Reviewing In The Name Of

Genre: Documentary

Director: James Marsh

Starring: Philippe Petit

**** 

OVER the past seven years the 9/11 terrorist attacks have been represented in a wide range of art, not least in film.

As well as cinema dealing directly with the attacks, the period since has also seen numerous films trading in the post-9/11 global climate, whether in an Iraq conflict zone or a besieged metropolis, where 9/11 is not always directly mentioned but never far from audiences’ minds.

Man On Wire is an interesting and welcome addition to this post-9/11 cinema club, taking us back to that terrible day, sparking mental replays of the images that stayed with us the most, reminding us how we felt as we watched the events unfold live on television.

The film does all of this but without ever mentioning the terrorist attacks, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, the war on terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, even terrorism in general. It is, in fact, a documentary about an event that took place 27 years before 9/11, but another in which New York’s World Trade Centre was the key focal point.

Using a combination of archive footage, reconstruction and modern-day interviews, the film tells the story of how French tightrope walker Philippe Petit illegally walked a high-wire between the two newly-constructed twin towers in August 1974.

Following his similar stunts on Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the eccentric Frenchman spent 45 minutes going back and forth over the 1,350 foot drop, occasionally lying down in the middle of the wire and only stepping back onto a tower when police threatened to use a helicopter to pluck him off the wire.

It was a sensational event, both in its audacity and its artistic beauty, that made the front pages all over the world on the same day that Richard Nixon announced his resignation as US president, and its story makes for a wonderful documentary.

On one level it is a fascinating portrait of Petit, who is such an animated and amusing character that he could make a documentary about the history of concrete quite gripping and enjoyable.

He is so passionate about both wirewalking and the genuine need he feels to walk between the towers that you can’t help being taken in by his inspiration and amused by his cheeky, roguish personality - we are told, to particular amusement, that he managed to steal an Australian policeman’s watch while the policeman was arresting him for tightrope walking on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Much of the build-up to his crowning escapade is told through docu-drama reconstruction, inviting obvious comparisons with Kevin Macdonald’s excellent documentary Touching The Void. Man On Wire does not generate the same level of tension as this remarkable survival story, but it is a gripping tale nonetheless, one scene showing Petit’s team hiding under sheets in as-yet uninhabited offices while night-time security guards patrol around them.

But the power is in the main event - a breathtaking spectacle that brought crowds onto the streets in awe, the truly beautiful sight of a man gliding gracefully through thin air more than 1,000 feet above.

The memories carry such emotional weight for some of Petit’s team that they are brought to tears as they recollect it in the film. And it is an emotional watch for audiences as well, both in admiration of Petit’s brave and stunning act, and in the memories it stirs in us - of a much darker kind.

Petit’s preparation for the walk is juxtaposed with footage of the construction of the towers, like the two are building towards the same destiny, that their meeting is preordained. The audience, however, knows of a different destiny for the towers, one that is difficult to ignore at any point, least of all when the film shows footage of the trade centre’s half-built form, forcing us to consider the design, materials and workmanship, the creation that preceded the destruction.

Brain Appleyard remarked in the Sunday Times recently that the film “celebrates their [the towers’] most uplifting, poetic moment”, which seems entirely true. It really is quite moving to see them at the centre of an exciting and creative enterprise, not exploding or crumbling in death, but the facilitators of an inspired man’s dreams, bringing joy to the thousands who saw and read about Petit’s act.

Needless to say, the film would not carry the same power had 9/11 never happened. But this is not to dispute its quality or the power of the act itself; it is, simply, the unavoidable and harsh reality that makes this extraordinary event - and this excellent documentary - seem all the more poignant and wonderful.

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DID YOU KNOW? Petit was arrested afterwards for “criminal trespass and disorderly conduct”, but became an instant hero and celebrity in New York. All charges were subsequently dropped on the condition that he perform a juggling act for children in Central Park. The Port Authority, which administered the Trade Centre, gave him a VIP pass to the buildings’ observation deck that was “valid forever”.

Genre: Thriller

Director: Chris Carter

Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Billy Connolly, Amanda Peet

**

THE new X-Files film is designed to “scare the pants off everyone in the audience”, according to director and co-writer Chris Carter, who also created the phenomenally successful TV show.

Well, one hopes he had a few other goals in mind when he made the movie as this one really doesn’t come to fruition.

I’m happy to say my pants remained firmly secure throughout the film, which rarely gets beyond mildly perturbing and remains a long way from undergarment-dislodgingly scary.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe also falls well short of its televisual predecessor’s spooky simplicity, bogging its alien-catching hoofs in the grandiose themes that its 45 minute episodes couldn’t afford to overindulge and ending as a jumble of half-baked ideas that are not nearly as enlightening or thought-provoking as the writers presumably hoped.

