Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep is one of those quiet mystery / thriller types of movies Hollywood should be making more of. What makes it so compelling is the structure of the script and how it untangles the mystery at hand.

The big secret to its formula is this: there is always another, bigger mystery.

When questions are raised in the beginning about the character played by Redford, you think you’re being set up for an entire feature length adventure to find the answer. But when the answer comes twenty minutes or so later, it is not only satisfying to get the answer, but in doing so it raises a slew of other questions that in themselves seem like enough to sustain the remainder of the film. But they, too, are answered in time, and the process continues and repeats. Continue reading →

The first rule of magic, according to Now You See Me, is to always be the smartest person in the room. However, the first rule of making a movie about the art of magic should be: make sure all your tricks are actually real magic tricks.

Many tricks depicted in the picture are pulled off courtesy of  special effects — and obviously so — and they could never be pulled off in real life. The reason such realism is so important in a story about deception and the art of magic is simple: credibility. Without credibility you cannot have believability and without believability, you have a really boring movie. Continue reading →