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The idea of magicians conducting a series of heists is a great one, but this under-developed film never quite seizes the opportunity. Even its terrific A-list cast can't make much of the lame plot. And director Leterrier is so enamoured with magic that he packs the film with whizzy digital trickery. Which completely misses the point.

At the centre are four illusionists: card trickster Daniel (Eisenberg), hypnotist Merrit (Harrelson), escapologist Henley (Fisher) and street magician Jack (Franco). They're summoned by a mysterious figure to team up for a series of elaborate performances funded by a wealthy benefactor (Caine). First up is a Las Vegas show that involves stealing millions of euros from a Paris bank and raining them down on the audience. This attracts the attention of FBI Agent Rhodes (Ruffalo) and Interpol's Dray (Laurent), who follow them to their next shows in New Orleans and New York. As does a notorious debunker (Freeman) determined to expose their secrets.

The film never quite gets the balance right, as we're not sure if we should root for these flashy young magicians or the people they're leading on a wild goose chase. But there's plenty of eye candy to keep us happy, as each whizzy stunt goes over-the-top to make us wonder what's really happening here. Everything this quartet does has an anarchist slant, stealing from the wealthy to help the needy, which adds a tinge of topicality. Although the gratuitous action scenes and ludicrous effects leave the film about as realistic as a Road Runner cartoon.

Continue reading: Now You See Me Review

Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) is the perfect director to take on F. Scott Fitzgerald's iconic novel about the American dream, simply because he's an expert at showing the emptiness of hyperactive excess. The film is a feast for the eye from start to finish, but it also eats away at us with its bleak story of people who live the high life even though it leaves them naggingly unsatisfied.

The tale is told by Nick (Maguire), trying to work through his life-changing summer in 1922 Long Island, where he rented a small cottage across the sound from his wealthy cousin Daisy (Mulligan), who is married to his college pal Tom (Edgerton), an all-American sportsman with an eye for other women. Next door to Nick's cottage is the vast mansion owned by reclusive millionaire Jay Gatsby (DiCaprio), who throws outrageously raucous parties for New York's celebrity class. But Nick realises that Jay only does this to catch the eye of Daisy, because he's still in love with her after a romance five years earlier. Now he wants to take her away from Tom, and he needs Nick's help.

It's tricky to know whether Luhrmann is celebrating Gatsby's luxuriant lifestyle or offering a cautionary tale about the emptiness of materialism. Obviously, the story is trying to do both, and Luhrmann fills the surfaces with decadent extravagance, filling the air with wafting fabric, buckets of glitter and exploding fireworks. Like a lavish 3D pop-up book, the party scenes are wildly over-the-top, as are smaller gatherings in opulent city flats or roaring open-top cars. These people's lives are so vacuous that they live at top speed, always in search of the next thrill. And it's difficult not to see Gatsby's earnest quest as just another greedy acquisition.

Continue reading: The Great Gatsby Review

Vividly colourful details in the animation and script bring mythical characters to life in ways that are thoroughly engaging as this riotous action-comedy soars through its epic story. It's a bit frantic, barely pausing to let us admire the artistry, but it's a lively thrill-ride of a movie that will keep both adults and kids on the edge of their seats.

Jack Frost (Pine) is a lonely boy no one else can see, so he has no idea why he exists at all. He fills time creating snowy-icy mischief to make children laugh, and feels out of his depth when he is summoned by the Guardians of childhood: burly Russian Father Christmas (Baldwin), tough-talking Aussie Easter Bunny (Jackman), fluttering Tooth Fairy (Fisher) and wordless Sandman. They need him to help them defeat Pitch (Law), a boogeyman who is replacing children's imaginations with nasty nightmares in an effort to get them to believe only in him. So while Jack works out a plan to get rid of Pitch, he also needs to figure out if he belongs with the Guardians.

Screenwriter Lindsay-Abaire and the animation team have a lot of fun with the characters, which are loosely based on the William Joyce novels. Each person is fully formed, with terrific vocal work from gifted actors who pack their characters with personality, especially Baldwin and Jackman. So their interaction zings with attitude even as the imagery bursts with hilarious details. Since the story is centred on Jack, he's the one who carries us through, and he's an engaging reluctant hero in the vein of Harry Potter or Frodo Baggins. Watching him discover his own inner skills is often exhilarating.

Continue reading: Rise Of The Guardians Review

The trio in question are Dunst, Fisher and Caplan, high school friends who reunite in New York as bridesmaids for Becky (a cleverly against-type Wilson), a girl none of them ever really liked. On the night before the marriage, they're goofing around with Becky's rather large wedding dress, and they tear it. So now they have one long night to get it repaired. Along the way, they run into the stag night for Becky's groom (MacArthur) and his chucklehead friends (Scott, Marsden and Bornheimer).