The TV show’s familiar seven note refrain chimes out at the start of the film, announcing our return to the world of Mulder and Scully. But things have changed since our last outing with the paranormal partnership: Scully (Gillian Anderson) has quit the FBI to become a full-time surgeon (cue dreary sub-plot about her trying to save a child with a terminal condition), while the disgraced and now bearded Mulder (David Duchovny) is living in hermitation, pinning newspaper cuttings all over his walls like a serial killer in training.

The trademark theme tune is quickly abandoned to signal this new era, replaced by a tense piece of music that plays over an opening sequence showing the kidnapping of a female FBI agent and a major manhunt through a snow-covered landscape.

It turns out that the FBI are following the visions of Billy Connolly’s psychic paedophile priest (actually one of the least stupid bits of the film) to help them find the missing agent and her abductors. Of course, they can’t be too sure if the priest is legit and so call on the expertise of Fox Mulder to help them figure things out. And, where the Fox goes Dana Scully’s hound surely follows, yapping at her former partner’s excitable heels with her rabid scepticism of anything not provable by cold, hard, scientific fact.

It’s a formula that worked for some time in the TV show, but feels cumbersome and forced here, like Duchovny and Anderson are playing parodies of their old characters.

But this might not be the actors’ faults. Much of the old relationship hinged on the professionalism that Mulder and Scully used to anchor their supposed desire for one another. Now, however, the ‘are-they, aren’t-they?’ couple are indiscreetly at it from barely half an hour in.

Some fans might raise their hands and rejoice in the finally-realised love of the odd couple, but the new dynamic robs the relationship of one of its most interesting features.

Furthermore, the romantic storyline is poorly handled by Carter, who seems to have thrown it in as an afterthought, a last-minute crowd-pleasing decision that leaves what should be a major revelation feeling thoroughly anti-climatic and without even half the passion one might have hoped for from a brooding pair that spent 10 years stretching the sexual tension to breaking point.

You’ve also got to wonder about an X-Files adventure that includes no conspiracy and only a smattering of supernatural guff, thrown in at the end of what is really just a patchy thriller.

And even the time-honoured faith vs science theme is stretched to breaking point as the film tries to embrace the argument’s new-found significance by weaving stem cell research into its convoluted plot.

This is, perhaps, the greatest flaw of The X-Files: I Want To Believe - that it loses sight of the simplicity and economical storytelling that made the old episodes enjoyably concise adventures, trying instead to do too much in its feature format.

The result is a confused piece that gets lost amid its own lofty themes, its tension reduced to a damp fizzle and the whole thing spluttering out like a tired and regrettable exercise that is likely to disappoint fans and newcomers alike.

Quite what the the die-hard X-philes will make of the film is anyone’s guess. My hunch is that 20th Century Fox and Chris Carter will replace a corrupt government as the enemy-la-mode and that the only thing the sci-fi nuts will now “want to believe” is that this film never really happened.

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DID YOU KNOW? The production operated under a near-fanatical veil of secrecy. Only the director and producers had full copies of the script. Actors were allowed to read it, only to have it whisked away as soon as they had finished. On each day of shooting they were given copies of only that day’s lines, which were then shredded at the end of the day. Select department heads were allowed to read the script in a locked room under video surveillance, after which it was returned to a locked vault.

Genre: Fantasy comedy

Director: Stephen Chow

Starring: Stephen Chow, Jiao Xu, Kitty Zhang Yuqi

**

CHILDREN and their connection with otherworldly beings is well-trodden cinematic ground.

From the frightening - demonic possession in The Exorcist - through to the funny and heart-warming - ET being the most obvious example - the most vulnerable members of society often find themselves the big screen favourites for both supernatural and extra-terrestrial encounters.

It is the life-enriching, family-rescuing friendship between a misunderstood child and his pet alien that forms the basis of Stephen Chow’s new film, CJ7, drawing obvious inspiration from Spielberg’s afore-mentioned 1982 masterpiece.

Following on from his hugely-enjoyable action-comedy Kung Fu Hustle, Hong Kong-born writer-director Chow has created yet another genre-blurring romp, again managing to keep his film interesting despite its well-used subject. But CJ7 falls short of Kung Fu Hustle’s acrobatic heights, displaying the director’s obvious talent for visual spectacle but also revealing a disappointingly flimsy sense of narrative.

Taking the lead role is talented 11-year-old Jiao Xu, who plays Dicky, the son of struggling labourer Ti (Stephen Chow himself). The pair live together in the wreckage of a dilapidated building, climbing a pile of rubble to go in and out of their crumbling second floor room, occupying their free time by seeing who can squash the most cockroaches.

