Posts tagged Movie
Lucy – Movie Trailer
Sep 2nd
From La Femme Nikita and The Professional to The Fifth Element, writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in cinematic history. Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, an action-thriller that tracks a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.
Magic in the Moonlight “The Magic of Love”
Sep 2nd
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT is Woody Allen’s latest film, and it has been getting moderately mixed reviews.
Some reviewers generally liked it, some generally disliked it, but I liked it a lot.
It is a romantic comedy, but it contains more romance than comedy.
And if you believe that Allen has his ups and downs in the movies he makes, I believe this film is one of his ups.
It begins in 1928 in Berlin, and we see the stage act of a renowned Chinese magician named Wei Ling Soo, who is actually an Englishman, Stanley Crawford, played by Colin Firth and wearing elaborate Chinese stage makeup and clothing.
The magician makes a live elephant on stage disappear, he cuts a woman assistant in half and proves that her body is in two parts, and he himself disappears inside a box and suddenly reappears onstage sitting in a chair that he swivels around, which will be used again later in the story to a nice effect.
Stanley brags that he invented that last trick himself, and Stanley is a suffering, egotistical, obnoxious person in real life who ridicules anyone who claims to have psychic powers.
When Stanley is told about a young pretty woman who holds seances and makes contact with the dead, he says, “A pretty face never hurt a cheap swindler.”
Stanley is told about Sophie Baker, an American played by Emma Stone, by Howard Burkan, a childhood friend of Stanley’s and also a magician, although not as successful as Stanley is.
Howard says that he can’t spot any trickery in Sophie’s claims, and he invites Stanley to accompany him to the south of France, where Howard believes Sophie will be trying to fleece a rich widow out of a lot of money.
Of course, Stanley jumps at the chance to expose another public phony, and he goes to France using an assumed name to do so.
However, while Sophie conducts a seance and establishes contact with the wealthy widow’s dead husband, neither he nor Howard can find any evidence to expose Sophie.
And when Sophie tells Stanley about things in his life that she could never have guessed, he starts to believe in her powers and to fall in love with her.
MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT might have you believing in the magic of love.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Magic in the Moonlight – Movie Trailer
Aug 20th
Chinese conjuror Wei Ling Soo is the most celebrated magician of his age, but few know that he is the stage persona of Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth), a grouchy and arrogant Englishman with a sky-high opinion of himself and an aversion to phony spiritualists’ claims. Persuaded by his friend, Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), Stanley goes on a mission to the Côte d’Azur mansion of the Catledge family: mother Grace (Jacki Weaver), son Brice (Hamish Linklater), and daughter Caroline (Erica Leerhsen). He presents himself as a businessman named Stanley Taplinger in order to debunk the alluring young clairvoyant Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) who is staying there with her mother (Marcia Gay Harden). Sophie arrived at the Catledge villa at the invitation of Grace, who is convinced that Sophie can help her contact her late husband, and once there, attracted the attention of Brice, who has fallen for her head over heels. What follows is a series of events that are magical in every sense of the word and send the characters reeling. In the end, the biggest trick MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT plays is the one that fools us all.