‘Magic in the Moonlight’: Promised twists and turns are illusion, leaving a love story
Woody Allen at nearly 80 is still cranking out a film a year, but not with the success he had in the ’70s (“Annie Hall,” “Sleeper” and “Manhattan”) or ’80s (“Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Crimes and Misdemeanors”). Nuggets such as “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” show up about every third or fourth off, but with the recent near hits of “Midnight in Paris” and “Blue Jasmine,” by math alone “Magic in the Moonlight” is not in that sweet spot. It’s a great-looking film, scrumptiously shot by Darius Khondji, who’s framed most of Allen’s recent works, and well acted, but something in the plot just never works.
Colin Firth gets a big scene-chewing role as Stanley Crawford, a 1920s illusionist who takes the stage as a Fu Manchu-like incarnation known as the Great Wei Ling Soo. He wows audiences, making elephants disappear and sawing women in half and, like Houdini did in his time, debunks hoaxes, which Stanley agrees to do when fellow magician Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney) asks him to come to a country villa in France to expose a young American woman shaking down a susceptible and well-off widow (Jackie Weaver). The young American woman in question, Sophie Baker, is played by none other than Emma Stone, a big-eyed cutie with auburn locks and by logistical association alone muse du jour to Allen. But she’s no Diane Keaton, not even a Mia Farrow or Mia Sorvino, for that matter. She’s game, but asked to do a lot with a little and beyond her range. Thankfully she has Firth to play off of, and he’s masterful. Initially when the game is afoot in the gorgeous greenery of Southern France, there’s promise and a playfulness in the air. The film suggests twist and turns to come, false reveals and oneupmanship, but then romance floats into the picture, and the notion of god too. What a buzzkill.
The chemistry between Firth and Stone has a foisted feel, but it’s not truly their fault. They’re likable enough – and Firth’s hubris and braggadocio makes for a great period character – but just don’t have a story worthy of their potential. It’s almost as if Allen set out to make one movie and in the process of penning it, had a nostalgic, romantic yen that he let consume the second half of the script. It becomes indulgent and uninteresting. We all want love, and this is the very milieu that Allen at his best employs hyperbole and pops with sharp, deprecating humor, but nothing comes. And that’s what’s missing: There is no zing. Firth, as the elegant lion, holds it together for a good time, but left to chew on a shoe for too long, even a well-mannered lion will roar with contempt.
What to know: After losing his mother to cancer in the ’80s, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt of “Parks and Recreation”) is abducted by a spaceship. Flash forward a quarter-century to a galaxy far away in another universe, or something like that, and Quill is a treasure hunter seeking out high-risk items à la Indiana Jones, with the attitude to boot. Smugly he goes by the moniker Star-Lord as if he were Banksy, though no one knows who he is – that is, until he recovers an orb with some of the empowering infinity stones in it and everyone, including the evil Ronan (a cloaked and face-painted Lee Pace from “Halt and Catch Fire” ) and his overlord Thanos (voiced by Josh Brolin), want him and the orb. 
Much of this percolates up in the “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” the newest chapter in the series reboot that has swapped top-shelf makeup and costume craftsmanship for CGI wizardry and crash bang FX (the old-school costuming is still a wonderment, and more impressive than its computerized successor, especially given the test of time). It’s 10 years after the last episode that left Caesar (Andy Serkis, who as Gollum in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy elevated animation acting to an art form) and his ape posse living in the woods outside San Francisco. In those years a simian virus has wiped out most of the human population, but pockets persist, including one on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge in the burned-out bowels of the bay city. The humans wanting to get a dam flowing to get power back on infringe upon the apes’ territory (neither really knew the other existed) and so a rub for resources and rights ensues.
Ebert, who grew up of modest means in Illinois, was obsessed at a very young age with newspapers and telling stories. At the University of Illinois he relished being the school paper’s editor and making critical editorial and ethical decisions on matters of world-shaping importance, most notably the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He would later stumble into the post of film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times when being a film critic was not a coveted or much respected job. Along with Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris and Gene Siskel, he helped redefine the role of the critic and transform it into an art form. 
Pearce plays the barely named Eric, an aloof loner with an ostensible military background. The film opens with the tacit protagonist making a pit stop at an isolated karaoke bar (which looks more like a grimy torture chamber from a “Saw” movie than a place of merriment) for some water and a bite when a speeding truck laden with unsavory lads crashes, and its occupants quickly disembark and carjack Eric’s sleek, lean coupe. That’s it – from there on out, Eric will stop at nothing to reclaim his car. It’s a straight-up one-noter like “Duel,” propelled by Eric’s simmering resolve and the ever pungent question as to what else has to be in that car to make Eric want it that bad. 
