MAN ON WIRE - compelling doc about a brilliant act of public art

James Marsh (THE KING) returns to documentaries with the compelling true life story of Philippe Petit - a cheeky, self-mythologising Frenchman who pulled off the breathtaking coup of walking a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Having previously walked between the towers of the Notre Dame and between the posts of the Sydney Harbour bridge, this ingenious hippie couldn't help but raise his sights to the world's tallest building, which had only just been completed. He went to New York, spied on the building, figured out the practicalities, and practised at his home in France. A motley band of friends and girlfriends helped him figure out how to smuggle in his equipment and connect the wire between the two towers. They shared his excitement at staging a beautiful public performance, but also the knowledge and fear that he could easily slip and fall to his death. Finally they saw Philippe engorged by sudden fame, feted and distant.

The documentary is a collage of interviews with all the key participants, archive photographs and video and elegant re-enactments. Marsh inter-twines the long-run story of planning the coup with the events of the day itself - the tension of smuggling in the equipment and the actual moment of the walk.

Philippe Petit is certainly a charismatic narrator, and one can't help but wonder how much of his story has been refined and re-enacted over the years. Certainly, I felt that the sort of personality that would attempt something as crazy-beautiful as this would necessarily be faily melodramatic and larger-than-life. But for me the most fascinating character was Philippe's best friend, who felt his friend was crazy but knew he was going to attempt the walk, and so tried his best to make sure he did so as safely as possible. There's a moment where he describes looking at Philippe's face as he steps onto the wire: the intense concentration changes into a broad smile. The adrenaline and physical memory take over: the friend knows Philippe will be okay, and even now, over forty years later, he starts to cry. It's a tremendously powerful moment and speaks of the really amazing thing at the centre of the film: true friendship, even if it couldn't ultimately survive the tension of the coup.

MAN ON WIRE played Sundance 2008 where James Marsh won the Audence Award ad the Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary. It is on release in New York and the UK. It opens in the Netherlands in February 2009.

HELLBOY II - THE GOLDEN ARMY - hands (of doom) down the best of the summer blockbusters

HELLBOY II - THE GOLDEN ARMY is by far the most satisfying of the summer blockbusters in terms of sureness of purpose; visual flair; emotional engagement; and sheer balls-out entertainment. It leaves the HULK and IRON MAN trailing in its wake, and while THE DARK KNIGHT may have been more ambitious and seditious, it teased more than satisfied: HELLBOY II, by contrast, shows a film-maker in full control of his medium and his subject matter.

The story is simple but captivating, rooted in myth and legend. Man has encroached upon the territory of monsters, and Prince Nuada will lead a mechanical golden army to reclaim that territory. His twin sister, Princess Nuala wants to maintan the peace and unites with Hellboy and his fellow paranormal investigators at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. So, "Red" goes into battle once more, defendng the very humans who call him a freak, turning against his own kind. On top of which, he's got relationship problems with is pyrokinetic girlfriend Liz Sherman; he's being ragged by his new boss, an ethereal officious pyschic called Johann Krauss; and his best friend, a merman called Abe Sapien has gone goofy for the Princess. What's a demon to do but slap on the Barry Manilow, drink more beer and kick the crap out of the other guy?!

Guillermo del Toro's plotting is admirably neat and linear, and that allows him to spend all his time, care and energy on some of the most wonderful visuals to be seen in a summer blockbuster. Art-house fans will see the same sort of organic, authentic fantasy creatures from PAN'S LABRYNTH on a far bigger canvas. The genius od del Toro is to harness the power of CGI without making his creatures look too fake, sleek and automated. His world is grimy, grungy, living and breathing, mythic and beautiful. The "cantina" scene in the Troll Market already has me desperate to see the movie again and wallow ithe richness of the imagination on show. And the internal mechanisms of the Golden Army are intricate and breath-taking.

