Man on Wire (***)

In 1974, Frenchman Phillipe Petit strung a cable between the twin towers of Manhattan’s World Trade Center in an attempt to cross via tightrope. How he and a group of confederates accomplished this is the subject of this inspiring documentary, adapted from Petit’s memoir.

Director James Marsh, whose last movie was the indie drama called The King, structures the movie like a thriller, cutting back and forth from the day of the attempted crossing to its predicate. Assembling a motley team of friends and acquaintances from France and the US, as well as one called “The Australian,” Petit took years to overcome obstacles that included wind and getting the wire from one building to another, but mostly illegality. Money, apparently, was sufficient. It helps that Marsh apparently got all of the significant persons to participate, including Petit, and that they apparently thought to document their efforts as they proceded. (Re-created footage is also used to show the logistical difficulties.)

My worry before seeing this was that the story might supply enough material for a newsmagazine segment, or a Discovery Channel half hour, but maybe not an entire feature. In the end, there is enough for the film’s 90 minutes. All questions are answered about the event (though not about Petit, like what he’s done for the last 30 years), except the why. As Petit said over 30 years ago, “There is no why.”

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 (screening) and reviewed 8/6/08

Ghost Rider (**1/4)

? One of the lesser-known Marvel comics was the inspiration for this reworking of the Faust legend. Nicholas Cage is the older of the two actors who portray the hero, a stunt motorcyclist called Johnny Blaze who sells the Devil (Peter Fonda) his soul for love, not money, but is cursed all the same. Decades later, Mephistopheles requires a favor, the sort of favor that seriously interferes with Blaze’s attempt to reconnect with his childhood sweetheart (Eva Mendes).
+ Haven’t you wondered what it would look like if a chain-wielding guy with a flaming skull where his head should be would look like riding a motorbike at a couple of hundred miles per hour trailing fire from the sides of the vehicle? Sure you have, and here’s where you get to see it, not to mention a jump that’d put Evel Knievel to shame. Wouldn’t you have thought Peter Fonda would make a good Satan? He does. Sam Elliot as Caretaker, a grizzled mentor of sorts to the possessed Blaze, is also well cast.
- This is kind of a hybrid movie, a little fishy and a little foul. It’s not a conventional superhero movie, because Ghost Rider is too busy figuring everything out and saving himself to do much superheroing. It’s got a lot of creepy imagery, but you probably wouldn’t call it scary. There’s a boy-girl story, but it’s no romance. Compare the Spider-Man movies to see how much better heartbreak and longing can be incorporated into even a superhero movie. In one scene here we have Mendes’s reporter character berating Johnny for standing her up at dinner, then inexplicably apologizing to him in the next. Writer-director Mark Steven Johnson also helmed another superhero adaptation, Daredevil, and even more than there we see the difference between being darkly mysterious and dully mystifying. The main plot revolves around old Lucifer’s having to rein in his son who, I gathered, wanted to head up his own network of evil. Mostly this ends up being an excuse for a bunch of gruesome-looking supernatural types to face off against Blaze, who’s forced into playing Devil’s advocate. And, on a minor note, why are Mendez and Cage, ten years her senior, playing characters of about the same age?
= **1/4 Supposedly this was a labor of love for Cage, who was a fan of the comic, but it’s hard to see anyone feeling that kind of passion for this movie version, which is no marvel. See it if you particularly like movies where men who are just about infallible stage battles where they get shot and stabbed but still come back for more.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/23/07