My wife and I saw the movie The Illusionist last night, and much enjoyed it. We liked both the script and the acting, though Paul Giamatti seemed particularly good (or at least his character was particularly interesting).
An interesting detail: The Illusionist was born with the last name Abramowitz, which pretty clearly marks him as Jewish; in the Austro-Hungary of the time, this would makes the Duchess’s attraction to him especially scandalous, yet the movie (as best I recall) doesn’t do anything with it. I suspect that the character’s name was just preserved from the short story (which I haven’t read, but which I’m told touches on the character’s Jewishness more); and it’s a slight enough reference that I doubt that it’s intended as a background item for people to note even without further development — my guess is that only a tiny fraction of the audience will note it. Still, I wonder whether there was any extra twist on this that I was missing, or whether this was just the gun in the first act that never went off in the third.
Note: I’d bet that the comments will have plenty of spoilers. (Nothing above really qualifies, since it’s hardly a surprise that Abramowitz and the Duchess will be involved in some way.)