DVD Review: Allen film conjures up some ‘Magic’

“Magic in the Moonlight” is somewhere between the 43rd and 45th movie Woody Allen has directed (depending on how you count “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?” and “New York Stories”) — almost certainly the most of any major living filmmaker. His career has had dry spells; his work from the late ’90s to the late ’00s was less rewarding than it had been before and would be after.

Still, there are few, if any, that would qualify as “bad,” even in that period. Just unremarkable. “Magic in the Moonlight” qualifies as one of them. For at least the fourth time, Allen’s characters include magicians, with Colin Firth playing a famous conjurer, who, like Houdini and the Amazing Randi, makes a point of debunking anyone claiming to practice true magic, irrational religion, or supernatural power. But then he meets Sophie (Emma Stone, radiant as always), who appears to be the real thing.

In terms of subject matter (but nothing else), the movie has echoes of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Magician” ... but with a lot more laughs. (Big surprise!) Not as many, however, as his last two comedies, “Midnight in Paris” and “To Rome with Love.”

Allen always chooses great cinematographers, in this case Darius Khondji (“Delicatessen,” “Seven”), and the Blu-ray does justice to his work. The director is not a fan of commentaries and extras. The only supplements we get here are a trailer, a 12-minute “Making of” (mostly interviews with cast members Firth, Jacki Weaver and Hamish Linklater), and a three-minute assembly of sound bites from the movie’s L.A. premiere.

Magic in the Moonlight (Sony Pictures Classics, Blu-ray, $34.99; DVD, $30.99)

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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).