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What to stream: Use your illusion with these movies featuring magicians

Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service on

Published in Entertainment News

There are plenty of movies about magic — but how many movies are about magicians? The “Now You See Me” franchise, featuring a quartet of illusionists, raked in blockbuster bucks in 2013 and 2016 and has reappeared once again, with “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” featuring a new generation of large-scale magicians who use their abilities for Robin Hood-esque heists.

It got me thinking about other movies about magicians, so here’s a round up of magician — not magic — movies, and where to stream them.

First things first: stream the two prior “Now You See Me” movies on Peacock and Starz if you need to catch up, but you’ll be able to grasp the concept even without the context. But they are pretty fun, frothy entertainments.

For more serious fare having to do with magic, 2006 was a good year, with both Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige,” about 19th-century rival magicians played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, who push each other in their craft (available to rent on digital platforms), and Neil Burger’s “The Illusionist” starring Edward Norton in a similar milieu. Stream that one on Prime Video, Hulu, Tubi and various other platforms.

In 2007, the recently passed New Zealand filmmaker Lee Tamahori made “Next,” starring Nicolas Cage as a Las Vegas magician who can see into the future. FBI agent Julianne Moore taps him for his abilities hoping to prevent a terrorist attack in this action thriller that also co-stars Jessica Biel. Rent it on all digital platforms.

One of the best films ever made about a mentalist is the 1947 Edmund Goulding film “Nightmare Alley” starring Tyrone Power as a gifted mentalist who rises from the circus to the theater and then descends back down. Unfortunately that film is only available for purchase. But Guillermo del Toro’s gleaming art deco 2021 remake starring Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett is available to stream on Disney+ or rent elsewhere.

 

In 2016, J.D. Dillard made a different kind of magician movie with the indie “Sleight,” in which street magic combines with the supernatural, in this drama starring Jacob Latimore and Storm Reid. Rent it on all digital platforms.

One of the most famous magician duos, Penn and Teller, starred in the 1989 comic murder mystery set in Atlantic City Casinos, “Penn & Teller Get Killed,” directed by Arthur Penn (of “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Night Moves,” “Alice’s Restaurant,” etc). Rent it on all digital platforms.

Steve Carell took on bombastic Vegas magicians with “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” in 2013, playing opposite Steve Buscemi as a pair of washed-up magicians in the style of Siegfried and Roy who are being overtaken by a David Blaine type played by Jim Carrey. Rent it on all digital platforms.

Oscar winner Adrien Brody starred as the famed escape artist Harry Houdini in the 2014 miniseries “Houdini,” directed by Uli Edel. Originally produced for the History Channel, “Houdini” is now streaming on Netflix.

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