Angier thinks it's the greatest trick he's ever seen because as a magician he can't figure out how it's done. Most non-magicians watching it would be amazed but maybe underwhelmed by the simplicity of it. But Angier's inability to puzzle out how Borden did it is what drives him eventually all the way to murder.

I don't know which movie you're talking about, but I'm interested in it now.

I understand your point, although I doubt you would find many Christians who believe the Salem trials were a good thing.

In the context of the film, Chewbacca is very much real. Outside of the film, whether or not Chewbacca is real is meaningless.

He was coked up plenty enough, they were just over budget.

The needles were on the arrows that were actually shot into Mifune's costume. The ones hitting the boards were real arrowheads.

I don't wanna sound like a queer or nothin', but Kurosawa makes mad films.

I agree that the arrow to the throat is incredibly well-edited, but honestly all I could think when watching this for the first time was "We finally found an army with worse aim than Stormtroopers."

I think this is Nolan's best film, and I hope he gets back to this sort of work. Interstellar was empty philosophizing and Dark Knight Rises was a bloated corpse of a film.

Witches don't complain about snakes on their plane.

"Blair Witch Project" has only taken on this sort of backlash due to its wild success and guilt in accidentally re-inventing the found footage genre, which has been largely terrible. But when it first arrived it was original, shocking, and yes—scary.

Are you suggesting that thematically the film does not suggest that tangible evil is real and can use fanaticism as an inlet for corruption? Because I think that's exactly what it suggests. And whether that figure in real life is a literal demonic being or just a particularly evil person doesn't really seem to matter…

Curtis is a Maori IRL.

Yes, and I really think you're splitting hairs. The film doesn't work unless the devil is a real being within the framework of the story. In the world of the film, the devil is real and tangible. I don't see how this is even arguable.

But it wasn't written by them, nor was it meant to be some sort of neo-atheist tract by the filmmaker.

The story in the movie is the movie itself. In this movie, the devil is a real and malevolent presence. How that applies to "real life" is meaningless.

I thought Frank Stallone.

That was an older man in The Crucible. Not sure who it was IRL. EDIT: According to our good friend Wiki, it was 81-year-old Giles Corey, who instead of pleading cursed his accusers and demanded they add more and more weight until his eyes and tongue bulged from his head. He died only after shouting "MORE WEIGHT!" once…

His character is H.E. Pennypacker.

The movie is actually 100% saying the devil is real. Because, you know, the devil is in the movie.