Despicable Me

IMDb
When a criminal mastermind uses a trio of orphan girls as pawns for a grand scheme, he finds their love is profoundly changing him for the better.


Rotten Tomatoes
A mysterious criminal mastermind has stolen one of the pyramids in Egypt, sparking a fit of jealous envy in evil genius Gru (Steve Carell), who hasn't managed to make headlines since he and his minions swiped the Times Square JumboTron years back. Ever since Gru was a little boy, he dreamed of going to the moon. Now, if Gru can just build a rocket and get his hands on a powerful shrink-ray, he can cement his reputation as the greatest thief who ever lived by stealing the Earth's satellite right out of the sky. But immediately after Gru heists the shrink-ray, the cunning super-nerd Vector (Jason Segel) swoops in and snatches it right out of his hands. Now, in order to claim the moon, Gru must first reacquire the weapon from Vector. Armed with the knowledge that his nemesis has a mean sweet tooth, Gru adopts cookie-selling orphans Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Agnes (Elsie Fisher), and Edith (Dana Gaier) and commissions a new line of cookie robots from the evil Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand), his personal weapons specialist. But as Gru and his diminutive yellow minions prepare to carry out the biggest heist in history, something strange happens. Gru discovers that the three little girls who have come into his life are much more than simple pawns. They actually seem to care about Gru, and it turns out the scheming evildoer makes a pretty good father. When Gru realizes that his upcoming moon mission clashes with a ballet performance by the girls, he must decide what's more important -- being a present parent or cementing his nefarious reputation once and for all. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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The Descent

IMDb
A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.



RollingStone

Scariest Horror Movies You've Never Seen

From French slasher flicks to Spanish ghost stories, here are a handful of horror flicks that make for perfect alt-Halloween viewing.

Pretty much the worst marketing campaign for spelunking ever, Neil Marshall's relentless British horror flick turns a harmless caving expedition among girlfriends into a tour of your absolute worst fears. A year after losing her husband and child in a grisly car accident, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) gets lost with five fellow adventurers in the bat-infested depths of Appalachia, where they're forced to reckon with claustrophobia, darkness, entombment, heights, and buckets of blood. Oh, and did we mention the zombie-like wall-crawling hyena humanoids? There are no damsels in distress among the exclusively female cast — just variations on badass heroines, which makes it that much harder to accept their mortality. "The worst thing that'll ever happen to you has already happened," one tells the still-grieving Sarah after an early trial. It's not true by a long shot. EH



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Raze

IMDb
Raze, a horror/action film, focuses on two abducted women & 50 other women who are forced to fight each other using their bare hands.



Rotten Tomatoes
A young woman is abducted by an elite, secret society and wakes to find herself in the company of fifty other women who are, just like her, forced to fight for their lives in an unimaginable hell. (c) IFC Films


RogerEbert
If "Raze" had been released in 1975, Quentin Tarantino would never shut up about it. He still might not shut up about it because it stars Zoe Bell, the New Zealand stuntwoman who doubled for Uma Thurman in the "Kill Bill" films and clung to the hood of Stuntman Mike's car in "Death Proof." Directed by Josh C. Waller from a screenplay by Robert Beaucage, this tale of captive women fighting to the death has the poker-faced craziness of a 1970s or early '80s midnight flick, the kind that made audiences howl for blood. 

"Raze" starts with an obvious fake-out, making you think it's about another character when it's obviously about Sabrina, whose raging face adorns the film's poster. A young woman (Rachel Nichols) wakes up on the floor of the dungeon following a one-night stand with a hunky guy she picked up in a bar, wanders the prison halls and runs into Sabrina, who fights and kills her in a close-quarters confrontation filmed in Jason Bourne whiplash-cam.

