memento>the prestige>the illusionist>disaster movie(sry just had to throw that in there cuz it sucked so bad

but ya the prestige was a great movie kept u at the edge of ur seat

Amazing movie

Dunno about taste, but I agree with the rest. I also preferred Biel over ScarJo, although my expectations for Biel's performance were a lot lower. May be time for a "Is Scarlett Johannsen Overrated As An Actress Or Even Good To Begin With?" thread. I've been underwhelmed since LIT/Earring, tho she has a long way to go to match Charlie Sheen's decline following Platoon/Wall St. Also think Biel is hotter than ScarJo, tho that's like $1000 being better than $995.

I was fairly meh on both Prestige & Illusionist. I've lol'd at all the things I'd forgotten from reading this thread. Best part of either was Michael Caine's "The first part of any magic trick..." spiel; one of my fave spiels from any movie actually. Overall, pretty disappointed w/both. Guess I just prefer "real life" scheming & scamming movies a la Mamet/Lumet to teh magicks.

From elsewhere in the thread, I always assume level when I see the words "the", "departed", & "best" in the same sentence. IMO opinion the best movie of 2006 was The Proposition by a whisker over Pan's Labyrinth, with Apocalypto, Children Of Men, Hollywoodland, Harsh Times, The Good Shepherd, Flags Of Our Fathers, Inside Man, & Stranger Than Fiction among others all being very enjoyable at a minimum. Have not seen Letters From Iwo Jima or Notes On A Scandal. I didn't like much of Borat, but it's obv a "good movie".

I had enough trouble with horcruxes.

I rememeber going to the cinema to see the movie with 4 other people and all of them where like "wtf?" at the end. I had to explain that Bale was actually twins living one life. I also promised to never see a film with them again.

How could anyone possibly miss this? There is a whole scene dedicated to that 'reveal'. I was flabbergasted. How do these people remember how to breathe?

Umm, you do realize that when the clones are created, they retain their memory from the time of cloning? The original Angier set up the water tank below, and that each clone will have knowledge of this, so if it is indeed a cloning machine he would know there's a tank beneath him and shouldn't be surprised when he falls in.


Jackman pretends to not care about Bale's trick so he can make Bale feel defeated as he sits in his cell waiting for his death, wondering how Jackman could still exist when he saw him drown before his eyes. If Jackman admits it was purely Tesla's electrical science, he admits he is NOT the better magician. So the audience assumes Jackman has won this rivalry simply because he has survived it. Of course, every movie has that moment where you think the villain has won and there's no hope/cause for the protagonist. Of course in the end Bale truly wins the rivalry because his trick - the hidden fact that there are two of him - comes back to kill Jackman. Bale gives Jackman the paper with his trick on it (which presumably tells him that they are twins), and Jackman could have read it and perhaps averted death, but in his arrogance he tears it up.

I felt the "never revealing the trick or you become worthless" is related to Bale's facade. It relates to the Chinese man who pretends, 24/7, to be a frail old man with a limp, when really he possesses great strength. He dedicates his life to his craft, just like the Bale twins dedicate their lives to their magic, even at the cost of the women they love.

Even outside of Jackman's diary descriptions the machine seems very real. Cutter warns that it's real magic and tries to get it destroyed. There's really no evidence that's been presented in this thread for the machine being phony, outside of the fact that the movie is inherently about magic tricks and tricking the audience. Except that doesn't really fit with the theme, because even if you watch intently there's nothing to suggest it's a fake (unlike the Bale story where you can see all the events that should have led you to suspect a twin but you didn't the first time around because you didn't want to see or weren't looking).

No, it's explained that every night he has a self-locking tank underneath the stage that the uncloned Jackman falls into. Then blind men wheel the tanks off into a sealed off basement or wherever it is Jackman gets shot at.

Yes, as I mentioned this might be the ONLY evidence for the machine being a fake, but it's not exactly convincing. His panic underwater is explained by a) playing the part so Bale is confused and doesn't suspect Jackman tricking him... it would be kind of conspicuous if Jackman just smiled at Bale and waved while he drowned; b) Cutter says at the end that the sailor said drowning was <insert something terrible>... could be Jackman suffering and wanting to turn back (obviously uncloned Jackman might resist death even if he had planned on his suicide).

