The Illusionist (2006)

By Rappy
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Grand Master

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I just watched The Illusionist and thought it was quite good seeing as I dont like period stories...but the fact there was magic involved and mystery made me interested through out the whole movie and although half way through the film I worked out the ending it was a good film to watch when you want your mind tested.

(IMDB)

7/10 :)

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Grand Master

Rappy Veteran

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This film wasn't released in my country, so I'll just have to wait for the dvd, pirated or not.

Anyhow try The Prestige - also a movie about magicians, and also one of the best films of all time.

Yeah I wanted to see that will wait for DVD for that :D

  • 2 weeks later...
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jafoman

Posted
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This film wasn't released in my country, so I'll just have to wait for the dvd, pirated or not.

Anyhow try The Prestige - also a movie about magicians, and also one of the best films of all time.

Best movies of all time? LOL... Wow how peoples opinions vary!

Grand Master

Lqv2015

Posted
Posted
LOL... I saw both, and The Prestige was crap compared to The Illusionist... I think most will agree.

Haven't seen Illusionist but I might agree with you on that. Prestige was so predictable. Ed Norton is one of my favorite actors, so the movie should be somewhat good. Checking it out soon.

Grand Master

Kev1n

Posted
Posted (edited)

No way as good as The Prestige. The one thing this is better than The Prestige is the visuals. The cinematography and colours are excellent! The plot is in reality a simple love story with a bit of mystery. There is a twist in the ending, and although I wasn't able to guess entirely through, it still wasn't very surprising to me. Where as for The Prestige, I managed to geuss quite a bit but the revelation was still shocking. Oh and the script in The Prestige was SO MUCH tighter.

All of Norton's movies have been good, so is this, but I was disappointed in his performance. He was very.. restrained and didn't realize his full potential. Paul Giamatti was brilliant though. Jessica Biel was good, but who cares anyways she's beautiful.

Also, all the magic we see in The Prestige is practical magic, aka HOAXES (

except the duplicating device, which is real magic?

). Here, while I think the audience is led to believe the magic performed are all faked, it doesn't look so. Many of the tricks here are very much impossible to perform by a stage performer today.

In all honesty though, it is quite unfair to compare The Prestige and The Illusionist. The former is a tale of two competing magicians who try to outdo each other no matter what, a tale of the dangers of obsession. The latter is a love story in turn-of-the-century Vienna. They do share similarities, but not a whole lot.

That said I prefer The Prestige over this.

8/10 for The Illusionist.

10/10 for The Prestige.

Edited by Kev1n
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mluu510

Posted
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good movie but some of it is just so stupid.

the orange tree, the book describes that it's mechanical. that still doesn't explain how the fruit grows and the butterflies. i imagined the audience tried to eat the orange when the magic toss it them. if it was mechanical, then the fruit has to be fake. and if the orange tree can be done mechanically, why did the movie used special effects? lol, that's just contradiction and makes the mechanical orange tree book implausible.

what about the spirits? that was never explained. they obviously didn't have advanced star-trek era holographic technology. so how the F did he do it?

Grand Master

Kev1n

Posted
Posted (edited)
good movie but some of it is just so stupid.

the orange tree, the book describes that it's mechanical. that still doesn't explain how the fruit grows and the butterflies. i imagined the audience tried to eat the orange when the magic toss it them. if it was mechanical, then the fruit has to be fake. and if the orange tree can be done mechanically, why did the movie used special effects? lol, that's just contradiction and makes the mechanical orange tree book implausible.

what about the spirits? that was never explained. they obviously didn't have advanced star-trek era holographic technology. so how the F did he do it?

Haha yea that'd what I thought. The 'spirits' is impossible to perform even with the technology today. The orange tree is mechanical, and I guess the 'oranges' were balloons and after plucking them he secretly exchanged them with real ones. The butterflies has to be fake, with wires of course, though it would still be damn difficult to perfect.

BTW the score of The Illusionist, by Philip Glass, is fantastic.

Edited by Kev1n
  • 4 weeks later...
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d3nuo

Posted
Posted

watched this with some family (best friends and various ladies) and we all unanimously loved the movie. i saw the previews for it when it was in theaters and thought nothing much of it, and a friend got the dvd last week so we all watched it and i was surprised by how good it was. what's ironic is that i just thought of this movie a few hours ago and added it to the top of my netflix queue. sweet movie :)

note that i'm a video guru and predict most every single movie i see before it happens, and this was less predictable although i did realize what was going to pan out.. but that doesn't really detract from a movie for me.. it's definitely a different movie than what's typical nowadays..

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