The Prestige
Christopher Nolan, USA, 2006o
A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.
These alter egos make sense really only in opposition to each other... It's this same contrast that makes the film so fascinatingly self-reflexive. The grueling battle of wills between the glib parlor trickster and the grim perfectionist — each of whom resents and envies the other in equal measure — encompasses both halves of the filmmaker's sensibility and turns The Prestige into an interestingly ambivalent directorial self-portrait.
Adam NaymanThe Prestige isn't art, but it reaps a lot of fun out of the question, How did they do that?
Owen Gleiberman