Then it's on to the premise, the characters and their backstories. The prison is a family-run institution that's pitted women against each other for generations. The guards are male, the prisoners female. The current jailers are a creepy, ostentatiously moralistic married couple (Sherilyn Fenn and Doug Jones) who dote on each other when they aren't berating the prisoners for their sins. The inmates all have experience fighting, professionally or otherwise. Most studied martial arts for self-defense; the wiseass Phoebe, played like a sneering Lee Marvin villain by Rebecca Marshall, has been physically and sexually abused since childhood. The jailers compel the women by threatening their loved ones, images of whom are piped in via closed-circuit TV. These human insurance policies have no idea they're being monitored, much less marked for death.

The best genre movies create their own reality, then fill it with situations compelling enough that the viewer is rarely distracted by what Alfred Hitchcock called "refrigerator logic." How did the jailers successfully kidnap so many strong women? Why are the women conventionally beautiful enough to be catalog models? Do the jailers buy their sweatpants in bulk? You don't ask such questions of "Raze" because it's a dream logic movie comprised of bits and pieces of other dream logic movies: "Battle Royale," the Hunger Games series, "The Most Dangerous Game," a smidgen of "Fight Club," a dollop of "Oldboy." The characters are sketched with two or three details, then filled in by the actors' furiously physical performances. In place of a standard three-act structure, "Raze" is presented as a series of bouts joined by thin strands of dramatic connective tissue. Onscreen fight cards tell you who's up next.

Of course "Raze" begs to be read as allegory, perhaps for the way patriarchal society treats women as objects, entertainments, prisoners or slaves, pits them against one another for the prize of male approval, and pressures them to conform to limiting roles: girlfriend, wife, mother, tramp. Tantalizing fragments of meaning ricochet in the film's margins, but they never freeze long enough to let you look at them.

That's probably for the best. "Raze" is not an especially political or even introspective work, though it sometimes poses as one. If its direction and fight choreography were a more imaginative—if each showdown had a strikingly different look, or were built around a different concept, as in Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies—it might have been a classic of sorts. Instead it's a solid feature with a few inspired moments. Its dark virtues are visceral and emotional: the amped-up sound effects of heels and knuckles bruising flesh and cracking bone; the intelligence in Sabrina's eyes as she plots against her jailers; the weirdly powerful confrontation between two combatants, one of whom tries to psych out her opponent by repeatedly asking her, "How's your mother?"

This is a women's prison picture, but not the kind you're thinking of. There are no rape scenes or shower scenes. Moments in which men intimidate or overpower women are about bulk and intensity, not sexual terrorism. "Raze" doesn't objectify its female fighters any more than the Olympics objectify their athletes. Its women are posed and shot like hounded Amazons, and the director gives every major character a spot-lit pirouette; the best finds Marshall taunting future adversaries in the cellblock hall, then stepping through an entryway and giving the finger—to the viewer, or so it seems—before the doors slide shut. The female characters are gladiators. Sabrina is Spartacus in a tank top.

Bell's performance is the best reason to see "Raze." She's just right as Sabrina, a strong-silent type in Steve McQueen-Clint Eastwood mode. The character mangles adversaries with her fists, feet, forehead and thumbs, but Bell's most fascinating moments are quiet ones where you watch her Hellenic face in close-up, thinking. How was this actress not cast as Wonder Woman? Can anything be done to remedy this injustice?

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Frozen

IMDb

For the first time in forever a true Disney classic is realized

Author: CarrieJa from United States
25 November 2013

When people speak of their favorite Disney movies, the big four of the Renaissance and films of the Golden Age of animation are likely to be mentioned. The past decade has seen Disney movies that were hit or miss. Some considered classics, some forgotten and some close to being classics but not there yet. Frozen changes this dynamic and creates a full fledged classic. Frozen IS not just a classic, it is THE Disney classic of the decade. It could position itself up there with the best of them. Disney returns to its roots with a vengeance. The best animated film of the past few years in my opinion.

The story is heart melting, filled with the pure feeling and heart that has become a staple with the best Disney movies. It is a moving story that has family at its center. It is unpretentious in what it is trying to portray. The comedy hits right on the mark and the action packed adventure and thrilling journey make this a tale with a little bit of everything in the exact right amounts. It is a daring movie that is laugh out loud at the some moments and stunning and provoking at others. All achieved in balance. A true triumph in story telling that proves exactly what Disney does best and again proving that they are back to producing top quality films. This is an affecting human story, one that is significant.

