Does ample justice to the many layers of Jacques Tati’s tale, both in text and out.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 25, 2023

While I've heard nothing yet about Chomet's next film, I can wholeheartedly say L'illusionniste had made my interest disappear.

| Jan 7, 2021

There's plenty of crack-a-smile humor, but the underlying mood recalls the diminuendo stretches in a Jacques Tati film.

| Jul 1, 2013

Director Sylvain Chomet manages to rouse a lot of smirks and smiles through the small nuance and inferences that were Tati's signature.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 18, 2011

The Illusionist is absolutely mandatory viewing for aspiring animators and filmmakers. (In terms of pacing, scoring, editing, and narrative, it's a film school unto itself.) For the rest of us, however, it's simply magic.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 11, 2011

This is a remarkable movie: lovely, slow-paced and almost silent, rich with pathos and deft comic gestures.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 4, 2011

The Illusionistis magical in more ways than one.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 3, 2011

A lovely appreciation of Tati and a loving, bittersweet look at the end of the 1950s, before entertainers like the magician of the title were displaced by rock bands and other more visceral acts.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Feb 3, 2011

The film is stunningly animated, full of wonderful moments and pieces bordering on the unforgettable. Everything thing feels organic and natural and little is ever out of place.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 29, 2011

A French import that's long on grace notes and wry humor, it eschews flash and opts for heart to great effect.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 28, 2011

A quiet declaration of love - for the urban vistas of the 1950s, for sleight-of-hand enchantment, for pen-and-ink animation and for a legendary French filmmaker who exited the stage before telling his daughter the magic word.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 28, 2011

A gentle, wistful tale of two people who briefly become a family, "The Illusionist" is both a tribute to the French filmmaker/comedian Jacques Tati and a final word from him.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 27, 2011

Watching "The Illusionist'' is like peering through a rippled windowpane onto a past that knows it's disappearing.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 27, 2011

The gentle delights range from the depiction of late fifties' Edinburgh with the milky light and gothic-influenced architecture, to the clever evocation of Tati's bumbling, comic rhythms.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 21, 2011

The dialogue is multilingual but largely incidental to the action; the physical comedy is gracefully rendered and often magical.

| Jan 21, 2011

The Illusionist is almost a silent movie, save for amusing sound affects, snatches of garbled dialogue and a beguiling piano score that inspires deep reflection.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 20, 2011

Gorgeous, and full of bittersweet whimsy, The Illusionist is animator Sylvain Chomet's follow-up to his Oscar-nominated The Triplets of Belleville.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 20, 2011

"The Illusionist" represents the magically melancholy final act of Jacques Tati's career.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 13, 2011

A very happy marriage of Tati's and Chomet's distinctive artistic sensibilities.

Full Review | Jan 5, 2011

It's a mood piece, and that mood is melancholy.

| Jan 5, 2011