I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

"Magic Bricks" is a French 3-minute short film by Spanish director Segundo de Chomón and those who only know about the very basics of silent film have certainly come across the name already as he comes right after Méliès in a group of prolific and successful filmmakers that also include Griffith for example. But SdC is certainly closer to Méliès from what we see here too. Magic shows were a common subject in these movies that are over a century old, actually almost 110 years old in this case. The big special thing in here, however, is not the plot or the acting or the magic, but the use of color which was really not common at all at that point. Hell half a century later, the majority of films were in black-and-white. So today we of course don't really see color as something special, but back then it absolutely was. Still I would say that everything taken together here, it was not a great film, not among the best of its era or from its filmmaker. I give it a thumbs-down this time.

No doubt this film was intended to wow early 20th century audiences with its conjuring tricks but, of course these are not so impressive today. After all, to show a magician's 'tricks' through the use of stop-motion photography defeats the object really: the magic's being performed behind the camera here rather than in front of it.What I liked about the film was the two Chinese assistants who magically appear from the conjurer's magic box, both grinning inanely with their index fingers pointing skywards. It was probably a racial stereotype back then, but it made me laugh. Check them out holding a smiley, pointy-fingers-in-the-air conversation in the background while the magician goes about his business. Hilarious.

Two magicians make people appear and disappear in front of our very eyes in this colourful French short film. Modern audiences will not be amazed at all by the appearing and disappearing characters but at the time I can imagine it was met with "how did they do that" gasps. However watching it now is still a wonderful experience because this was almost exactly a hundred years ago when this sort of thing was new and being thought up as these films were made. New ideas were being taken and expanded upon and used in different ways.This film simply gives the producers a structure to play within. There is some humour but really this is all about the visual effects and with the colours on top of that it makes it interesting to watch when you have a feel for what the historical context you are watching it within.

This film has special effects which for it's time are very impressive. Some if it is easily explainable with the scenes played backwards but the overlay of moving images on an object on film is surprisingly well done given that this film was made more than 94 years ago.