Startling and stunning, beautifully envisioned, emotionally powerful and relevant. Gorgeous visuals, stunning backdrops and intricacies like you have never seen before. The environments, the costumes, the character movements among other things make this film a gigantic step forward. The brilliant voice talents that breath life into this project need to be applauded and then some. The cast consisting of Kristen bell (Veronica Mars) and Idina Menzel(Wicked!)among many others bring winning charm, superior voice acting and magnificent vocals as well as heart to this tale. The sensational wit and humor, the arrays of different personalities, their emotions, their triumphs and falls make them some of the most interesting characters that people can relate to and some of the best i have seen in animation. The cast fully become the characters.

The score and music is perfect. The score is grand. The sound, the texture, the harmony, the melody is in a class of its own. Above and beyond anything attempted by the animation studio in the past decade. I would place the songs up there with those of the 90's movies and 2000's Enchanted. A true all round musical triumph. Songs that will be stuck in your mind and you will be humming them and you won't even know it. And some you will be belting out at the top of your lungs because they are that good. Songs that progress the story and an essential part of it.

So you have meticulously crafted breath taking animation, an affecting tale of the bond of family, romance, hilarious wit and humor courtesy of the characters especially sweet Olaf and heart stopping adventure. A true fairy tale that i would say could very well be The Little Mermaid or The Beauty and The Beast of this generation.

FROZEN has that Disney MAGIC that has been missing for so long and it comes in full force here.

Rotten Tomatoes

Featuring the voices of Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel, "Frozen" is the coolest comedy-adventure ever to hit the big screen. When a prophecy traps a kingdom in eternal winter, Anna, a fearless optimist, teams up with extreme mountain man Kristoff and his sidekick reindeer Sven on an epic journey to find Anna's sister Elsa, the Snow Queen, and put an end to her icy spell. Encountering mystical trolls, a funny snowman named Olaf, Everest-like extremes and magic at every turn, Anna and Kristoff battle the elements in a race to save the kingdom from destruction. (c) Disney

RogerEbert

The animated, 3-D adventure wants to enliven and subvert the conventions of typical Disney princess movies while simultaneously remaining true to their aesthetic trappings for maximum merchandising potential. It encourages young women to support and stay loyal to each other—a crucial message when mean girls seem so prevalent—as long as some hunky potential suitors and adorable, wise-cracking creatures also are around to complete them.

It all seems so cynical, this attempt to shake things up without shaking them up too much. "Frozen" just happens to be reaching theaters as Thanksgiving and the holiday shopping season are arriving. The marketing possibilities are mind-boggling. And in the tradition of the superior "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid," surely "Frozen: The Musical" will be headed to the Broadway stage soon. The songs – which are lively and amusing if not quite instant hits—are already in place. 

Little girls will absolutely love it, though. That much is undeniable. And the film from co-directors Chris Buck ("Surf's Up") and Jennifer Lee is never less than gorgeous to watch. A majestic mountaintop ice castle is particularly exquisite—glittery and detailed and tactile, especially as rendered in 3-D.

But first we must witness the tortured backstory of the film's princesses – not one, but two of them. The script from "Wreck-It Ralph" co-writer Lee, inspired by the Hans Christian Andersenstory "The Snow Queen," has lots of cheeky, contemporary touches but is firmly and safely rooted in Scandinavian fairy tale traditions.

When they were young girls, sisters Anna and Elsa were joyous playmates and inseparable friends. But Elsa's special power—her ability to turn anything to ice and snow in a flash from her fingertips—comes back to haunt her when she accidentally zaps her sister. (Not unlike the telekinesis in "Carrie," Elsa inadvertently unleashes her power in moments of heightened emotion.) A magical troll king heals Anna and erases the event from her memory, but as for the sisters' relationship, the damage is done.

