Now you see me

Now you see me had a good premise, as a fun artsy heist movie about four magicians who are recruited by a mysterious benefactor to form a show called the four horsemen, where each show climaxes in stealing money from a bank live on stage, while the FBI hesitate over whether to arrest them or not.

It's a natural fit, of "how did they do it" blending between heist and stage magic. But I felt it didn't follow through.

It had some excellent characters. Jesse Eisenberg as a Mark-Zuckerberg-esque smarmy but personable, clever and ambitious young magician, the de-facto leader. Woody Harlseston, playing a dark version of Woody-from-cheers. Mark Ruffalo as the FBI agent, and the other two magicians were reasonably good too, although the other two magicians didn't get enough time to shine.

And it had Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. But Caine and Freeman didn't really seem to have their hearts in it, they looked like they were reading from a script, alas, whereas the lesser known actors looked like they were doing it for real.

But the concept relies on lining up all the tricks so they look impossible and then make sense when you find out what's really going on, and that everyone who thinks they're one step ahead of the other side is actually two steps behind. And the film seemed to fall into a trap of doing things that looked cool, but then trying to justify them afterwards, and when that didn't really make sense, it ruined the effect of "these characters have a clever plan".

Difficulty sleeping when background level of stress starts *receding*

It's funny, I've noticed this several times. It's like there's a low level of background stress (or maybe, more positively, "weight of things to do"), which is always on. But occasionally when I get organised, it recedes. And it's like, normally I sleep perfectly fine, but _then_, when it recedes, my brain seems to suddenly fill up with stuff and be too excited to sleep. Not so much I _can't_ sleep, but that I'll wake up in the night sometimes and it's hard to go back to sleep because I want to do things. It feels backwards to what I expected to happen.

Conversely, when I feel content -- when I'm not worried, _and_ I feel really satisfied, then I often sleep really well, falling into bed in good time, and waking up early but completely refreshed.