Now You See Me

SUSPENSE/THRILLER

The Closer You Get, The Less You See

8.5 out of 10 | DVD

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Rated: PG-13  Language, some action and sexual content
Release Date: May 31, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 56 minutes

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Director: Louis Leterrier
Writers: Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin, Edward Ricourt
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Melanie Laurent, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Common

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SYNOPSIS:  An FBI agent and an Interpol detective track a team of illusionists who pull off bank heists during their performances and reward their audiences with the money.

REVIEW: Louis Leterrier, known for his breakout directorial debut with Jason Statham's The Transporter and the ambitious but less well received Clash of the Titans reboot, returns after a three year hiatus to bring together a clash of another kind - law enforcement vs. a quartet of thieving magicians. Written by Ed Solomon (Men In Black), Boaz Yakin (Safe), and newcomer scribe Edward Ricourt, Now You See Me combines the thrills of illusion and misdirection with the cat-and-mouse chase of predators and prey.

Magician J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg, 30 Minutes or Less), mentalist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson, The Hunger Games), escape artist Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher, The Great Gatsby), street entertainer and pick pocket Jack Wilder (Dave Franco, Warm Bodies) are drawn to an apartment in New York City by tarot cards that each finds in their possession. Triggering a mechanism that instructs them with holographic images, the quartet become part of something larger by becoming the Four Horsemen. Sponsored by benefactor Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine, The Dark Knight Rises), the quartet become a huge act in Las Vegas. When their final grand illusion, 'Rob a Bank' delights the audience by raining 3 million Euros on them, the FBI led by agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo, The Avengers) and Interpol agent Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent, Night Train to Lisbon), start their manhunt to get evidence on The Four Horsemen's next heist. As the magicians move on to other cities, Rhodes enlist the help of former magician and current magic rebunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman, Oblivion) to help his team. As Atlas and the Four Horsemen stay ahead of the FBI and Interpol at every turn, is there anything anyone can do to stop the Horsemen?

A cross between George Clooney and Brad Pitt's Oceans 11 and Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman's The Prestige, Now You See Me as a film of grand illusion, misdirection, and thievery. Thaddeus explains why agent Rhodes is being played for a fool over and over again by the Horseman, explaining to Rhodes and to the audience the tricks of the trade as he tries to debunk the Horseman's next trick.

Eisenberg plays to his strengths, putting on a character of false bravado and putting on an air of confidence that masks a sense of insecurity. The former popular master mentalist, played by Woody Harrelson, is so cocksure in his abilities that he alienates himself from the rest of the group. Dave Franco plays young upstart street magician and pickpocket Wilder excited to be chosen to be with some of his idols. And finally, the escape artist and illusionist Henley played by Fisher is the final beautiful and capable piece of the puzzle. Michael Caine's Tressler funds the extravaganza, Morgan Freeman's Bradley pulls back the curtains on the illusions, Mark Ruffalo's Rhodes believes in only when he can see, and Melanie Laurent's Alma Dray takes almost everything on faith.

But who is the fifth Horseman? Dray banters around the name Shrike, a magician and illusionist from the 70s who died during one final and fatal illusion. Throughout the film, the audience is guessing as to the fifth Horseman's identity. What is this person's motivation? What drives them to steal money from banks?

Any good magic trick will leave an audience amazed, wondering how the trick took place. Not many of us believe in magic, but the art of illusion and the suspension of disbelief is part of the dying art form of the craft. As street magicians become more popular and magic shows on the Las Vegas strip become less popular, the art of illusion is still paramount. Sometimes the illusion itself is enough, not the mechanics of the trick behind it.

Now You See Me is a carefully crafted illusion, coupled with a cat-and-mouse game between magician and law enforcement. At the end all will be revealed, but the sleight-of-hand of getting there is worth the price of admission.

