Michael Jordan To The Max

By Richard Corliss Sunday, May 14, 2000
    • What can fill a screen 81 ft. high? Gods and monsters. The success of Fantasia/2000 in IMAX theaters is cuing top directors like James Cameron to the notion that the format might accommodate longer stories and higher budgets. For now, documentary spectacles still splatter the big wall. The Jordan movie--a star chat interspersed with clips from his final NBA playoff drive--has an adoring tone and the familiar slo-mo, wide-angle baskebatics. For higher highs and cooler thrills, go Cirque. The Montreal-based art circus has finally made a film that captures the joy and awe of shows like Quidam, Mystere and O by placing Cirque du Soleil's most enthralling acts in natural settings: a bungee ballet in a forest; a living-statue duet in a Renaissance pool; the graceful intricacy of swimmers locking into Busby Berkeley designs underwater in the Bahamas. The performers' precision and daring touch the viewer, and not just because Journey is in 3-D. Here are humans achieving the impossible, beautifully, in a film worthy of being displayed on a screen eight stories high.