supposedly brilliant twists to be highly predictable. I guessed right away that Hugh Carlos*man wasnt really dead, and that the Lord was him, right at the very beginning. I also guessed that Fallon was Bale, I didnt get the twins thing, thinking instead that Fallon didnt really exist and was just a creation of Bale's mind or an alterego of the one man, but the idea of twins is rather cliched anyway, infact it is resolved very similarly to the french film Crimson Rivers. There were other elements I didnt like also - the ease with which they sabotaged each others tricks, for example - what are the odds of them getting picked, out of all the people with hands up, and then not being recognised in their feeble disguises? Also I would have liked to have seen more tricks, and a greater variety, as I didnt get the proper feel that these were really great magicians, outside the one trick they both strove towards.

END OF SPOILERS

But all in all I still really enjoyed the film and thought it was very good, and it doesnt lessen in the memory. I would like to see Caine get a supporting actor nom at the oscars, and perhaps a director and writing nob for Nolan (and the other Nolan). Beautiful sets, original idea and well carried out.

 

[Good_User]

Saw this movie, it's not as fantastic as I expected but still pretty good. The whole idea and atmosphere created is superb, felt really unique and engrossing, and the story is complex but satisfying to follow. The acting was good also, Michael Caine being pick of the bunch and Hugh Carlos*man surprisingly good also. Christian Bale wasnt quite up to their level in my opinion, he seemed to be playing his part almost as an imitation of other characters from other films and hence it didnt seem too original, but he was still perfectly suitable, and Scarlett was extremely hot.

SPOILERS - DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVENT SEEN THE MOVIE OR ELSE IT WILL BE TOTALLY RUINED FOR YOU

However, I found the supposedly brilliant twists to be highly predictable. I guessed right away that Hugh Carlos*man wasnt really dead, and that the Lord was him, right at the very beginning. I also guessed that Fallon was Bale, I didnt get the twins thing, thinking instead that Fallon didnt really exist and was just a creation of Bale's mind or an alterego of the one man, but the idea of twins is rather cliched anyway, infact it is resolved very similarly to the french film Crimson Rivers. There were other elements I didnt like also - the ease with which they sabotaged each others tricks, for example - what are the odds of them getting picked, out of all the people with hands up, and then not being recognised in their feeble disguises? Also I would have liked to have seen more tricks, and a greater variety, as I didnt get the proper feel that these were really great magicians, outside the one trick they both strove towards.

END OF SPOILERS

But all in all I still really enjoyed the film and thought it was very good, and it doesnt lessen in the memory. I would like to see Caine get a supporting actor nom at the oscars, and perhaps a director and writing nob for Nolan (and the other Nolan). Beautiful sets, original idea and well carried out.

very bad review.

 

[Sir Calumn]

Not a review, just an opinion

 

[Virgo]

However, I found the supposedly brilliant twists to be highly predictable. I guessed right away that Hugh Carlos*man wasnt really dead, and that the Lord was him, right at the very beginning. I also guessed that Fallon was Bale, I didnt get the twins thing, thinking instead that Fallon didnt really exist and was just a creation of Bale's mind or an alterego of the one man, but the idea of twins is rather cliched anyway, infact it is resolved very similarly to the french film Crimson Rivers. There were other elements I didnt like also - the ease with which they sabotaged each others tricks, for example - what are the odds of them getting picked, out of all the people with hands up, and then not being recognised in their feeble disguises? Also I would have liked to have seen more tricks, and a greater variety, as I didnt get the proper feel that these were really great magicians, outside the one trick they both strove towards.

oh sh*t I really have to, you look like you didn't get half the movie or just weren't paying enough attention.


- If Fallon and Bale were one how would he be able to perform the door trick? He wouldn't. Don't try to see things where they aren't.

- Throughout the movie we realise that they attend to each other performances very frequently, to study one another, that explains him being picked out eventually. They obviously couldn't show the times when he's not picked or the film would be 4 hours long.


oh and btw this film sh*ts all over The Illusionist in every way possible, it's just totally on another level.

 

[Sir Calumn]

It always seemed to me as if they were being picked in the first, or a very early, performance. I may be wrong though.

And yeah, I realise that the movie goes as deep as you want it to, infact I did hear a rather interesting theory the other day that explained the whole story without any real magic at all, by use of the double.

Spoilers:

But it was still billed as a movie that was full of twists and turns, and the supposedly big twists were undisputably Johanson's double double bluff, Carlos*man being alive and the Lord and Bale coming back at the end as a twin, all of which I at least semi- predicted. I'm not saying there arent deeper connotations, but those are the bare bones.

Anyway, as I said I still really liked the film, and had I not been expecting so much I would have thought it spectacular, but at the end I was not quite as impressed as I thought I would be. Still made it into my top 10 of the year.

I havent seen the Illusionist as it hasnt been released yet.

Have you seen Pan's Labyrinth yet?

 

[Virgo]

the real brilliance of the film is the blend of reality and history (Tesla) with supernatural/sci-fi.

It keeps you guessing for an explanation for Tesla's machine in the end. Is is supposed to be real or just another trick? Like it's said in the film, it gives you enough information to keep you thinking it's really "real" but also gives you room to doubt it and to start thinking about alternate twists and hidden meanings like lots of people do.


On top of that it's superbly well shot and acted considering the lead are two actors who I didn't rate very highly.

I had no expectations before going into the film, I knew nothing of it, apart from having a good cast and the acclaimed directon. I had only seen the imdb page and it's rated very highly there. That's probably why I was pleasantly surprised, I wasn't expecting twists or anything, just a good movie, and I got it.


Pan's Labyrinth hasn't been released here yet.

 

[Help?]

So what's with the Tesla towers?

It seemed that their main function in the movie was the replication of objects, but wasn't their real purpose something like creating a lot of energy? Can someone fill me in on all the history about this?

 

[Virgo]

Tesla's machine was designed to achieve what we call "teletransportation" like the "beam me up scotty" from Star Trek, unfortunately it never achieved it's full purpose and instead it created a clone of the object it was supposed to transport.

This is fantasy of course, such machines don't exist.

Tesla however was a real person, the inventor of the AC power and the radio, and he got known for his crazy experiences with electrical power and magnetic fields of which you can know more about here.

Nolan obviously used this to give a more "real" feel to the fantasy part of the film.

 

[Help?]

Thanks for clearing that up