Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Now You See Me (2013) - Cocky stars trapped in empty construction

8/29/2022

Now You See Me (2013) - Cocky stars trapped in empty construction

[ZERO]

+ Worst Movie of the Year

+ Most Undeserved Hit of the Year

A cast of well-dressed stars walk all over the title on this poster for Louis Leterrier's Now You See Me

An odd quartet of magicians stage big magic shows, in which they inexplicably steal from the rich and let some of their loot fly out to their audiences.

Now You See Me is written by Ed Solomon (Super Mario Bros. (1993)), Boaz Yakin (Fresh (1994)) and Edward Ricourt (Jessica Jones (2015, TV-series)) and directed by Louis Leterrier (The Transporter (2002)).

A depressingly bad, completely empty film, it is hard to watch Now You See Me and not lose some measure of respect for its stars, whose glow inevitably dim from this sorry affair: Particularly Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers (2012)) is enormously bad here as one half of the film's insultingly poor romance, in which he commands and yells at Mélanie Laurent (La Rafle (2010)), - until she falls for him! (You try to make sense of it.)

The stars have ego-polishing parts mostly played with the cheekbones and a bit of cocky attitude that are so hollow and toothless that one will afterwards feel like a long break from Jesse Eisenberg (Cursed (2005)) and Woody Harrelson (Rampart (2011)) as the champion sleek fellow magicians of Now You See Me. As part of the plot, Morgan Freeman's (War of the Worlds (2005)) character sells his integrity (to Michael Caine (Peeper (1975))) for 5-10 mil. $, - a situation that isn't very fictitious in this instance, one might ponder, - and he explains at one point in Now You See Me that a new sucker is born every minute here in the world.

Leterrier's movie certainly treats its audience as suckers with a ceaseless barrage of ridiculous, ugly, stressful, frenzied nonsense here, which is never fun, romantic, nor thrilling. Making Now You See Me even worse is that a huge audience actually seemed to like it.

Louis Leterrier: 2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Clash of the Titans (2010) - Leterrier's CGI-stuffed remake is surprisingly good

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 75 mil. $

Box office: 351.7 mil. $

= Big hit (returned 4.68 times its cost)

[Now You See Me premiered 21 May (New York) and runs 115 minutes. Laurent was paid 571k € for her performance. Shooting took place around January 2012 in New Orleans, Louisiana, New York, Chicago, Illinois, Las Vegas, Nevada, and in Los Angeles, California. The film opened #2, behind Fast & Furious 6, to a 29.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 3 weekends in the top 5 (#3-#3-#5), grossing 117.7 mil. $ (33.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany with 25.7 mil. $ (7.3 %) and China with 22.9 mil. $ (6.5 %). Most of the cast but not Leterrier returned for the obligatory Now You See Me 2 (2016). Leterrier returned with The Brothers Grimsby (2016). Eisenberg returned in Night Moves (2013); Ruffalo in Begin Again (2013); and Harrelson with a voice performance in Free Birds (2013) and physically in Out of the Furnace (2013). Now You See Me is rotten at 51 % with a 5.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Now You See Me?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

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Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Philip Baker Hall has died

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Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (17-24)

8/29/2022

Now You See Me (2013) - Cocky stars trapped in empty construction

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Eagerly anticipating this week ... (16-24)

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