Elsa's parents lock her away and close down the castle, which devastates the younger Anna. (Of the many tunes from "Avenue Q" and "The Book of Mormon" songwriter Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, the wistful "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" is by far the most poignant.) But once they reach adolescence and it's Elsa's turn to take over the throne at age 18, the two experience an awkward reunion.

The perky, quirky Anna (now voiced by a likable Kristen Bell) is a little nervous but overjoyed to see her sister. The reserved and reluctant Elsa (Broadway veteran Idina Menzel) remains distant, and with gloved hands hopes not to freeze anything and reveal her true self on coronation day. But a run-in with an amorous, visiting prince (Santino Fontana) who sets his sights on Anna triggers Elsa's ire, and she inadvertently plunges the sunny, idyllic kingdom into perpetual winter.

Flustered and fearful, Elsa dashes away in a fit of self-imposed exile – which significantly weakens "Frozen," since she's the film's most complicated and compelling figure. On her way to the highest mountain she can find, Elsa belts out the power ballad "Let It Go," her version of "I Am Woman." This soaring declaration of independence is the reason you want a performer of Menzel's caliber in this role, and it's the film's musical highlight. (Her flashy physical transformation from prim princess to ice queen does make her resemble a real housewife of some sort, however.)

Afterward, though, the story settles in on Anna's efforts to retrieve her sister and restore order to the kingdom. Along the way she gets help from an underemployed ice salesman named Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) and his trusty reindeer sidekick, Sven. They all meet up with a singing snowman named Olaf (a lovably goofy Josh Gad, star of "The Book of Mormon" on Broadway) who dreams of basking in the warmth of the summer sun. This "Wizard of Oz"-style quartet makes the obstacle-filled trek to the imposing fortress that awaits. (At least "Frozen" has the decency to borrow from excellent source material.)

While the journey may seem overly familiar, the destination has some surprises in store. Some come out of nowhere and don't exactly work. But the biggie—the one that's a real game-changer in terms of the sorts of messages Disney animated classics have sent for decades—is the one that's important not just for the little girls in the audience, but for all viewers. It's so innovative, it makes you wish everything about the film met the same clever standard.

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And HollyWood movies

The Mountain of the Cannibal God 1978

IMDb
A girl and her brother fly to New Guinea to look for a lost expedition, led by her husband, which has vanished in the great jungle.



HorrorPedia

‘When the price of lust is death!’

The Mountain of the Cannibal God (Italian title: La montagna del dio cannibale) is a 1978 Italian cult movie starring Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach with English dialogue that was filmed in Sri Lanka. The film was also widely released as Slave of the Cannibal God and in the UK as Prisoner of the Cannibal God. Despite being shown in cinemas in a BBFC cut version, it was banned in Britain until 2001 for its graphic violence and considered a “video nasty”.

Incredibly, not stopping the cannibal cycle of films which appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s in its tracks, The Mountain of the Cannibal God is one of the most head-scratching entries. Despite the cruelty inflicted upon animals in the film and the nudity, most famously that of Ursula Andress, underlying is an enjoyable but actually terribly ropey film which offers nothing in the way of tension, drama or soul.

The plot is straightforward enough, Andress playing Susan Stevenson, the wife of an anthropologist who has been missing in the jungles of Guinea (check that sat nav, chaps), sets off to try and find him, with the aid of her annoying brother (Antonio Marsina) and scientist Edward Foster (Stacy Keach). The twist in the tale is that the siblings are actually searching for radioactive uranium hidden in remote caves – that’s if you don’t consider running into a tribe of peckish cannibals as a twist.

Keach was not adverse to taking roles that veered from, for example, Barrabas in Jesus of Nazareth to grimy British crime movie The Squeeze but exactly what Andress’s agent had assured her about the film is unclear – though years had passed since Dr No, an appearance just three years later in Clash of the Titans, surely proved her star had not completely diminished. The setting is anything but as classy asShe. Regardless, the pair roam through the utterly unconvincingly dense forest, passing the same cheeseplants again and again, enough times that you too will soon forget why you thought all this was a good idea. 