The rich visuals are complemented by a script and performances that manage to walk the line between genuine emotional engagement and laugh-out-loud comedy. It says a lot for Anna Walton and Seth "Family Guy" MacFarlane that we fall for a love story between two characters played from behind serious make-up and prosthetics - the most unlikely romantic couple in cinema. And Ron Perlman has cause to feel overlooked in all the hype about Heath Ledger. He's consistently one of the most charismatic and engagic actors working. He manages to pull of deeply romantic scenes with Liz (Selma Blair), moments of soul-searching, and slapstick comedy in fights with Krauss and drunken male bonding with Abe.

Many summer blockbusters try to capture the heady mix of action, romance, comedy and myth that made the original STAR WARS flick and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK so enjoyable and memorable. Few have succeeded. But HELLBOY II is firmly in that genre, and is one of the very few CGI movies to be a master of its technology rather than a slave to it.

HELLBOY II - THE GOLDEN ARMY was released earlier this year in Singapore, Thailand, Mexico, Panama, the US, Iceland, Italy, Israel and Russia. It opens on Agust 14th in Russia; on August 15th in Turkey; on August 20th in the UK; on August 21st in Hungary, the Netherlands and Portugal; on August 22nd in Norway; on August 28th in Australia and on August 29th in Spain. It opens on September 5th in Slovakia, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia and Finland and later in September in Poland and Sweden. It opens in October in Argentina, Greece, Venezuela, Germany, Belgium, Egypt and France.

Juatifiably overlooked DVD of the month - YOU KILLED ME

John Dahl (ROUNDERS) tries very hard to create a stylish noir romantic-comedy but fails by a whisker. He wants to make us laugh at the bleak and bizarre coupling of a old recovering-alcoholic hitman (Ben Kingsley) and his younger girlfriend (Tea Leoni), as mediated by his sweet-as-pie mentor (Luke Wilson.) The script is occasionally funny, but by far neither funny nor insightful enough. Moreover, the movie doesn't have the distinct visual flair or truly balls-out bleak humour of IN BRUGES. Fatally, Ben Kingsley had no real chemistry with Tea Leoni, who, by the way, was by far the most impressive person in this film. Her laid back, dry, rather desperate line-readings were absolutely spot on, but even then, not enough reason to watch this film.

YOU KILL ME played Cannes 2007 and went on cinematic release last year. It is available on DVD.

THE X-FILES - I WANT TO BELIEVE - huh?

Never seen an episode of the X-Files. Never going to. Definitely not after this film, which plays like a sub-CSI police procedural artificially stretched beyond its natural 45 minute run-time.

6 years after the end of the TV show, cultural icons Mulder and Scully are pulled back into the FBI to help find a missing agent with the aid of a psychic, paedophile priest. At the same time, Scully is now a paediatrician, struggling with her conscience: should she give a kid a painful stem-cell treatment with a small chance of success or let him die in peace?

The spoooooky X-Files kidnap/organ-harvesting storyline was very lo-rent. Certainly sub-CSI and at around the level of an Urban Legend spoof. The stem-cell storyline could've been cool but the movie jumps the shark when Scully learns how to conduct cutting edge complex surgery by *googling* "stem cell research". Seriously?!

I'm sure the TV show was better than this. At least, that's what the message boards and my informal sample of 2 frends who are massive sci-fi geeks suggest. But there's no need to schlep to the cinema for this unless you really have a strong fan-boy urge to see Mulder and Scully kiss on the big screen.

THE X FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE is on global release.

THE LOVE GURU - not quite good enough

Here's the thing. I don't find dick and fart jokes particularly funny. (This isn't judgmental - just a a matter of taste). Nor do I find comedians putting on ethnic accents at the cutting edge of humour: Peter Sellars had that down decades ago. Having said all that, I love WAYNE'S WORLD and the first AUSTIN POWERS movie. They were such warm-hearted joyful pastiches of genre-movies, I could overlook the occasional crude joke. Mike Myers' latest movie, THE LOVE GURU, tilts the balance firmly in favour of the crude and away from the thoughtful spoof. That's fine and if you like that kind of humour, as many of the people in the cinema I was in last night did, you'll have a really good times. The litmus test is this: is the idea of two lychees wrapped in pastry to look like balls funny to you? If so, go forth and enjoy!

