2016 - NOW YOU SEE ME 2 - sequel to a film I didn't see.

A sequel to a film I didn't see.  From what I can gather this is a team of crime fighting magicians who right wrongs and call themselves The Horsemen for some reason.

The team gets involved with a British crook played by the Harry Potter kid, Daniel Radcliffe who I guess isn't a kid any more but is certainly short enough to be a kid.  Anyway they have to steal a computer chip that can control all the world's computers. It used to be diamonds now it's computer stuff these days.

After lots of improbable adventures involving magic tricks we finally get to the big magic trick to trap the villains at the end of the movie which is quite frankly pretty lame.

Really when you get down to it, this is just Mission Impossible with some stage magic thrown into it.
The film is over two hours which is way too long for this kind of film.

129 minutes, written by Edward Solomon.

2012 - GAMBIT, another remake

Going to the same well yet again we have a remake of the old Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine comedy thriller.  This version does at least attempt to work in some new situations instead of just completely aping the storyline of the original.  This time Cameron Diaz and Colin Firth fill in for MacLaine and Caine.

The basic plot is the same,  a mismatched pair of thieves attempts to swindle a millionaire out of a chunk of money.  As in the original film we see the caper executed flawlessly which as it turns out is just a fantasy "flash forward" to how the crime should go.  Back to the real world when the actual caper is being executed, everything goes wrong and our thieves have to deal with one crisis and then another

This version of Gambit is notable for the screenwriting presence of Joel and Ethan Coen. However I would have to say this is one of their minor efforts.  Nobody will be talking about this film in their oeuvre.

The film tries to be stylish and I guess the actors do what they can with their parts.  About the best you say for the film is that it has a kind of a clever trick ending.

89 minutes.