Skip to main content

Now You See Me 2

Image result for now you see me 2 cast

This movie got terrible reviews. Indeed, it got at least one non-review review that turned into a discussion of why some movies should never get sequels, but Hollywood obliviously makes sequels anyway, and ... etc., the writer was off the the races then, writing about everything except this movie.

But the theater was packed when I was there, and I enjoyed the show. Most people around me (admittedly not all) seemed caught up in it.  This must have included at least some who weren't familiar with the original.

I'll avoid any spoilers, which seriously limits how much I can say about a movie of this sort. But I'll plow on anyway. There is a Big Reveal moment that takes place on a barge in the middle of the Thames. So if you find London scenery inherently fascinating, that'll be a plus for you.

The ending, the very ending,  didn't work for me though. Perhaps the five minutes or so after the Big Reveal on the aforementioned barge might charitably be see as wind-down time. A lot of quasi-philosophical talking and some further reveals that are anti-climactic after the big one.

Loose ends still exist that could be tied up in a Part Three if everyone is willing.

The former Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, plays a great Bad Guy. That's not a spoiler, BTW. His character is a bad guy from the moment he is introduced. Heck, the movie poster makes it plenty obvious. See above.

Anyway,, go and enjoy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.   We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

The Lyrics of "Live Like You Were Dying"

Back in 2004 Tim McGraw recorded the song "Live Like You were Dying." As a way of marking the one-decade anniversary of this song, I'd like to admit that a couple of the lines have confused me for years. I could use your help understanding them. In the first couple of verses, the song seems easy to follow. Two men are talking, and one tells the other about his diagnosis. The doctors have (recently? or a long time ago and mistakenly? that isn't clear) given him the news that he would die soon. "I spent most of the next days/Looking at the X-rays." Then we get a couple of lines about a man crossing items off of his bucket list. "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu." Then the speaker -- presumably still the old man -- shifts to the more characterological consequences of the news. As he was doing those things, he found he was loving deeper and speaking sweeter, and givin...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere.  At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...