上海市世界外国语中学校园传媒

来源：Sailor

Movie review of Limitless
By Rita Chen

Produced in 2011 by American director Neil Burger, the movie Limitless is based on a book called The Dark Field, which was written in 2001

To summarize, this movie is about a frustrated writer called Eddie Mora who accidentally finds a medicine called NZT, which can stimulate human’s brain and makes the unimaginable possible.. After having this drug, Eddie becomes a brain superman and his world starts being promising. He starts to invest in stock and soon he becomes rich. However, he slowly realizes that NZT has side effects and his life becomes at risk. After all the difficulties, he finally gets rid of NZT and becomes a hardworking man who achieves success in the end.

This is a movie that can entertain the audiences and also make them think. NZT, the super brain medicine in this film helps Eddie learn fast, work efficiently, and his mind and thoughts becomes unparalleled. In a word, NZT’s function is to make anyone who takes it super. Generally speaking, humans can only use 20 percent of their brain’s potential. However, according to the film, NZT makes the brain work at 100% of its potential. This unusual ability, in some way, reflects human’s desire to maximize our brain’s utility. Understandably, humans are always curious about what we can do and the extremity of our capabilities. As such, this movie provides a visible situation for the audience to realize their imagination. However, after the audiences start to admire what Eddie has, the plot of the film turns. The NZT brings Eddie lots of pain and makes him suffer from headache, dizziness, and the other illness. As a result, this movie warns people that getting smart and receiving success in life is impossible and imperfect if you are trying to rely on medicines. We have to be realistic and study hard, try hard, what’s more, work hard.

来源：Sailor
By Coco Ruan from MYP9(2)

The movie The Prestige is about the competition between two eminent magicians, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden. Borden accidentally kills Angier’s wife. Every time Angier sees Borden and his family, he feels that Borden steals his life and his happiness. In response, Angier shoots Borden during performance. As time goes, they have an almost morbid competition. They don’t care about improving their own magic by themselves any more. Instead, they try to steal magics and make each other infamous. In the end, Angier duplicates himself and kills his double in order to frame Borden and sentence him to death. However, he finds that Borden doesn’t die due to his double. What’s more, Borden’s life isn’t as great as Angier thinks because he needs to share his life with his double.
To me, the movie is not a story about jealousy. It’s more about people’s perception of things and what things truly are. People’s so-called enemies are in fact enemies in their imagination. Thus, we always overestimate our true enemies and exaggerate their achievements. Even though sometimes our enemies do have something more outstanding than we do, they must have paid a certain price. In the movie, the price Borden pays is the death of his wife and having an incomplete life.. However, from his enemy Angier’s perspective, he has lost nothing and is just enjoying his life. In fact, Angier’s true enemy is himself, his lack of trust and his complaints about life all the time. He doesn’t want to believe that his enemy is an equal as himself who lost a lot to gain money and fame. The only difference is not that his enemy is luckier than him, but is that his enemy pays a higher price.
There is an impressive line in the movie, “People don’t care about the secrets. They like to be fooled”. This theory is not only applicable to people’s attitude towards magic, but also applicable to daily life. When we watch a TV drama or read a novel, we always feel depressed when the hero and the heroine break up in the end. In fact, if we can think out of the box and look at their relationship logically, we can easily find that they are really not a good match from the beginning. Despite the main characters’ good-looking, the only reason why we expect them to live happily together as if they were in fairy tales is that we want to be fooled.
In conclusion, The Prestige is such a great movie that you shouldn’t miss because it really induces a multitude of your thoughts about life.