AFTER a dark foray into feature films with the tough-to-watch Gael Garcia Bernal film The King, maverick British filmmaker James Marsh (who also gave us 1999's Wisconsin Death Trip) delivers a hugely entertaining and attention-grabbing documentary with Man on Wire which recounts in clear-headed and thrilling detail French tightrope walker Philippe Petit's remarkable high-wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Centre in 1974.
Seamlessly mixing archive footage, dramatic re-enactments and talking-head interviews with Petit and his collaborators, Marsh creates a vivid picture of the sheer scale of the covert (and illegal) operation that has the grip of a great heist film.
Having been inspired from the first moment he read a news article about construction starting on the towers (he was at the dentist at the time), pulling off the stunt quickly became an obsession for Petit, and he spent much of his early adult life training for the day when this might be possible.
He's great company as he relates how this dream became reality, and the film doesn't skimp on delving into the complicated ways his relationships with those around him evolved as he pursued it. But it's the way the film taps into the emotional and artistic significance of the event without ever directly invoking the events of 11 September 2001 that makes it truly special.
SARAH SILVERMAN: JESUS IS MAGIC SARAH Silverman is one the funniest American comedians around at the moment. Her hilarious I'm F***ing Matt Damon skit has already been the YouTube phenomenon of the year and this concert film (recorded in 2005 but only now getting a limited UK release, presumably on the back of her suddenly increased profile) provides a useful introduction to the sweetly provocative way she confronts issues of race and religion with outrageous routines that subtly confront the prejudices her stage persona endorses ironically.
Gags about the Holocaust, 9/11, rape and the problems incurred when trying to use racial epithets on network TV take us into uncomfortable areas and lead to a lot of nervous laughter, but Silverman's acute timing and sophisticated ability to make us question why something is funny without deconstructing her own jokes is a real skill that is worth celebrating.
It's too bad then that she also feels the need to frequently interrupt her performance in Jesus is Magic with several musical numbers and sketches. This might be a noble effort to break up the monotony of the concert film, but it also distracts from what she's best at.
SPACE CHIMPS BRIGHT colours, loud noises, simple gags and wisecracking protagonists are the order of the day in this cheaply rendered animation film about… well, you can probably guess from the title.
The hero is Ham (voiced by Andy Samberg), a daredevil circus chimp who finds himself part of the space programme when a mission is launched to retrieve a probe that has discovered signs of life on the other side of an intergalactic wormhole. Why Ham? His grandfather paved the way for the moon landings by being the first monkey blasted onto space, thus the human government thinks it will be good PR, little realising that chimps can understand everything they say and are much smarter than they're given credit for.
Teamed up with a pair of nerdy astrochimps – including love interest Luna (Cheryl Hines) – what follows is a run-of-the-mill fulfilling-your-destiny story with Ham discovering previously untapped reserves of nobility and heroism as they land on an alien planet under threat from a monster (Jeff Daniels) who is determined to use the Earth probe to turn the place into his own personal Las Vegas.
It's undemanding fun for younger kids, but so is Kung Fu Panda and that has better animation.
PARIS HAVING specialised in creating frothy, multiple-character Euro pudding comedies such as Pot Luck and its sequel, Russian Dolls, Cédric Klapisch shoots for a more melancholy tone with his latest, using the City of Light as a beacon to unite a disparate bunch of stories that don't add up to much in the end.
In Paris, Klapisch regular Romain Duris (yet to properly capitalise on his breakout role in The Beat that My Heart Skipped) stars as a dancer knocked for six by a heart condition that has turned him into a passive observer of life. Juliette Binoche plays his social-worker sister who looks after him full-time, despite having two kids of her own.
Their lives intersect at various junctures with other characters, including an anxious ageing history professor (Fabrice Luchini) who becomes obsessed with a student; a market stall owner (Albert Dupontel) with complicated feelings for his ex-wife, and an illegal African immigrant (Kingsley Kum Abang) making his way from Cameroon to Paris.
There are others stories too, and love and death crop up regularly, but despite a clear effort to show "all of human life" this is little more than an extended advert for the French capital.
