Video review: "Magic in the Moonlight"

Woody Allen, who started out as a TV punchline writer while still a teenager, has moved restlessly between comedy and more somber fare all his career as a film director. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his dour stuff, such as “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Match Point.”

But his newest, “Magic in the Moonlight,” is one of his most light-hearted and purely entertaining movies in years.

Set in the upper-crust world of the 1920s, it’s the story of a magician named Stanley who’s also a man of science. Played unctuously and splendidly by Colin Firth, Stanley makes a hobby of exposing charlatans who pretend to have psychic abilities. His latest target, a young would-be seeress named Sophie (Emma Stone), proves to be his greatest challenge – and an unlikely love interest.

Though Sophie’s manner while doing her act is amateurish and transparent, her divinations have the disturbing habit of being unerringly accurate. Soon Stanley, who places more trust in Nietzsche than religion, is wondering if his life of agnosticism about the great beyond has been a tragic mistake.

It’s a great-looking movie, filled with sun-dappled gardens and shorelines, terrific period costumes and lots of pretty people to look at.

Filled with wry humor, delightfully clumsy encounters and a whole lot of extravagant mannerisms, “Magic in the Moonlight” is best described in one word not lately applicable to Woody’s work: fun.

Alas, as is often the case with the Woodster’s video releases, there is only the bare minimum of bonus features. And they are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray versions: A making-of featurette, “Behind the Magic,” and publicity footage from the film’s red carpet premiere in Los Angeles.

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Review: "Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"

I always thought “Watchmen” was the anti-superhero superhero movie, but this one takes the cake. It’s not so much against superheroes as movies based on their comic books, registering as a spit-flecked denunciation of the way such flicks saturate our culture, almost like a spreading disease that uses up actors’ careers and audiences’ time.

“Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” is an obsidian-black comedy about Riggan Thomson, an over-60 actor who played a costumed hero decades ago and has struggled to do anything equally consequential since. He’s played by Michael Keaton, who knows something about that.

If this sounds like stunt casting, that’s because it is -- but then this whole movie directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (“21 Grams”) is a gimmick, if a very clever one.

Thomson has now sunk most of his heart, soul and bank account into mounting a Broadway production based on the work of short story master Raymond Carver, which he also wrote and is directing.

At one point he finds himself facing off with a hostile New York Times theater critic (Lindsay Duncan), who announces that she’s going to close the play with a vicious review, even though she hasn’t seen it, because she resents Hollywood dilettantes invading her sacred space where real art is made, taking up a theater (the actual St. James) that could be better used for, well, just about anything.

We suspect her lips are channeling the thoughts of Iñárritu, who co-wrote the screenplay (along with three others), and they’re really talking about caped crusader movies.

Keaton is a marvel in this movie, providing an emotionally naked performance as a self-consumed man who has spent so much of his life worrying about being appreciated that he hasn’t ever really inhabited the present tense. Riggan is constantly reminded of this by his estranged daughter, Sam (Emma Thomson), recently graduated from rehab and hired as his assistant -- partly out of a sense of guilt and partly to keep an eye on her for his ex-wife (Amy Ryan).

Iñárritu created the role expressly for Keaton, which was deft, but then unwisely keeps getting in the way of his lead actor.

The director makes all sorts of showy creative choices, like constructing the entire movie out of (seemingly) uninterrupted tracking shots, so we’re constantly shadowing the actors like a ghostly presence. Similarly, the music score (by Antonio Sanchez) is made up almost entirely of percussion instruments, but the disjointed beats bump the movie off its rhythm rather than riding one.

Riggan professes not to think much about being Birdman, but in fact he’s verily haunted by his feathered former alter-ego. The voice of the hero speaks to him (Keaton’s guttural rasp is wonderfully eerie), offering alternate praise and scorn, trying to convince Riggan to give up his ridiculous dream and return to costume work. In private moments when the alter egos are conferring, Riggan performs feats of telekinesis that, even if imagined (?), help buck up his brittle psyche.

The play is teetering on the edge of disaster. Riggan replaces his awful second lead actor, injured during rehearsal, with Mike Shiner, who’s brilliant but notoriously difficult to work with, and he’s played by Edward Norton, who also has a reputation for… but I think you get it now.