On paper, the plot seems acceptable enough but it runs out of steam almost instantly, leaving us with unlovable characters and some tedious padding. The appearance of  the character Manolo (played by Claudio Cassinelli, who tragically died in a helipcopter crash in Martino’s Fists of Fury in 1986) makes little sense, other than to keep prodding Andress and Keach awake. Fortunately, we receive rather bigger jolts to keep us enthralled.

Though Martino has insisted that it was the producers of the film who insisted that footage of animals being slaughtered was inserted into the film, this excuse is used so often that it’s difficult to take seriously; was it really such a prizes project that a director of Martino’s standing and reputation would go along with any request? Thus, a large lizard is butchered, snakes skinned, a large spider trodden on and a cute fluffy thing, clearly with the same manager as Andress,  is strangled by a boa constrictor… very slowly.

That said, rather like ivory ornaments from yesterday, what’s done is done, it’s there and though ghoulish, it adds nothing, so poorly added to the rest of the film that it comes across as being just as, if not more gratuitous than, similar scenes in the far more challenging Cannibal Holocaust, Last Cannibal World andCannibal Ferox. Keach bails out of the horror by falling off a waterfall, whilst Andress survives having a massive, drooling snake (do boa constrictors actually  drool? Answers by fax, please) drop on her, the wrestling scene being as convincing as a warm-up between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks.

If the indignity of the script and the low budget weren’t enough, Andress still had to come to terms with the plentiful nudity she was expected to deliver – she didn’t disappoint. After finding her husband, dead and now looking like a toffee apple that’s been dropped on the carpet, her true motives are revealed but not before the cannibals capture her, treating her first as fondue and then as a Goddess. To prove their adulation, she is stripped and has her breasts anointed with orange mud (or maybe it’s honey) by cannibals who are similarly attired. The camera cuts to another cannibal girl, clearly enjoying herself whilst the frenzy of cannibals feasting and Ursula’s fondling reach a perplexing climax. To confirm you really are imagining it all, a dwarf cannibal is brained on the wall of a cave and one of his mates enthusiastically simulates congress with a large pig. Well done everyone.

Martino is a terribly frustrating director, conjuring up wonderful gems like All the Colors of the Dark andYour Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and, well, this. I appreciate we all have gas bills to pay but at what stage this wasn’t a catastrophe I can’t imagine. It is, still, well worth a watch, for all the bad stuff and the good – in particular the score from those prolific brothers, Guido and Maurizio De Angelis.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

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Jungle Holocaust 1977

IMDb
An oil prospector escapes from capture by a primitive cannibal tribe in the Philippine rain forest and heads out to locate his missing companion and their plane to return home.


Monsterhuntermoviereviews

From what I’ve been able to gather from thesecannibal movies, the actual presence of primitive tribes practicing cannibalism in today’s world is pretty limited. So how is it then that if these vicious cannibals are invariably “the last of their kind” a “lost tribe” or “thought long extinct” that every stupid group of documentary filmmakers, reporters, fashion models, and businessmen manage to either crash land smack dab in the middle of their territory, or worse yet, mount an expedition that takes them straight into their stew pots?

As expected from an Italian cannibal flick, Ruggero Deodato’s (Dial: Help) Jungle Holocaust offers up plenty of grim death, torture, and animal abuse, but is also surprisingly involving since Deodato approaches the story of businessman Robert Harper as one of survival and how Harper does whatever it takes to stay alive, ultimately committing the very acts that he once believed separated modern man from the primitives.

Things start off inauspiciously enough with Robert and three other people on a small plane flying into the jungle to check out some business concern he’s trying to get up and running there. No one on the ground answers their radio calls and the landing strip hasn’t been mowed in a few weeks which causes the plane to lose a wheel on landing.