I'm not 100% sure the machine is real, but people who think otherwise should present more evidence than "CMON PEOPLE CUTTER SAYS YOU WERENT WATCHING" ... because I have watched it several times.

I'm pretty sure Jackman would freak out every single night like that even if he knew damn well he was going to fall into a locked box of water. Kind of like Ron Burgundy jumping into the bear pit to save Corningstone and suddenly being faced with death: "I immediately regret this decision!"

Jackman freaking out doesn't seem like solid evidence to me that the machine is fake and that this is the ONE night that the Angier's double actor unknowingly falls into the water box. You guys that are thinking Jackman, while drowning to death, is gonna like fist pump or something in victory upon seeing Borden next to the tank are wrong, imo.

There is no undeniable proof but what the hell do you suggest the final lines of the film are about if not whether the machine really works or not.

he says "Now youre looking for the secret, but you wont find it of course because youre not really looking. You dont really want to work it out. You want to be fooled". The most important lines of the movie imo and people are just deciding to write them off?

What do you think this is about? It can only relate to whether the machine works or not, and since everything in the movie leads us to believe it worked, it most likely doesnt. We have been fooled. Also the final shots are of the hats then of Bale, then the tank. The movie is trying to tell you something, and its definitely not 'The machine worked' cos that wouldnt be a secret.

ok i just watched the whole thing again. of all things, the end makes it MOST clear that angiers was the inferior magician, trumped by borden. angiers' narrative describes the cost of cloning himself and the sacrifice HE endured having to shoot his own self. that was no journal entry. they're in a room filled with a bunch of angiers-filled tanks. the end's Cutter dialogue is to reiterate the Borden trick that was just performed and to let it sink in that the audience was clueless as far as the Borden-twins trick was concerned. Watch it again imo.

ATTENTION!! ACHTUNG!!

Ok, I just came across something that totally kills the argument that "the machine did not work" (or at least kills the idea that it was the actor double in the box)...if you go back and look closely, every time you see Angier's "double," the actor called Root, he has bigger, non-connected ear lobes, while Angier has smaller, connected ear lobes. The dead body in the case at the end has the same connected ear lobes that Angier's has. It's a CLONE, mother ****ers.

I doubt if Nolan wanted us to believe that it was Root in the box that he would have neglected giving him the unconnected ear lobes he has in in every other scene he appears in throughout the movie.

Seriously go check it out...it's no joke.

This is somewhat interesting until we simply remember how Borden displays two clearly defined personalities throughout the entire film (two different people who happen to be twin brothers working together, not one man and his clone).

If it were Borden and a clone they would BOTH love Sarah and would display the same personality. I think it's unbelievably obvious that Fallon and Borden are secret twin brothers who had to undergo a ridiculous sacrifice for the sake of their art. Borden most definitely has no clone, while Angier most definitely is making/killing clones every night (please see my previous post for hard evidence backing this claim up).

OK either I forgot the movie or didn't read every post. The core of this movie to me, at least, was in Bale's double's love for the heroine (again need to watch the movie again) When he "killed" his double it was as if he killed anything in in him that had the ability to appreciate anything outside of the craft.

This movie gave me nightmares for several evenings .... loved it

re: Jackman shouldn't be surprised if he knew about the water tank:

Another thing to consider is that Jackman did this trick often. Memory is a bit rusty, but wasn't it something like 'limited to 100 performances' with Borden showing up at the last?

Imagine a machine where you go in and then it's supposedly a coinflip if you remain yourself or become the copy. You go in 99 times and every single time you end up being the copy. Yeah yeah survivorship bias and all.. tell that to the dude who's drowning in the box!

It's a movie about stage magic, not the Lord of the Rings, and cloning machines don't exist. Do you not see the thematic unity in having the movie itself be structured like a magic trick - make it look like something impossible is happening and rely on the audience not being bothered to figure out what's really going on? If you feel that having a cloning machine is an acceptable solution for the movie watching it a thousand times isn't going to change your mind, so I think saying you've watched it a bunch of times is totally meaningless.

but wtf impossible is impossible

The only way for your theory to make sense is if Jackman has an identical twin also, which would be gheyer IMO then having some machine that doesn't exist.