
loaded question: what’s the best movie ever about magic?
Define magic however you like: could be supernatural magic, stage magic, or any other definition of the word you can defend.

Define magic however you like: could be supernatural magic, stage magic, or any other definition of the word you can defend.
The words I keep coming back to, the ones that seem to fit this most astonishing of films best, are ‘terrible’ and ‘awful.’ The old-fashioned senses of the words are what I’m talking about: Peter Jackson has given us a grandly eloquent film that inspires more terror and more awe than anything I’ve seen in a long time. I can compare my reaction to it only with the moviegoing experiences of my childhood, when the hugeness, the all-encompassing-ness of movies in all ways — emotionally, viscerally, visually, aurally — first astounded me, when ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ and Darth Vader’s stormtroopers horrified me to such a degree that I can still feel it.
About half my best-of’s for 2002 were clear and ready choices, films I fell instantly in love with, that completely blew my mind, that utterly awed me in their fabulosity — I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which those were. Filling out the rest of the list was tough … more…