Continue reading: Bachelorette Review

In 1828 Edinburgh, friends William Burke (Pegg) and William Hare (Serkis) realise they can make good money supplying cadavers to world-class surgeon Dr Knox (Wilkinson). But when they can't find a dead body, they kill someone instead. Hare's wife (Hynes) finds out and wants in on it, but Burke can't tell his aspiring actress girlfriend (Fisher) how he makes his living. Meanwhile, Knox is battling a rival surgeon (Curry) for the King's seal. And the local militia captain (Corbett) is closing in.

Continue reading: Burke & Hare Review

A perfect example of this ideal is Rebecca Bloomwood. The heroine of P.J. Hogan's adaptation of Sophia Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic, this spunky career gal wants a cushy job, a suave boyfriend, an understanding best bud, and an unlimited credit line... and that's just for starters. Only problem is, Rebecca (played with real drive by Isla Fisher) is neck-deep in debt. She just can't stop spending. When her job as a writer for a gardening rag falls through, she applies at the nation's number one fashion magazine. Named after its editor, Alette Naylor (Kristin Scott Thomas), the job represents the completion of all our heroine's career goals. Sadly, she has to settle for a gig writing at Successful Saving, a financial magazine. Oh, irony! Luckily, it's managed by the humble British hunk Luke Brandon (Hugh Dancy).

Continue reading: Confessions Of A Shopaholic Review

It's a cold night in Manhattan when Syd (Chris Evans) decides to attend the going-away party of ex-girlfriend London (Jessica Biel) in the large loft of a friend (Isla Fisher, completely wasted). Before getting to the party, Syd stops to see his bartender friend, Mallory (Joy Bryant), and meets up with Bateman (Jason Statham), a man with a serious amount of cocaine but who refuses to be called a dealer. With Bateman and drugs in tow, Syd hits the party, doing more drugs and doing more alcohol that Hemingway, Carver and Sid Vicious combined. Bateman and Syd hole up in the bathroom talking about everything from S&M to the Almighty, and eventually Syd gets up the guts to talk to London.

Continue reading: London Review

Soon there are interrupted weddings, "I tried to tellyou but couldn't" apologies and an avalanche of other plot machinationsthat come close to ruining what is otherwise the bawdiest, most consistentlyhilarious comedy so far this year.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have an ad-lib-happy, almostHope-and-Crosby-like chemistry as a pair of buddies -- ironically talenteddivorce mediators by profession -- who spend their free time attendingweddings of people they don't know to score with girls they'll never seeagain. Almost the entire first reel of the movie is something akin to afilmmaking miracle -- one long, perfectly-tuned montage sequence of variousethnic weddings that just keeps getting funnier and funnier as it mixestoasts, dances, flirtations, made-up war stories, fake tears, and prettygirls caught up in the romance of the day and jumping our heroes' bones.

Story proper kicks in when the boys dare to crash "theKentucky Derby of weddings" -- the Secretary of State's eldest daughteris getting hitched -- and Wilson lays eyes on the middle daughter (talented,bright-eyed Everygirl knockout Rachel McAdams) as she's quietly snickeringthrough her sister's corny self-written vows.

Continue reading: Wedding Crashers Review

Zoiks! Like, man, some ghoulish fiend is turning party-hearty spring breakers into straight-laced zombies on the amusement park resort atoll Spooky Island! And for once you'll never guess (well at least not right away) who will be unmasked as the villain in the gleefully goofball live-action version of "Scooby-Doo."

Self-spoofing yet devoted to its inspiration, this campy comedy ex-cartoon escapade may be edited with a fire axe and aimed mainly at kids, but screenwriter James Gunn (a veteran of underground spoof studio Troma Films) and director Raja Gosnell ("Big Momma's House") know who the hardcore "Scooby" fans are. They're grown-ups who have fond memories of the Saturday morning cartoon about an oddball foursome of post-teen detectives and their bark-talking dog, but who have since come to realize how stupid it was.

Liberally sprinkled with humor that only adults will get -- like the winking implications that cowardly hippie Shaggy (played to squeaky-voiced perfection by Matthew Lillard) is a major stoner -- the movie assumes a working knowledge of "Scooby-Doo" and is very smart about being deliberately stupid. It makes sport of the TV show's repetitive plots ("I'd have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"). It pokes fun at the characters' personalities (perpetual damsel-in-distress Daphne, played with ditzy aplomb by Sarah Michelle Gellar, has become a black belt). And it's clever enough to know what parts of its source material worked and what didn't.

Continue reading: Scooby-Doo Review