Ti is a decent father who works hard to afford Dicky’s school fees, desperate to give him opportunities that he feels the public schools won’t provide. But his paltry income means he can afford nothing else, forcing him to scavenge clothes, shoes and school supplies from the local garbage dump, opening Dicky to daily ridicule and bullying by his rich classmates.

On a late-night trip to the dump Ti finds a small green pod left by a visiting spaceship. Mistaking it for a toy, he takes it home to Dicky who soon discovers it is actually a cute dog-esque alien that has special healing and mending powers, prompting Dicky to plan how he will use his new pet to excel at school and end his exile in classroom unpopularity.

The film’s emotional centre is Dicky and Ti’s difficult relationship, their up-and-down existence and the way it tests and strains their love for one another. It is a sweet, engrossing and quite moving core, but one that is unfortunately surrounded by flabby and confused narrative that jumps around like an excitable toddler from one unexpected plot development to the next.

It doesn’t take long for any sense of coherence, let alone the warmth and humour of the father-son relationship, to unravel amid the film’s frenetic journey through pointless fantasy sequences. It often feels like Chow had lots of different ideas about where to take his ‘kid and pet alien’ project and couldn’t bring himself not to include them all, leading the audience through a sequence of irritatingly inexplicable scenes, some of which seem completely extraneous to the plot - I felt a fair degree of exasperation when a particularly silly section of the film, lasting a good 10 minutes, all turned out to be a dream.

As it becomes increasingly confused, bouncing from slapstick comedy to tear-jerking trauma, you are left with the distinct sense that the director has no real idea what kind of movie he wants to make - or, at the very least, that he lacks the discipline to narrow his broad vision into a coherent whole.

Which is a shame, as his uniquely fun style is also quite evident in the film, leaving you with little doubt that CJ7 could have been so much better had Chow been stricter with his script.

There are other questionable elements, not least the CGI of the alien, just as there are quite a few points of merit - humour, heart, an enjoyable score - but the overarching assessment is that CJ7 simply doesn’t know what kind of film it wants to be and fails because of it.

Stephen Chow could never be accused of making dreary, formulaic pictures. I just wish he hadn’t pushed this one so far in the opposite direction.

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DID YOU KNOW? Jiao Xu, who plays the young boy Dicky, is actually a girl.

Genre: Comedy

Director: Dennis Dugan

Starring: Adam Sandler, John Turturro, Emmanuelle Chiriqui, Nick Swardson, Ido Mosseri

***

WELL, it was surely just a matter of time.

After more than half a century of conflict it’s surprising it’s taken until now for Hollywood to turn out a slapstick comedy about the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but here it is, in the form of You Don’t Mess With The Zohan.

Tres Parker and Matt Stone (of South Park and Team America fame) might have seemed the most likely candidates for such an un-PC adventure but the bad taste shenanigans have instead fallen to Adam Sandler, along with his regular partner in crime (yes, crime) director Dennis Dugan and writing colleagues Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow (Knocked Up).

It would almost certainly have been both funnier and in poorer taste in Parker and Stone’s filthy hands, but Sandler and co have not done a bad job, straying from their normally safe comedic heartland to embrace global politics in an hour and a half of unabashed mockery that surpasses any of the tatty Sandler-Dugan back catalogue.

The film might be crude, stupid and probably insulting to a hefty proportion of the world’s population, but it’s also pretty damn funny in places and its story could never be accused of unoriginality.

Sandler plays the titular Zohan, an almost superhuman Israeli commando who has singlehandedly killed or captured more terrorists than any other fighting force in the world, making him a huge celebrity in his homeland. His ample terror-battling prowess is, of course, complemented by an equally ample genital package which has made him an even bigger celebrity with the ladies and which he consistently draws attention to in numerous ways (by slapping as a form of greeting, using to scratch records when DJing and so on).

Zohan, however, is sick of the fighting and “all the hate”, and deep inside his muscular loins yearns to be a hairdresser, clutching a pair of scissors as he cries himself to sleep at night. During a showdown with his Palestinian terrorist nemesis Phantom (John Turturro), Zohan fakes his own death and escapes to America to begin his life as a stylist, where he becomes a kind of cross between Borat and Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen’s gay Austrian news reporter), finding work at a Palestinian salon and reversing its ailing fortunes by sleeping with all of its elderly female clients.

So far, so ridiculous. So far, so Sandler. The film is certainly as absurd as anything this dubious comedian of a very acquired taste has so far produced, but it does have its moments.

