10. It Was Howard Burkan All Along - Magic In The Moonlight
To be entirely honest, Magic In The Moonlight was a bit of a dud. The script felt like something that writer/director Woody Allen found in a box under his bed during a clean-out - messy and unfocused to the point of frustration. What should have been a charming romantic comedy in the vein of his "earlier, funnier ones," starring Colin Firth and Emma Stone, failed to develop into anything that you'd want to sit through even once (let alone a second time). But it does feature a neat twist. The plot concerns Firth's illusionist, Stanley Crawford, who is asked by a former colleague and fellow magician, Howard Burkan, to investigate a medium - Emma Stone - who looks to be exploiting a rich family with her "powers." This sets the stage for a bunch of middling scenes in which Firth and Stone do their best to show us that they have zero chemistry together. The final denouement, however, in which Burkan is revealed to have engineered the whole scenario as a means of tricking his "best friend", is a good one.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
