Guest post from Ms Connie, on The Prestige -
I'm not quite sure where I stand on that movie. One of the statements in the very beginning is that the whole point of the magic trick is keeping it a secret, because when you find out the trick behind it, it seems simple and stupid. They gave an example where the magician crushes a birdcage with a bird in it and then makes the bird re-appear. Thing is...they're still crushing the first bird dead. They just have a second bird. Anyway, the movie was a lot like that. You predicted some things easily, some things you didn't predict--but at the end 'reveal' or 'prestige' you weren't sure if you'd predicted them or not because they were so...obvious. I heard reviewers say that as soon as it was over they wanted to see it again to catch all the nuances, but to be honest, I wouldn't have found that necessary. The movie was only subtle for people who are used to movies like Superman Returns. I'm not saying it was bad, but a twister like The Machinist or Memento, it was not. They also got me by making one of the tricks "real magic." They tried to explain it with fantastic new technology, but it wasn't related to real technology. You know, by obeying the laws of the universe and everything. It's a show about magicians...in my mind it could have been as horrifying without the 'magic machine.'

Still, where the movie was brilliant was the character interaction between Jackman and Bale. Their revenge/cross/doublecross story was the meat of the movie. And when you look at the details of the conclusion, it answers a lot of questions about each character and what they'd be willing to do for the better trick.

-also, she made a nice wiki find: floral vocabulary