The Prestige

The Prestige. Newmarket Films/Syncopy 2006.

Before watching the movie:

I think the main thing I know about this movie is the big secret that drives the plot. The core mystery is about finding out how a magic trick is done, so I suppose it’s about a younger or rival magician trying to learn the master’s secrets. I’m not sure how an entire movie can come out of that, so I don’t know what’s going on around it.

I believe I’ve heard there’s a lot of Christopher Nolan’s philosophy of moviemaking in how the character approaches being a magician. I recall some discussion of looking through this movie for clues of what Nolan was going to do with the Dark Knight trilogy, or that The Dark Knight Rises was going to be Nolan’s Prestige in the trick he was performing with Batman. I’m not sure that panned out, but speculation drives engagement.

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American Psycho

American Psycho. Lions Gate Films 2000.

Before watching the movie:

I think I first heard about this movie about a decade ago, somewhere on the internet. I don’t really know much about it other than that Christian Bale plays a serial killer business executive and it’s somehow really popular. There was a parody of a murder scene where Huey Lewis kills Weird Al for doing a middling parody of one of his songs. It lives in my mind next to American Beauty which I don’t think is much related at all, but I expect it to be more like Fatal Attraction.

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Newsies

Newsies. Walt Disney Pictures 1992.

Before watching the movie:

This looked like a bland musical in a setting I wasn’t very interested in until I recently heard it discussed as a unionization success story, which is pretty topical. I also have more understanding of the newspaper landscape of the late 1800s and the media dueling media empires of the day.

It also still looks like a kind of bland musical, but I haven’t looked too closely.

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