Cut to the Chase: Perfectly balanced.

Watching a great movie that clicks in all of the right places assures me that there is harmony in the universe. It is like marveling at a perfectly symmetrical design like the Eiffel Tower or a spider web. Life is really random chaos with no point. It is a relief that our human intellect stubbornly seeks and finds safety, reason and occasional serendipity in the face of an abyss. Without a sound mind, sanity is lost. To perform well, the struggle between genius and madness is universal. The endeavor of Philippe Petit is one of the most memorable.

The documentary Man On Wire recounts a French tightrope walker’s obsession to tread while suspended between the void of the World Trade Center Towers 1,368 feet from the ground. That’s the height of 228 six-foot men. Having trained for most of his life to perform this feat, he masterminded a plot with an adventurous team of experts and thrill-seekers to infiltrate the towers’ rooftops to get the wire across them. The illegal operation was as dangerous and complex as a robbing a heavy-guarded infrastructure like in Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1954) or, if you haven’t seen that one, Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven. My only complaint about the break-in was that they didn’t pack a video camera to film the spectacle from such an awesome perspective view.

The scenes of the controversial incursion are narrated by the present interviewees while documented footage and dramatically staged footage bring us intimately to experience it. The black-and-white footage (always timeless) is integrated so well that documentary and the fictional realization becomes seamless. The director James Marsh has made an exceptional thriller and a visual poem about great dreamers whose vision threaten to capsize them unless they rise to act upon their desires.

This is a superb follow-up to Marsh’s 2006 directorial debut titled The King, a chilling docudrama about an estranged son (Gael García Bernal) who goes to depraved lengths to integrate himself into the new family of his born-again father (William Hurt - “How does that feel?”). The King was between Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine and John Hillcoat’s The Proposition on my top ten list of 2006. This year, Marsh is neck-to-neck with magician-like Errol Morris who too has made another invaluable documentary called Standard Operating Procedure.

Philippe Petit is a charismatic and animated character in his own right. “I have this childlike rebellion against those who say that I can’t do something, which is something that I felt very early in my life. I have more wisdom now than I did at the time, but when most of the world tells you that you cannot do something, what an incentive to prove them wrong.” Before this daunting venture, he had walked between Notre Dame where one shot looks like he is floating in the sky.

One of Petit’s memories and certainly the most loveliest involves Annie Allix, his then-girlfriend: They both walk a wire suspended a few feet from his backyard together; relying on one another to gracefully cross this delicate bridge suspended in the midair. The romantic in me was immensely moved by the sight. Allix then mused, “We both look like we’re plotting our next mischief”.

Reflecting on Petit’s stunt above the World Trade Center, no mention in the film is made about the infamous tragedy that took place twenty-seven years after the fact. There is footage early in the film that depicts the building of the World Trade Center which looks hauntingly like Ground Zero today. What an irony, considering the still-troubled political climate a few years ago in New York (re: Freedom Fries) that in the early 1970s; New Yorkers looked agape and in wonder at a Frenchman’s daring.

The other star of this film is the composer Michael Nyman (The Piano, 1993), one of most exceptional and prolific in the past few decades. He is so distinctive that Hollywood studios unwisely dilute his work or stay away from him altogether. Thankfully his collaboration with such cinema rebels like Peter Greenaway, Jane Champion, and Michael Winterbottom have contributed richly to celluloid.

His score for Man On Wire is an accumulation of reworked film scores he has done. Nyman loyalists will recognize segments from “Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepards” (The Draughtsman’s Contract, 1982), “Sheep and Tides” (Drowning By Numbers, 1988), “Time Lapse” (A Zed and Two Noughts, 1985), and “Stroking, Synchronizing” (Water Dances, 1985). The last time I heard Nyman tracks incorporated in a motion picture was two years ago. The film in question was Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shanty: A Cock and Bull Story (2006), which also made my top ten list that year.