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The Odd Life of Timothy Green

Change of Seasons

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Rated: PG  Mild thematic elements and brief language
Release Date: August 15, 2012
Runtime:  1 hour 44 minutes

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Director: Peter Hedges
Writers: Peter Hedges, Ahmet Zappa
Cast:  Jennifer Garner, Joel Edgerton, CJ Adams, Odeya Rush, Davis Morse, M. Emmet Walsh, Lois Smith, Dianne Wiest, Ron Livingston, Common, Shohreh Aghdashloo

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SYNOPSIS: A married couple bury a box in the garden with all of the traits written on paper for the child they cannot bear. The same night they are visited by a boy with leaves growing out of his legs ready to call them mom and dad.

REVIEW: Writer and director of Steve Carell's Dan in Real Life, Peter Hedges returns to pen and helm a new film about a childless couple who are magically granted the chance to raise a young boy who had sprung out of the couple's garden. Helping with the writing duties is longtime actor and first time writer Ahmet Zappa. 

Jim Green (Joel Edgerton, Warrior) and his wife Cindy (Jennifer Garner, Arthur) sit at a conference table across from Evette Onat (Shohreh Aghdashloo, House of Sand and Fog) and her assistant, waiting nervously for Ms. Onat to review their adoption application form. When Ms. Onat questions the gaps in their submission, Jim and Cindy plead for Ms. Onat to let them tell their story about a young boy named Timothy (CJ Green, Dan in Real Life) who came into their lives to change it forever. So they begin their tale, telling the case worker that they were told that their efforts to conceive a child had become fruitless. To get over the disappointment and pain of never having their own child, Jim and Cindy wrote down all of the qualities that their child would have possessed. Burying the attributes in a wooden box in Cindy's garden and going to bed, a spot shower in the middle of a drought results in the sprouting of a boy with leaves growing out of his legs ready to call Jim and Cindy dad and mom. At first unsure of the miracle before them, Jim and Cindy soon warm up to the boy named Timothy and raised him as their own. The new parents keep secret the fact that Timothy has real leaves growing from his legs by using tall wool socks, Timothy still uses all of the best traits that Jim and Cindy wrote down for him to engage with friends, coworkers, and friends to bring a little hope and laughter into their lives.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green could be compared to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, taking a seemingly impossible magical premise of a boy with a strange affliction and his life among the rest of us. But while Benjamin Button was a sweeping epic and a love story, Timothy Green is a more intimate family tale centered in a small struggling town. I see Timothy Green closer to Sean Patrick Flanery's Powder, where a strange sensitive kid affects those around him. In the small town of Stanleyville, the 'Pencil Capital of the World', the town lives and breathes and thrives by the success of a specific No. 2 writing implement. With the decline of the need of their pencils, hope is in short supply, but Timothy Green more than makes up for it with his sensitivity, honesty, and charms. But even comparing The Odd Life of Timothy Green to Powder is too different a comparison as Disney's film is quiet, retrospective and light - like the sun peeking through the clouds to warm outstretched arms and faces.

Director Peter Hedges goes into his stable of go-to actors to find the perfect sprouting boy. CJ Adams, from one of Hedges previous films, embodies the natural wide-eyed innocence that Timothy Green needs. With every gesture, nod, or gaze, CJ Adams melts hearts. And as a character that is not from the norm, CJ makes sure that everything he experiences is looked upon as unique and mind-opening. Joining Adams is a young lady cast as outcast Odeya Rush and as Timothy's nature crush Joni Jerome (Curb Your Enthusiasm). Together they see the world in a similar fashion, but different than those around them. Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Garner bring just the right mix of passion, drama, humor, and belief in magic to make the perfect couple to deserve a magical son like Timothy. On the flip side, Shohreh Aghdashloo's adoption case worker brings plenty of healthy skepticism to bear against the strange story that Jim and Cindy need to share. The rest of the cast is pitch perfect, from David Morse's Big Jim, to Dianne Wiest's stoic curator of Stanleyville's pencil museum, to Ron Livingston's (Office Space) run as the struggling pencil factory boss Franklin Crudstaff.

