DVD OF THE WEEK

MAN ON WIRE *****
Dir: James Marsh
Starring: Philippe Petit, Jean Francois Heckel, Annie Allix

It's another documentary, and why? Because it's far and away the best film that came out this week, possibly this month. It won the Best Documentary Oscar and with good reason. Everyone I speak to knows what it's about but isn't that interested in seeing it. You should be.
Man On Wire centres on French adventurer Philippe Petit, a man who likes to walk the high wire. After staging a number of prominent acts in Europe (the walk across Notre Dame Cathedral being the most elaborate) he went to America and eventually spent 45 minutes walking and dancing along a wire strung between the Twin Towers in New York.
But that's just the bones. This film does two things: it tells, like a great thriller, the story of the Twin Towers walk, and it explores Petit's personality. And, as one reviewer said, he is 'one of the most absurd and audacious people I've ever seen in real life or recorded on film.”
True enough, and his commitment and bravery, his leaning towards the dangerous and illegal, and his irrepressible spirit inhabits every frame of this film - from his ex-girlfriend who says on meeting Petit for the first time 'he courted me... and then my life was all about him. It was as if I had no destiny of my own... I was following his destiny”, to the loyal and also slightly crazy friends who make his wild schemes come true – audacious and inspiring and almost unbelievably courageous.
And the story of the Twin Towers walk is amazing. Remember, this was not legal. They had to smuggle the (not inconsiderable) gear and themselves up to the roof, and hide from security guards before secretly rigging up the whole thing while praying for the wind to drop… and that's before even getting on the wire.
This is a film that is both inspirational and awe-inspiring. It will take your spirit and lift it to the wire alongside the extraordinary Philippe Petit. See it.

After excellent turns in some rather good movies (which probably didn't do huge business) Jim Carey returns to his earlier mainstream days of broad comedy mugging. Yes Man (**), is a spiritual sequel to Liar Liar, the gimmick this time being that, for reasons better left unexamined, Jim finds himself only able to say 'Yes” to any suggestion, leading to all sorts of 'hilarious” situations and generating a suitably trite moral at the end of the tale. Fans of Carey's frantic gurning will no doubt laugh like drains, others will have to make do with an entertaining Rhys (Flight of the Conchords) Darby cameo.

The French certainly do things with class, as is apparent in Chrysalis (***), a dystopian future noir filmed in such chilly tones as to almost make you forget about the occasional absurdities in the plot. It starts with a gung-ho detective losing his partner in a gunfight. She is also his wife. After being re-paired with a cute naïve new recruit he goes looking for answers, which eventually tie in to a dubious company doing strange genetic stuff involving planting one person's memory in the body of another. Not as important as it would like to be, Chrysalis makes up in style what it lacks in substance.

Everyone needs a little insanity in their lives and Tokyo Gore Police (****) supplies it by the bucketload, with lashings of nudity, gore, and eye-popping kinkiness that could only come from Japan. In fact, after many years, I think Peter Jackson's Braindead will finally have to give up its title of Bloodiest Film Ever to the gushing geysers of blood that drench Tokyo Gore Police. The plot is equally nutso, involving our cute police heroine hunting down 'Engineers”, mutated humans with weapons where their wounds were. But that's not important. Now the Incredibly Strange Film Festival is no more, this film proudly continues the tradition (and don't even ask about the woman with alligator jaws where her, er, legs should be…).