John Ottway (Liam Neeson) awakens stretched out across a row of upholstered seats firmly planted in the wet ground. Unbuckling the seatbelt, Ottway carefully lifts himself and stands erect. He dazedly scans his surroundings: a never-ending horizon of white. This isn't some angelic purgatory. It's the unforgiving, Alaskan Arctic. Spotting an embankment, Ottway clumsily scampers to its summit and finds a disemboweled fuselage, separated from the wings of his charter plane.
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It's only a few minutes into Man on a Ledge before the camera pans up to a ledge, prompting ominous thoughts like: there is a ledge. Will there be a man on it soon? Will this man be played by Sam Worthington, and will he harbor a dark secret and/or a mysterious agenda?
Yes, yes, many times yes. Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, and after he gets up on that ledge -- not long after that first pan, as if desperate to prove his efficiency bona fides -- we learn a little more about him. He's a former cop, framed for stealing a diamond from businessman David Englander (Ed Harris), and he's on the ledge to protest and/or prove his innocence. Nearby, his brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and Joey's girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) busy themselves with some sort of a break-in while the NYPD's Lydia Spencer (Elizabeth Banks) is called onto the scene to negotiator with Cassidy.
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The ability to conjure art out of massive edifices has something to do with the reverence many hold for our world's top architects. It could also be that most of the buildings the average person walks past or finds themselves inside on a daily basis don't have much to recommend it. Whereas the moment that you come across a structure that cuts through the air in a way that snaps your head back or causes a flutter of awe is so rare that the people who made such a thing happen can seem like modern-day magicians. It's that sense of being in the presence of greatness which both animates and stultifies this glinting bauble of a documentary about architect Norman Foster.
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Patric Chiha's Domaine begins with a seductive and cerebral sequence that unfolds with lovely, unstrained subtlety, from the first dim glimpses of a strawberry-red dress to a woozy bout of inebriated dancing between friends. In between, the group, led by Nadia (the incomparable Beatrice Dalle), muses on about mathematics, control, sexuality, and philosophy, but temptation is what is conveyed by Chiha's camera as it passes over the faces of the group. Pheromones drift in between all participants, but the palpitations of temptation in Nadia's nephew, Pierre (Isaie Sultan), are felt strongest. Like Pierre, we are enamored by Nadia's intellect and ability to be bound to nothing but her ferocious will and, yes, the bottle.
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