NOW YOU SEE ME 2 

* * *

(More magic from the Horsemen)

While the sequel is not as good as the first one, the antics of the Four Horsemen will hold your interest and provide you with some clever magical moments. There are not enough magical moments, however, to sustain the tension, as the movie turns into one big chase scene.

The Horsemen have been in hiding for the past year. Their actions caused magician Thadeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) to end up in jail. FBI agent Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), who is a secret Horseman, reassembles the group to go after an evil tech company, sending them on a journey to find a valuable microchip.

The movie is filled with diversions, as we are never sure who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

The cast is strong, including the four magicians: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and newcomer Lizzy Caplan. Harrelson also plays his evil twin brother.

Daniel Radcliffe plays a scientist and Michael Caine is The Eye. There are other characters thrown in to throw you off, but they confuse more than they complement the story.

There are some great special effects, and if you watch closely you may even figure out how some popular illusions are carried out. One scene follows the classic disappearing card trick through a series of clever maneuvers.

The sequel is both fun and confusing. Rated PG-13, with some profanity and violence.

THE CONJURING 2

* *

(Same old, same old)

The setting changes from Harrisville, R.I. to an Enfield, England row house, but the elements are pretty much the same as the first film and the hundreds of other films in the genre.

Things go bump in the night. Eerie ghosts appear and speak through young children. Swings swing, rockers rock, children's toys move, scary music plays in the background, kids sleepwalk, objects move by themselves, crosses spin on the walls, dogs bark at nothing...and pay for it, beds bounce, etc, etc, etc.

The Warrens, who were the paranormal investigators in the original, are back to get to the bottom of things. Their daughter even starts acting strangely. Mom has visions of Dad's violent death. As usual, there are religious overtones, including crosses that spin on the walls. And then we finally get the conjuring.

Enough, already!

Rated R, with violence and attempts to scare you. 

THE LOBSTER

???

(Weirdest movie we've ever seen)

How can you rate a movie that makes no sense to you?

"The Lobster" is, without a doubt, the weirdest movie we've ever seen, and we've seen some weird ones.

Colin Farrell plays David, a depressed man who is dumped by his wife and ends up in some kind of a hotel/rehab center, where single people have 45 days to find someone they have something in common with enough to make them love one another. If you do, you are moved to a couples section, sent out to tranquilize loners, moved to a yacht, and who knows what after that. If you don't, you are turned into an animal of your choice. David picks the lobster.

David escapes, joins the loners living in the woods, meets an equally strange woman who shares his shortsightedness, eventually falls in love (a no-no in the cult), and the two head for ill-fated love.

There's more to the strange story that apparently some see as a metaphor to life, love and loneliness, but we found as just plain weird.

Rated R, for sex and violence.

Note: "The Lobster" is one of many "Avon-type" independent and foreign movies that are occupying one screen at Warwick Showcase, trying to capture an audience that is sick and tired of fighting the monster parking meters on Thayer St.