As the change of season and a drought turn the leaves to vibrant pre-Autumn colors, and rumors of layoffs threaten to cast a storm cloud of despair over the town, Timothy stands tall, bending but not breaking, against doubters and bullies. Timothy is a lesson to be learned about humanity and how we should treat each other.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green is a sweet tale of a new boy and new parents, trying to find a natural balance between the three of them, and the rest of family and the community that they encounter. The film is not as odd as you would think, but as heartwarming, sweet, and a little sad as you would expect.

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WORTH:  Matinee or DVD

Happy Feet Two

Fluffy Song and Dance

Director: George Miller

Writers: George Miller, Warren Coleman, Gary Eck, Paul Livingston
Cast: Elijah Wood, Pink, Ava Acres, Benjamin Flores Jr., Sofia Vergara, Robin Williams, Common, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Hugo Weaving, Hank Azaria, Richard Carter, Anthony LaPaglia

SYNOPSIS: Mumble and Gloria's offspring Erik finds that he can't find his voice or his happy feet. When Erik and his cousins Atticus and Carmen run off to follow Ramon back to his clan, Mumble searches after them.

REVIEW: Who would have predicted that Mad Max and The Road Warrior writer and director George Miller would find himself gathering recent success with dancing and singing animated penguins! Was the 1998 animated pig adventure Babe: Pig in the City a turning point for a career birthed from the motorcycle patrolled sandy wastelands of a post-apocalyptic Australia? Maybe Miller is getting soft (and fluffy) in his old age. Whatever the reason, the winner is the audience. Re-teaming with Happy Feet writer Warren Coleman, and joined by  new writers Gary Eck (The 50 Foot Show) and Paul Livingston (Good News World), Happy Feet Two shuffles, scats and sings its way back into our hearts.

In Happy Feet Two, two-stepping Mumble (Elijah Wood, LOTR trilogy) and Gloria (now voiced by Pink) are raising their new hatchling Erik (Ava Acres, Weeds) who is struggling to find either his singer's voice or his happy feet. Unsure of how he should find the song that is in his heart or how to express it, a depressed Erik chases after a fed-up Ramon (Robin Williams) who journeys to return to his own colony, Followed by Seymour's (now voiced by Common) son Atticus (Benjamin Flores Jr.) and Miss Viola's (Magda Szubanski, The Golden Compass) daughter Bo (Meobh Campbell), the trio and Ramon leave their own colony behind. When Mumble realizes that Erik and the other fluffy hatchlings are gone, he waddles off to corral and return them home. But the task is not as simple as one thinks.

Socially relevant, Miller uses the the vanishing ice caps to make Mumble's and Erik's journey much more difficult. Ice quakes, warming temperatures and a mammoth break away glacier make the journey arduous, as well as returning to the colony impossible. All the while, Mumble finds himself insecure as a father figure as Erik is taken by a strange penguin, Sven (Hank Azaria, The Smurfs), who has the unique ability to fly and to bolster the spirits of those around him. Adding more struggles, always boisterous Ramon struggles to find a mate in standoffish Carmen (Sofia Vergara, Modern Family), butting heads with the beloved large beaked Sven.

Almost as a aside, we also get to follow the story of rebellious Will the Krill (Brad Pitt, Mr. & Mrs. Smith) and his friend Bill the Krill (Matt Damon, Contagion). Tired to being a nameless part of the Krill swarm, Will swims to the edge of his universe to find that there is more to life. Bill follows in an attempt to bring Will back into the fold. As Will decides to become an evolved predatory species, we are treated to beautifully detailed, expertly choreographed and hilarious sequences. When Will the Krill tries to take on a seal, every detail of ice crystal and strand of fur are beautifully rendered.

My only complaint is Robin Williams. His Latino-tinged Ramon and tent preaching colony leader Lovelace sound more distracting than endearing, but his characters are colorful enough to get the job done.

Touching, funny and heart-felt, Happy Feet Two is a fine follow-up to the Oscar winning Happy Feet. Choreographed by tap maestro Savion Glover, you will be tapping your feet in the dark. The songs sung by Pink's Gloria are uplifting and heart wrenching. And when Erik finally finds a way to express himself, you should come away with goosebumps, I mean, penguin bumps.

WORTH: Matinee and DVD