JGL’s Breathtaking High Wire Walk Between The WTC Towers In THE WALK

Now playing at an IMAX theater near you:

THE WALK (Dir. Robert Zemeckis, 2015)

While watching James Marsh’s excellent Oscar-winning documentary MAN ON WIRE back in 2008, I thought many times that the story of Frenchman Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 could really make for a great dramatized movie.

Obviously I wasn’t alone in that thinking because now we’ve got Robert Zemeckis’ supersized recreation of the event, releasing today only in IMAX theaters (it will enter wide release on October 9), starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, and featuring some of the most exquisite and breathtaking visual effects ever rendered on the big screen.

It starts with an extreme, ginormous close-up of Gordon-Levitt telling us his story from the top of the Statue of Liberty with an immaculate view of the Manhattan skyline of the ‘70s behind him. Gordon-Levitt’s French accent may be just barely passable, but his boundless energy and charm make him a great Petit (he was also trained to walk on wire by Petit himself, so there's that). 

And check out JGL's mad miming and acrobatic skills in the early Paris scenes, in which Zemeckis mimics jaunty new wave French films in bits in black and white, and shots in the grainy color textures of that era.

Petit’s life is one of obsessions. First, he’s obsessed with learning how to tightrope walk, under the tutelage of a circus ringleader/father figure named Papa Rudy (Sir Ben Kingsley doing his Yoda thing); then he’s obsessed with finding the perfect place to perform his wire-walking act (the towers of Notre Dame cathedral is one early effort), and finally he’s obsessed with pulling off what he calls “the artistic coup of the 20th century.”

That is, of course, to illegally infiltrate the World Trade Center, which was still under construction, string a 450-pound steel cable between the towers, and conduct a high-wire walk for the whole world.

To pull it off, Petit recruits a rag tag crew of accomplices for the coup. First, there’s the lovely Annie (Charlotte Le Bon), who he has a meet-cute with in the streets of Paris – she’s busking Leonard Cohen songs while he upstages and steals her audience with his shenigans on the same block. Then there’s Clément Sibony as a dapper photographer, César Domboy as a math teacher, who is afraid of heights; James Badge Dale as a savvy electronics salesman, Ben Schwartz (Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation!) as a New York recruit, and Steve Valentine as Petit's inside man at the Trade Center as he has an office on the 82nd floor. 

The pacing really picks up as Petit’s meticulous plotting, 6 years in the making, gets put into action, helped along by longtime Zemeckis collaborator Alan Silvestri's score which takes its jazzy queue from such ‘70s crime capers as THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1,2,3 for the heist-like sequences.

The first half is fine, but as you’d expect it’s the second half involving the staging of the stunt itself that really - forgive me, but it’s right there – reaches incredible heights.

Every shot pops, with not a single moment that’s unconvincing, of Petit’s walk across the air 110 stories above street level, as crowds gather to watch, and policemen pop up on both towers waiting to arrest the performing perpetrator.

Look for cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, and visual effects supervisor Kevin Baillie to get many accolades this upcoming awards season – what these guys did here, helped by an army of digital technicians, of course, is beyond stellar. It's also one of the few 3D films in which the format feels the most necessary.

Now, I have a bit of a fear of heights, so I strongly felt the sensation of being on the edge of my seat – I don’t care how much of a cliché that is – throughout the sky high scenes that form the climax. At the same time, I felt the regret that I had never been to the top of the towers when I had the chance (in 1995, I was visiting my brother in New York and came close to going up, but the lines were too long for us. Sigh).

Like many of Zemeckis’s films, THE WALK is several movies at once: it’s a heist thriller, it’s a high-scaling adventure, it’s a comedy, and it’s a love story – though, one that’s about being in love with a dream. All of these genres collide together into a pure piece of pop entertainment that’s one of the director’s and the year’s best films.

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Ann Hathaway Is Robert De Niro’s Boss In The Likable Ball Of Fluff THE INTERN

Opening today at a multiplex near me...

THE INTERN (Dir. Nancy Meyers, 2015)

The premise of writer/director Nancy Meyer’s frothy follow-up to IT’S COMPLICATED is very simple: Robert De Niro plays a retired widower who becomes an intern for an online retail startup run by a much younger boss played by Anne Hathaway.

In an opening voice-over set-up, De Niro’s 70-year old Ben Whittaker lays out how his retirement has had him struggling to fill time despite taking classes, learning to cook, reading, going to movies, and resisting the advances of Linda Lavin as a fellow aging Brooklynite.

Ben happens upon a flyer for a “senior intern” program at a fashion e-commerce company called About The Fit, so he puts on his best suit, dusts off his 1973 attaché briefcase, and applies.

Ben’s video resumé, which he had to call his 9-year old grandson to get help with, is a big hit and he’s hired, but the company’s extremely ambitious yet very wet behind her ears founder Jules Ostin (Hathaway) isn’t fond of the idea of having him around. To further irk her, and to get the plot going, a snappy Andrew Rannells (Girls) as the company’s office manager assigns Ben to work directly with Jules, but at first she doesn’t give him anything to do.

This changes as over time Ben brings a can do spirit to every task he’s given, and Jules comes to rely on him just like we’d expect to happen. Also like we’d expect, Ben befriends and doles out wisdom to his co-workers played by Adam Devine *, Zack Pearlman, and Jason Orley, and he strikes up a romance with the office masseuse (Rene Russo, who co-starred with De Niro in SHOWTIME back in ‘02).