No doubt Judd Apatow’s involvement has helped, bolstering the amusing one-liner quota (“You’re like Rembrandt with a grenade,” Zohan’s father tells him in an effort to convince his son the anti-terror work is creative).

And the subject material is a definite bonus, giving the filmmakers lots of scope for silly cultural jibes that, while easy, are often quite amusing in a tut-while-chuckling kinda way: the Israeli characters brush their teeth with hummus; Phantom sets up a fast food chain that gives away terrorist action figures with its kids’ meals; Hezbollah has a telephone hot line where you “press 5 for terrorist supplies”.

Some might find it a little uncomfortable at times, but the majority will probably laugh at things like an inept domestic terror cell whose members can’t pronounce liquid nitrogen properly at the chemist and end up trying to build a bomb from a large stockpile of genital wart cream.

And that’s not to suggest the film won’t be found offensive by some, if not many – it does, after all, reduce one of the world’s biggest problems, thousands of years of bloodshed, war and immeasurable death, to a big joke (er, well when you put it that way…).

But it doesn’t push the boat too far (certainly not as far as messers Parker and Stone in Team America) and it’s telling that the only real villains are white Americans, whose racist prejudices are mocked more severely than Palestinian terrorism and Israeli militarism combined.

Far more offensive is the fact that Sandler and co couldn’t resist polluting some great gags and a funny story with the usual dick and fart humour and the kind of horribly saccharine ending that we have come to expect from their unoriginal canon.

It’s these hackneyed bits of nonsense that come close to spoiling the film and which threaten to unravel the entire thing towards the end - right around the time that Mariah Carey appears, in one of the worst, most sickening pieces of human product placement you’ve ever seen: “buy my new album” the vacuous pop whore even says at one point.

But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me laugh – way more than the majority of Sandler’s other movies, of which I’m no great fan. A bit like George W Bush, it’s stupid and annoying at times, but you can’t help but laugh.

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DID YOU KNOW? Zohan was loosely based on a real-life Israeli soldier-turned-hair stylist called Nezi Arbib, who worked in San Diego, California. Sandler and the film crew went to Arbib to learn different hairstyling techniques and mannerisms.

Genre: Fantasy action

Director: Guillermo Del Toro

Starring: Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Luke Goss

**** 

THE first Hellboy film was not a bad introduction to the “world’s greatest paranormal investigator”; it was an adequate scene-setter if nothing else, but still meandered its way through a forgettable plot and never really showed off the talents of director Guillermo Del Toro or the cinematic potential of its brilliant eponymous hero.

Hellboy 2 has now put the franchise to rights, slamming a thundering red fist (the Right Hand of Doom if we’re being specific) through any of its predecessor’s disappointments and elevating “Big Red” to his rightful position among cinema’s superhero royalty.

Not only has Del Toro decided to flex his fabulous imagination, allowing the film to overflow with the kinds of dark magical creatures that are so central to his other work (such as Pan’s Labyrinth), but he has added depth and purpose to all of the central characters, taking each on their own conflicted journey but throwing in some hefty doses of humour to lighten the two hour load.

Key members of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (correct - US spelling) - Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) - all make their return, minus the first film’s annoyingly weedy John Myers (Rupert Evans), whose welcome removal leaves the path clear for the development of Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and Liz’s relationship.

And unlike the first film’s rather two-dimensional goateed bad guy, Hellboy 2 features the far more interesting Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), a kind of albino Marilyn Manson lookalike who wants to erase the human race as punishment for ruining the world, using the formidable robots of the Golden Army to return it to the ownership of his elfin kind and their magical counterparts.

It is in Nuada’s underground kingdom that Del Toro first allows his vision to flourish, creating a familiarly sinister world of fairytale creepiness, bettered only by the later decent into a troll market, - a fantastic and elaborately-designed society of frightening but beautifully-conceived creatures that are both more startling and intriguing than anything found wandering the Mos Eisley Cantina.

Such creations are one of Hellboy 2’s greatest strengths and a marker of its distance from the first film (which didn’t stretch much beyond the predator-giant squid crossbreeds). Here we are given all manner of monster - from flying flesh-eating bugs that make Indiana Jones’ ants look cuddly, to a huge car-hurling tree that wreaks destruction through the city streets.

The beauty of many such beasts is that their presence is given more weight and depth than the basic urge to kill and wreak havoc: Prince Nuada is not an anarchic villain, but an angry and disillusioned young man who wants to preserve the world for magical creatures in the way Hellboy strives to for mankind; the giant tree meanwhile is the last of its kind and it is with heavy heart that Hellboy is forced to exterminate the species.

