The Illusionist (DVD, 2007, Widescreen)

The movie in a nutshell is about Eisenheim the illusionist, an amazing performer from turn of the century Austria. He reconnects with a childhood love who happens to be engaged to the crown prince and as you can imagine trouble starts brewing. Soon she ends up murdered and he sets out to avenge her death by bringing the man responsible to justice, only problem is it's the prince. The illusionist turns to his talents to aid his cause, by supposedly conjuring spirits from the dead his love is able to publicly accuse her murderer.

Or so we're meant to think! You see the entire movie is a magic trick, and like a good magic trick we are distracted from what is really happening.

I loved the performances, but really at this point I think these two actors can do no wrong in my book. The one major flaw are the accents; half German, half British and all wrong. Everyone in the movie had the same goofy accent so it's not the actors fault. I also really really loved the whole victorian look of the film.

Another minor criticism comes at the end when the whole deception is revealed, there is that "aah-ha" moment that both Paul Giamatti's character and the audience go through, but since you weren't paying attention to the details of what was happening under the surface it's not easy to get the gist of everything that really happened. Those moments are risky for a film to take, if the audience suspects anything the scene often doesn't have the weight that is intended. But for me anyway, it worked perfectly. And it was fun realizing that we'd all been tricked.