Conveniently, Ben catches Jules’ chauffeur boozing, so he takes over as her driver for a bit, which allows him and us to meet her stay-at-home husband (Anders Holm*), and her five-year old daughter (JoJo Kushner) at their posh Brownstone (of course it’s posh – every interior in a Meyers movie is posh).

In another all too convenient moment, Ben happens to see Jules’ husband with another woman, which serves as our third act conflict. I guess Meyers figured that Jules’s struggling with whether or not to bring in an older, more experienced CEO to head her company wasn’t enough of a plot point.

Earlier this week, De Niro walked out of an interview with a reporter from the Radio Times because of what he called her “negative inference.” The reporter, Emma Brockes, had apparently pissed him off with a question about how he resists going into “autopilot mode on set.” The question maybe was a little rude, but many critics and fans, myself included, have accused him of walking through a lot of his later day roles, “phoning it in” so to speak. But here, De Niro fleshes out Ben nicely and makes him one of his more convincing normal guy roles. He appears to put as much effort into the part as his character puts into his daily duties.

Hathaway also brings plenty of pluck to her performance, and makes for a perfect Meyers protagonist – a tough, but vulnerable witty woman who is great at her work. Her scenes with De Niro have a palpable tenderness to them, even when they veer towards cheesy sentiment at times.

Speaking of cheesy, the movie overplays its cute kid card with Kushner as Jules’ daughter, and a subplot about De Niro, Devine, Pearlman, and Orley breaking into Jules’ parents’ house in order to delete an offensive email that she mistakenly sent is too wacky for the film’s own good. 

Meyers’ screenplay and direction is sharper than on her previous films, even if the sitcom-ish sensibility still remains. The movie doesn’t really have much to say about workplace relations, but it has an undeniably progressive air about it nonetheless. Underneath the layer of obvious generation gap gags that is.

Filled with the same can do spirit of its leads, THE INTERN is a warm, fluffy film that’s as polished as it is predictable. Sure, it’s lightweight, but its likability factor is through the roof. It made me smile more than it made me laugh, but that’s fine – I’ll take it.

*It’s fitting that this workplace comedy would have two cast members from the Comedy Central series Workaholics.

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Lily Tomlin Delights & Deserves Oscar Buzz In GRANDMA

Now playing at indie art house near me:

GRANDMA (Dir. Paul Weitz, 2015)

Lily Tomlin’s first starring role on the big screen since 1988’s BIG BUSINESS is a pure delight. Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a no-nonsense 70-something aged lesbian poet, who we accompany through a day of helping her 18-year old granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) raise money for an abortion.

In the film’s opening scene, Tomlin’s Elle breaks up with her much younger girlfriend (Judy Greer), and we get a glimpse of the vulnerability under her tough veneer when we see her sobbing in the shower afterwards.

Then Garner’s Sage shows up, 10 weeks pregnant and cash poor, asking for help, but Elle is also broke, pointing out that she cut up her credit cards and made a wind chime out of the little pieces.

The two drive around Los Angeles in Elle’s rickety old ‘55 Dodge to try and gather the funds for the procedure scheduled for later that afternoon, starting with a stop at Sage’s loser boyfriend’s (Nat Wolff ) where Elle turns his own ice hockey stick against him because he refuses to pony up the dough.

Elle and Sage then hit up Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox as a tattoo artist that owes Elle money, they attempt to sell a stack of Elle’s first editions of feminist classics to Elizabeth Peña in one of her last roles as a crusty café owner, and make an ill-advised visit to one of Elle’s former lovers, Karl played Sam Elliot, who is still a bit bitter about the past.

Their last resort is to turn to Sage’s mother Judy (a perfectly prickly Marcia Gay Harden), a strict corporate lawyer-type, who both Elle and Sage are intimidated by (“I’ve been scared of your Ma since she was five years old,” Elle quips).

Written and directed by Paul Weitz (AMERICAN PIE, ABOUT A BOY), who previously worked with Tomlin on the Tina Fey/Paul Rudd rom com ADMISSION, GRANDMA is a punchy 79 minute comedy drama that has not one wasted moment. Tomlin carries the movie beautifully, delivering extremely amusing dry wise-cracks throughout, but her most affecting moments are when her character laughs to herself, remembering something her recently passed long-time partner, said or did. Tomlin’s portrayal of Elle is so lived-in that we don’t need any more back story than that to go by.

Tomlin’s co-stars also get a chance to shine. Garner, who’s had roles in PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, and on the FX show The Americans, brings a fragile yet determined presence to the coming-of-age arc of Sage. Elliot lets his trademark stoicism slide for one of his most nakedly emotional performances, and Greer, despite being in several big ass releases this last summer (ENTOURAGE, JURASSIC WORLD, ANT-MAN, and TOMORROWLAND) actually gets to have a substantial part here as Tomlin’s ex.

GRANDMA may be a small, low budget movie that was filmed in only 19 days for less than $1 million, but it boasts a big-time lead by Tomlin, which is deservedly stirring up Oscar buzz. That would be nice for her to at least get a nomination, but what I really hope it really stirs up is more leads for the lady. It’s incredibly obvious from this that there’s lots of fire left in her belly.

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