This kind of tortured existence defines the central character and, like all of the best superheroes, is what makes him such a great protagonist. He is still the same cigar-chewing demon with a penchant for irritable one-liners - the John McClane of superheroes with more than a passing resemblance to Tom Waits - but he is far more than the sum of his macho red parts. As Nuada points out, he is fighting his own kind to save a race that doesn’t want him, and it is a conflict that greatly enhances his character in the film.

All of this might sound a little heavy and serious but, rest assured, the film is genuinely funny as well - a hilarious moment sees the drunken Hellboy and Abe Sapien duetting on Barry Manilow’s Can’t Smile Without You. Priceless.

Held up against the first film, Hellboy 2 is all the richer for its humour and the abundance of Del Toro’s crazy creatures. But it also boasts passion, emotion, tragedy and action - all the ingredients of a good comic book adaptation. It would seem the franchise has found its feet.

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DID YOU KNOW? Guillermo Del Toro turned down offers to direct I Am Legend and Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince in order to do the Hellboy sequel.

Genre: Comedy/Drama

Director: Jonathan Levine

Starring: Ben Kingsley, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby

*** 

THE enduring fetish for all things 80s has seen a string of recent nostalgia picks appearing at the local megaplex, all bopping along to the same Cure and Gary Numan soundtrack as if to trick us into thinking the decade was some long lost renaissance of cool.

Well one hopes this blatant deception is finally coming to an end (take note appallingly-coiffured hipsters in brightly coloured jeans), signalled perhaps by the arrival of The Wackness, a flawed but enjoyable film set, steeped and rolled up in mid-90s New York.

It follows the exploits of school-leaver Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), a sullen but likeable teenage pot-dealer grappling with many familiar coming-of-age conundrums, plus the imminent eviction of his family. His unlikely confidant and kindred spirit is Dr Jeffrey Squires (Ben Kingsley), a psychiatrist who is equally confused, depressed and insecure, and who offers Luke free therapy in exchange for free bags of weed - cue easy laughs watching a knight of the realm draining a large bong in his plush Manhattan office.

As far as a generation-spanning friendship goes, this is by no means the best partnership we have seen in an increasingly popular story formula (think Wonderboys et al). But it’s still an entertaining and interesting relationship, both characters searching for love and affection and each struggling to see anything but “the wackness” (the bad, the downside) of life, never able to look at “the dopeness” (the good, the positive).

There is certainly common ground between them, but there’s also the pleasing contrast of Luke travelling into manhood - learning to make money (albeit illegally), losing his virginity and experiencing love for the first time - while Dr Squires is desperately seeking to relive his youth - taking whatever narcotics he can lay his hands on, sleeping with teenagers and so on.

This, of course, gives rise to plenty of funny instances, some courtesy of a good script, others a little more subtle, such as the sex scene between Luke and Dr Squires’ daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby) which is brilliantly painful and comic in equal measure.

But The Wackness is as much concerned with time and place as it is with story and script. It is a love letter to a by-gone era, as nostalgic for the New York of 1994 as Dr Squires is for his misspent youth.

Set at the beginning of Rudy Giuliani’s infamous clean-up, it takes place at a seminal moment in the city’s history: the turning point between the crime-ridden New York of the 70s and 80s and the safe, clean, tourist-friendly city we know today.

One scene finds Luke and Dr Squires in the once rotten Time Square - a symbol of New York’s vicious and depraved past - where the pair are subsequently arrested for graffiting. “We give you character,” Squires then shouts at the police, emphasising the nostalgic connection between his own wilder youth and the wilder past of his city.

As with the recent crop of 80s flicks, The Wackness also relies heavily on music for period anchoring, pulsating to the hip-hop throb of Notorious BIG, KRS-One and A Tribe Called Quest at every conceivable moment.

And this is no bad thing - it was a fantastic and important time for hip-hop also, and the soundtrack is significant to the story: unlike many of his Kurt Cobain-mourning contemporaries, Luke is obsessed with the rising rap stars, a symbol of how white youths’ increasingly embraced the genre in the post-grunge vacuum.

The seductive nostalgia, smart script and sturdy acting are somewhat undone by some pretty shoddy editing and camerwork, and the story certainly dips from time to time.

But these are just the wackness in a film that has plenty of dopeness. And, if nothing else, its nice that the rose-tinted baton has been passed to a decade far more deserving of its fond reminiscences.

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DID YOU KNOW? You’d be forgiven for not recognising lead actor Josh Peck even if you’ve seen some of his earlier films, such as Spun and Mean Creek. Once considerably overweight, the 21-year-old actor has slimmed down dramatically, apparently using a combination of yoga, karate and lots of salads.