Mike is greeted as the production’s rescuer but soon sets about as its chief saboteur, stealing Riggan’s limelight in the press and even stopping a preview performance cold when his (real) gin is confiscated. He’s also the boyfriend of the lead actress, Lesley (Naomi Watts), a bundle of neurotic self-doubt, who recruited him but soon comes to regret it. Meanwhile, Riggan is having an affair with the other, much-younger actress (Andrea Riseborough).

Flitting around the edges of the story is Jake (Zach Galifianakis), Riggan’s lawyer, producing partner and underappreciated fixit man.

The performances are delicious in “Birdman,” particularly Keaton, who will deservedly be the subject of a lot of Academy Awards conversations. I just wish Iñárritu had enough faith in his star to let him shine in the spotlight, instead of constantly distracting us with his showy, look-at-me direction.

Earlier in this review I called the movie clever, and it is that; but it’s the sort of feckless, selfish clever that feels compelled to keep reminding you how clever it is.

Review: "Magic in the Moonlight"

One of Woody Allen’s most briskly entertaining movies in years, “Magic in the Moonlight” is about love, mysticism and con jobs.

Set in 1928, it boasts gorgeous locations in the south of France, incredible vintage cars and costumes, and lots of beautiful rich people to stare it. In many ways, this looks and feels like Woody’s riff on the Jay Gatsby era (and the movies made about it).

Colin Firth supplies a delicious performance as Stanley, a famous magician and man of science. The marriage of those vocations may sound like a contradiction, but the erudite and very snobby Stanley would correct you -- and probably quote Nietzsche while doing it.

Because he approaches the craft of illusion with methodical precision, Stanley fashions himself a genius in ferreting out the difference between truth and charlatanism. Indeed, he has a healthy side venture debunking purported mystics and seers. A professional faker who has made his fortune at it, he looks down his nose at others for using similar talents to fool the gullible rich.

Alas, Stanley’s cold rationality has translated into a bleak pessimism about all forms of spirituality, and indeed most human endeavor: “It’s all phony, from the sales counter to the Vatican and beyond,” he sniffs.

Peevish, arrogant and yet slyly magnetic, Firth gives Stanley a sort of petulant charm.

But then he’s recruited by a fellow magician pal, Howard (Simon McBurney), to debunk a young American woman who has ensorcelled a fabulously wealthy family.

The matriarch (Jackie Weaver) has agreed to fund a foundation for her and even dangled a marriage with Brice (Hamish Linklater), the handsome, amiable but dim eldest son. Howard himself was brought in to disprove her, and ended up stumped. Stanley is quite sure he’ll have no problem ferreting out her tricks.

Their meeting, however, serves to lend credence to her psychic abilities. Despite the fact that Stanley is known only by his stage personality, a Chinese wizard by the name of Wei Ling Soo, and he adopts a fake name, career and backstory, the woman soon figures out who he is.

The fact that Sophie (a beguiling Emma Stone) is young, ravishing and full of vim catches the crusty, older Stanley off guard.

Sophie represents a beguiling puzzle to him: her occult act and amateurish demeanor would seem straight out of a carny sideshow, complete with a controlling mother (Marcia Gay Harden) who accompanies her and handles the pressing of flesh and conveying of funds. Yet Stanley can’t pierce the veil of her performance, and even begins to wonder if her gifts are authentic.

He’s finally convinced when he takes her to visit his beloved Aunt Vanessa (a spot-on Eileen Atkins), and Sophie is able to summon intimate details about the older woman’s life by clutching her favorite set of pearls. This revelation throws Stanley’s entire life of rationality and divine asceticism into peril.

If there is a great beyond, then why not a God, and love at first sight, and if there is such love, could it be shared between Sophie and Stanley?

Allen seems to be having a great deal of fun here, playing with his characters’ and the audience’s expectations. One soon senses that it’s not just Sophie and Stanley, but the venerable filmmaker himself, who enjoys wielding the tradecraft of deception.

Funny, smart and wry, “Magic in the Moonlight” conjures up a delightful impression.