Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008). In 1974, tightrope walker Phillippe Petit recruited some accomplices and strung a cable between the two towers of the World Trade Center. He then walked out on it, performing a feat of jaw-dropping daring some 110 stories above the crowded pavement. Marsh’s riveting documentary combines old footage, new interviews with key participants and spare reenactments to fully convey the colossal tension of the act and the freewheeling fearlessness that drove Petit to do it. Petit, naturally, is the film’s greatest asset, spinning stories about his bygone triumphs with an enthralling enthusiasm. If he doesn’t make the act of striding into the sky with only a narrow cord between you and a deadly plummet seem a plausible, irresistible choice, he certainly makes you understand why so many people would respond to his infectious adoration of living on the edge by risking incarceration to help him achieve his grandly ludicrous goals.

Rocket Science (Jeffrey Blitz, 2007). This is the sort of film that doesn’t necessarily inspire a whole lot of excitement in and of itself, but holds enough promise that it develops anticipation for the filmmaker’s next offering. In this instance, the filmmaker in question is writer/director Jeffrey Blitz, making his fiction film debut several years after assembling the greatly entertaining spelling bell documentary Spellbound. This film is also concerned with school-age competition as a chronic stutterer high school student is recruited for the championship caliber debating team. The narrative holds some comically cruel twists and, more importantly, diverges from the well-worn paths it starts down in refreshingly honest ways. In the end, it feels a touch too slight and, excepting a nice performance by Anna Kendrick as a hyper-verbal overachiever, has few elements that are truly memorable.

The Burning (Tony Maylam, 1981). Why watch this cheapo Friday the 13th rip-off horror flick from the early eighties? A film so forgotten that that even Michael Bay isn’t interested in it? The title has been stored in my memory banks for under the heading “Holly Hunter’s Film Debut” for somewhere close to twenty years, so when a showing of it unexpectedly emerged during some channel clicking, it seemed like an amusing, harmless way to pass an evening. Turns out it’s also the debut of bushy-haired Jason Alexander and, less notably, Fisher Stevens and Brian Backer. They’re all far more prominent, in fact. Hunter is basically an extra given just enough prominence to require the acquisition of a S.A.G. card, laughing or screaming or lobbing flirty taunts amongst a small gaggle of fellow female campers. The film itself is hopelessly standard-issue. There’s the summer camp setting, the murderous fiend wielding sharp implements to exact revenge for a cruel prank gone wrong years earlier, and the usual collection of misbehaving teens prone to conspicuous nookie and sultry showering. It probably goes without typing that it isn’t very good, although there are characteristically gory Tom Savini makeup effects for those who are into that sort of thing.

Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, 1968). Newman’s directorial debut is about as quiet and restrained as a movie can get. Based on a Margaret Laurence novel, the film is about a lonely schoolteacher in her thirties, stuck in her hometown looking after her passive aggressive mother. The clear purpose of the film is to provide an acting showcase for Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward. In that capacity, it’s a marvelous success. With gentle exactitude, Woodward captures the wounded longing of this woman, but is honest enough in her performance to show how quickly that can transform into an off-putting neediness or curt self-absorption. It’s natural to feel sympathy for Woodward’s Rachel. That shouldn’t prevent us from seeing the way solitude has shaped some of her traits in problematic ways. Newman is confident enough to allow that through with a directing style that is elegantly unobtrusive. One year after her richly-deserved Oscar win for Bonnie and Clyde, Estelle Parson turns in another terrific supporting performance as Rachel’s one confidante.

American Gangster (Ridley Scott, 2007). Maybe it’s needlessly ungracious, but one of my first reactions after finally watching Scott’s high-gloss epic about a Harlem drug kingpin was relief that Ruby Dee didn’t fulfill many prognosticators’ forecasts that she’d win last year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her nominated work here. The role is so puny and Dee’s work so undistinguished that the nod is embarrassing, even judged against the low standards of the Academy when its sentimental streak takes over. That aside, American Gangster is a generic Hollywood offering, trying futilely to wring drama out of the drug trade and the efforts of the dedicated few who fight against it. A film like this pops up every few years and it’s rarely any good. It’s as if the creators assume that just because the film is about substances that are prevalent at all their best parties, it’ll automatically yield interesting material. That theory doesn’t hold up for cocaine or heroin any more than it would for Chex mix. At least Scott’s usual approach of overly agitated editing is toned down. It may not be rewarding, but it’s watchable.