If you don't find that funny, as I didn't, is there enough in this film to keep you satisfied? My answer is wishy-washy. I can't say I'd want to watch THE LOVE GURU again, and I did cringe every time Ben Kingsley portrayed a cross-eyed Indian guru. (Has Ganndhi come to this?!) The running joke using Marishka Hargitay's name may not play in the UK and Justin Timberlake is definitely worth more than his cameo as a camp Quebecois hockey player. And the scene where the trainee gurus joust with urine covered mops was truly tragic.

But there are a handful of genuine laughs in this movie, and I had an okay time with it. The basic idea is that Mike Myers is a LA based celebrity Guru, always striving to be bigger than Deepak Chopra. If Guru Pitka can reunite an ice-hockey star and his wife in time to restore his game and win the championship, the Guru will appear on Oprah securing his position as number one Guru. Pitka has a bunch of risible self-help techniques, signified by trade-marked acronyms, and the titles of all his books ARE funny. The early sight gag of the motorised cushion is also brilliant. I even liked the Bollywood song-and-dance number spoofs with Jessica Alba.

Still, as funny as the soft spoofery was, I couldn't help but think that THE LOVE GURU would've worked better as a SNL sketch. And, if truth be told, the funniest thing in it IS like a SNL sketch - Stephen Colbert's satire on sports commentators was sharper and edgier than anything Myers brought to the table.

THE LOVE GURU was released earlier this year in the USA, Australia and Israel. It is currently on release in Iceland, Italu and the UK. It opens later in August in Singapore, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Turkey. It opens in September in Belgium, the Netherlands, Venezuela and France. It opens in October in France, Germany, Austria and Spain.

THE POPE'S TOILET / EL BANO DEL PAPA - finely balanced tragicomedy

EL BANO DEL PAPA is a delightful tragicomic tale of hope and disillusionment in a poor town in Uruguay.

Beto smuggles contraband food and batteries over the border from Brazil on his bicycle. It's hard work and treacherous thanks to the unwanted attentions of the corrupt, indecent "mobile patrolman", Meleyo. Despite the precariousness of Berto's existence, this is not a sob story. Even in poverty, Berto and his mates have a space for drinks with friends, running jokes and a passionate love life. Moreover, Berto is a chippy bloke, always looking for an angle. A visit by Pope John Paul II himself looks like his ticket out of poverty. After all, the slick local TV presenter tells the villagers that floods of faithful Brazilians will come to hear the mass. Why not make some money selling chorizo and hamburgers? Why not mortgage the house or sell your bike to buy kilos of burger buns? And, in a stroke of insane brilliance, why not build a bathroom and charge the tourists to use it?!

It won't ruin anybody's film to report that the promised thousands never flood in. THE POPE'S TOILET is firmly in the tradition of COUS COUS and BIG NIGHT. From the first scene we know that the joy of the film will be in watching the collective madness and that the bitter streak will be the inevitable disappointment. For Berto, it takes the shape of disillusionment with religion: the Pope's visit should've been a miracle rather than a disaster. For his daughter, it takes the shape of disillusionment with the slippery promises and distorted reportage of TV journalists. Ironically, this realisation comes through seeing her father's true character on the TV - wandering through town, begging visitors to come and use his expensive new toilet.

Writer-directors César Charlone and Enrique Fernández have crafted a finely balanced tale. There are bleak moments, but the balance is always restored by Berto's irrepressible drive. Special mention must be made of César Troncoso's performance as Berto. Just look at the cheer joy he communicates when he finally gets to ride a motorbike! Moreover, look at the wonderful camerawork, capturing the thrill of speed, also from Charlone (CITY OF GOD).

EL BANO DEL PAPA played Cannes and Toronto 2007. It opened earlier this year in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain. It is currently on release in the UK and it opens in Argentina on September 4th.