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I finally caught up this one... Haven't seen The Prestige yet but I really quite enjoyed this movie... I always liked movies about magic and magicians. Thought Edward Norton was well cast as a charismatic illusionist. He certainly has the stage persona schtick down cold -- particularly in the eyes. I liked how the film presented him as this enigma early on and then gradually revealed his motivations for why he was doing what he did.

Paul Giamatti was excellent as always as the audience surrogate. He narrates the film and I thought that his character's internal conflict between the loyalty to the arrogant prince (played with moustache-twirling panache by Rufus Sewell) and his sympathies towards Norton's magician were well-played.

Hell, even Jessica Biel didn't embarass herself and actually held her own against all these other veteran thespians. It almost made me forget she was in crap like Stealth and Summer Catch.

The sepia-tone look of the film was a nice touch... gave it that look of an old, faded photograph. The extras mention that it was shot in Prague doubling for Vienna and all of that old European architecture did a great job of establishing just the right, 19th century vibe.

I had written a review of "The Illusionist" for my movie blog. Pasting it here:

Edward Norton's magician Eisenheim tells a character in the film: “Everything you have seen is an illusion.â€

The Illusionist was really spooky and intriguing. It totally "fooled" me. The cinematography was incredible as were the costumes. Paul Giamatti was fabulous and the story was damned good. A very solid feature film.

Michael wrote:The cinematography was incredible

When I saw the movie it was projected so poorly that it looked like it was shot on a DV camera bought from radioshack, all muddy and speckled with excess grain. I guess I partially assumed it was the cinematography; now I know I was just being shafted by pure incompetence.

Nice review a.khan, cheers for that.
I had let this pass me by, figuring that one 'magic' film a year was enough but you've peaked my interest so I think I'll give it a go.
Are there enough extras/ repeat value here to warrant buying or is this a rental do you think?

Michael wrote:The Illusionist was really spooky and intriguing. It totally "fooled" me. The cinematography was incredible as were the costumes. Paul Giamatti was fabulous and the story was damned good. A very solid feature film.

Yeah, I was "fooled" by the story as well. And, of course, going back a second time I saw where they dropped all the clues throughout. D'oh!

jt wrote:Are there enough extras/ repeat value here to warrant buying or is this a rental do you think?

The two featurettes that are included are your standard fluff promotional stuff -- soundbites from the cast mixed with clips from the movie but Neil Burger's commentary is quite good. He's a very eloquent speaker and covers many aspects of the production, including how they pulled off the practical magic tricks in the movie!