What an inspiration to play Nyman’s “Memorial” from Peter Greenaway’s masterpiece The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover over Petite’s highest walk. How fitting that it was Nyman’s music that Petite actually practiced his wire act in his backyard to. I often listen to Nyman’s jazzy scores when I illustrate. Nyman’s Baroque-affected work is so locomotive and minacious that it stirs up the most mishandled of hearts. “(Nyman) has one foot in the 1600s and the other in contemporary times”. You can never go wrong overlaying a Nyman piece over your own movie (I should know!). Nyman has recently held an exhibition of his photography work and influences called Sublime with the assistance of the design firm Volumina.

On August 7, 1974, Petite realized his dream and conquered the Twin Towers. His stunt was split between potential suicide and artistic liberation. Petite claims he was at peace with the thought of dying that day should he have slipped. His actions suggest that a life lived without the realization of one’s most radical aspirations is a moot one. We only get one trip around so we might as well put aside trivial safety measures and make the best of it.

I connected with Petite’s romanticism and his need to dream boldly. I was cheered by the extreme measures and unapologetic grand gestures he made to realize the unthinkable. To walk across the clouds. Take a moment and ask yourself if you would actually like to perform a similar feat? Having gone up the Empire State Building to scream out loud from the top of the world over the exquisite yearning to truly live. It was a minor gesture in the same vein. I was in complete sympathy with Petit when he accepted an invitation by a slender brunette to make love to her after having achieved his death-defying stunt. What can I say? Petit and I are French.

Man On Wire is currently in limited release.

This sumptuously lurid play, by Peter Greenaway, on depravity, sexual oblivion, and revenge remains the most accessible and compelling of his filmography. It is also one of the few films I hold closest to my heart. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover is simultaneously simple and deceptive with the film’s title. The main characters could stand for an angry allegory about greedy Thatcher-inspired bullies exploiting the working class citizens of Britain. Then again, perhaps this tale of excess, rape, and cannibalism is a heightened account about deeply wounded souls.

Le Hollandaise is a grotesquely bourgeois restaurant where the thief Albert Spica (Michael Gambon - Gosford Park, 2001), his wife Georgina (the indispensable Helen Mirren - Gosford Park and Last Orders, 2001), and his goons (Tim Roth and Ciarán Hinds) dine every night. We are introduced to Albert as he force-feeds a lowly member of the kitchen staff owing money his excrement, and elaborating on its value: “I eat the very best and that’s expensive!”

The cook, Richard Borst (Richard Bohringer - Rembrant, 1999) stands up to the thief’s boorish threats concerning his offered “protection” with a collected reserve that masks deep rage - “If you button your expensive jacket, Mister Spica, you feel less…empty inside, Mister Spica.” Seated in the center of the operatic dining room, Albert’s hostility extends toward everyone around him, including the patrons. Georgina, who Albert crudely dubs, “Georgie”, often berated and beaten by her husband, is quietly defiant. She makes eye contact with Michael, a quiet intellectual (Alan Howard - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003) as he eats and reads in the corner. Their infatuation leads to many excuses for a rendezvous in the opulent lavatory, where she and tender, love-handled Michael make desperate, explicit love as a means of escape.

Their sexual escapades take them behind closed doors in the kitchen, a secret quietly kept by the restaurant’s workers. Albert, obvious to being a cuckold, continues displaying his virtuoso nastiness with loud, arrogant (albeit darkly hilarious) commentary punctuated by violence: “I think Ethiopians like starving!” “Human milk should be considered a delicacy.” Everyone around him is reduced to frightened submission. One night, he invites Michael to his table where he picks on his reading habits, “Does this stuff make money?” After having badly-bruised Georgina dictate how wonderful her life is (“Tell Michael you live in a big house and you spend a thousand pounds a week on clothes!”), she retaliates with news about her gynecology appointments (“Being infertile makes me a safe bet for a good screw.”) Albert drags her across the parking lot for that one.

The thief eventually discovers his wife’s deception is consumed by jealous rage. Searching for them, he invades the ladies’ lavatory and trashes the kitchen while screaming under satanic lighting, “I’ll kill him and then I’ll eat him!” Georgina, having been pushed beyond all measure, is transformed from tragic victim to arresting seducer, to tortured lunatic, and finally to avenging mastermind. There’s much to savor when the cook offers to prepare Georgina’s proposed meal for her husband. Albert’s comeuppance is satisfying and extreme, though perhaps not excruciating enough.

Every actor performs excellently with their given roles. In particular, Michael Gambon’s portrayal of the thief remains one of the most criminally overlooked performances of a great villain. He could stand alongside the likes of Hannibal Lector; after all, they have some things in common. Helen Mirren and Alan Howard exhibit astonishing bravery and tact in playing nude and suggesting real human depth with roles that might not initially suggest.

Sacha Vierny’s fantastical and painterly cinematography captures a surreal and heighten reality. The nightmarish sets include a large dining space saturated with blood red walls, furnishings and dominating curtains along with the towering, sickly-green industrial kitchen. The panoramic widescreen capitalizes on the vast stage-like compositions, panning from the parking lot, the kitchen, and the dining room in one deceptively continuous take. The color of the characters’ clothing changes to match the given settings. Costume designer Jean-Paul Gaultier fuses seventeenth century sensibilities along with warped contemporary ones. The unreality of the film’s look utilizes the melodramatic and farcical elements of the story. There are visual quotations of the painting “The Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Militia of Haarlem” (1616) by Frans Hals as though the oily aristocracy are staring at their more uncouth counterparts centuries later.

Michael Nyman’s thunderous music suggests decadence and savagery. Hellish chorus howls, shrieking violins, and saxophones dominate the exceptional soundtrack. Rarely have saxophones sounded like they have slobbery, wet tongues inside.

When released in 1990, the film was given the NC-17 rating that rallied a demand for a working adults-only rating reserved for more serious and sophisticated films. Helen Mirren spoke up against the ludicrousness of the MPAA ratings system. After eighteen years, it is still an uphill battle against maddeningly vague, studio-influenced hypocrites who keep films like this from the mainstream cinema. Peter Greenaway, who began his career as a serious painter and a student of anatomy, is uninhibited about regarding the naked human form of both sexes before the camera. Written with exacting intelligence and perversion, Greenaway’s portrayal of violence and sexuality is a conscious indictment of it. The extremity of the film is not without merit or thought, as it is not for the faint of heart. Order wisely from the menu, this is uncompromised satire of the highest order.

The polarizing writer-director and sometimes-actor Kevin “Silent Bob” Smith - responsible for tickling my funny bone with Clerks (1994), Chasing Amy (1997), Dogma (1999) , and the criminally canceled Clerks: The Animated Series (2000-2001) - offers to tickle something else with his new movie. C’mon! I’m writing about K.S.; at least one dick joke is mandatory!

The movie is called Zach and Miri Make A Porno. Not since Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover (1990) has a title been so descriptive. The gist of the flick is that platonic life-mates Zach (Seth Rogen - Superbad, 2007) and Miri (the Grace Kelly sass-n’-sexiness that is Elizabeth Banks - Slither, 2006) come up with a get-rich-quick-scheme by making a porno. It’s like The Honeymooners…but with sex!

Touch HERE to review the audition reel.

“Don’t improvise. We work hard on this shit.”

Also starring is Traci Lords (Serial Mom, 1994), Jason Mewes (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, 2001), Tom Savini (Planet Terror, 2007) and my role model Jeff Anderson (Randal Graves: “Get the hell out, Scorsese!”).

Knowing K.S., we’re in for some royally profane observations and a look at Seth Rogen’s tits. Yes, I feel dirty too.

SNOOCH TO THE NOOCH this Halloween!