Robert isn’t too thrilled with his workers and upon checking the camp finds it deserted. A search of the area shows evidence that his crew may have met their fate at the hands of a tribe of cannibals, so Robert and his three companions go back to the plane, the wheel having been fixed and decide to fly out in the morning when it’s light out.

The next day, the pilot ends up impaled on one of those falling spike balls the cannibals always have tied in the trees for intruders and Robert and his remaining friend Rolf (Ivan Rassimov from Spasmo) decide they need to get back to the plane and get out of there before they’re next.

Their problem though is that the cannibals have chased them around so that they’re lost and they end up building a raft to get them down the river that they think flowed passed the airfield.

Robert and Rolf are ultimately separated when they go over some pretty nasty rapids and Robert ends up a prisoner of the cannibal tribe while Rolf has completely disappeared.

The middle part of the movie where Robert is held captive by the tribe at once hews closely to the conventions of these sorts of movies, but also manages to go beyond the expected scenes of carnage.

You are treated to various scenes of animals being slaughtered and some gore, but it’s not omnipresent or done purely to shock so much as to illustrate what Robert was going through and what caused him to descend into savagery by the end of the film.

Some of the movie’s best stomach churning moments have nothing to do with the gore as both us and Robert wonder why they haven’t simply killed and eaten him. He figures out that because he came in on the airplane, they think he’s like a bird and can fly.

This results in some queasy scenes where they hoist him up to the top of the enormous cave they inhabit and then let him drop free-fall style until he almost crashes on the ground. Who knew that the bungee jump was invented by a lost tribe of jungle cannibals?

He survives that and is thrown in a cage with some birds and realizes that he will soon be used for gator bait. This is when he decides that it’s time to get primitive on these jokers and grabs a good sturdy rock and pulls the old possum trick before brutally making his escape.

Robert’s ultimate act of becoming those that he has struggled against takes place shortly before he gets back to the plane. Once aboard the plane Robert pleads with the barely alive Rolf to tell him that Rolf would’ve have done the same thing if it were him.

A surprisingly gripping account that mostly fulfills the icky promise these cannibal movies usually fail so dismally at. Of the high profile Italian jungle movies including Cannibal Holocaust,Cannibal Ferox, and Eaten Alive, Jungle Holocaust is far and away the best of the lot.

Massimo Foschi lets all hang out (literally) and impresses with a performance that gets across Robert’s changing character with very little dialogue and wide-eyed looks that go from shock, to haunted, to numbed.

The decision to concentrate on a single man, his fears and uncertainty as to his fate, the things he has to endure, and the acts he has to commit in an effort to stay alive transforms what could have been simply another crummy collection of special effects shots and animal slaughter footage, into something shocking – a story that horrifies you, but doesn’t gross you out.

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Everest

IMDb
A climbing expedition on Mt. Everest is devastated by a severe snow storm.



RogerEbert
“Never Let Go” is the tagline on posters for this movie, based on the true story of an exceedingly ill-fated trek up the title mountain in 1996. “What The Hell Are You All Doing Up There In The First Place?” might be a more apropos. The transformation of massively risky mountain-climbing, as an activity exclusively for scientists and highly-trained explorers to an adventure-tourism endurance test for the rich and obsessive, gets taken care of here in a series of three title texts at the beginning of the movie, starting with the ostensible conquest of Mount Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary’s team. Beginning with some tantalizing/troubling glimpses of the heedless and colonialist aspects of adventure tourism culture, "Everest" then gets down to business. This movie, scripted by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy and directed, with meticulous regard for the elements and action, by Iceland-born filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur, is a detailed and realistic depiction of climbers—of various experiences—facing the worst possible conditions, at heights and climates that seem designed to shut a human body down. 

Jason Clarke’s Rob Hall is an experienced climber and the head of a company called Adventure Consulting. He’s a good-hearted bloke who’s got a devoted team and a relatively diverse clientele. The climbers putting out big bucks (or, in some cases, as it happens not; Hall, we learn at one point, is even more good-hearted than he appears) for a spring jaunt up Everest include cocky Texas businessman Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin),  good-natured workingman Doug Hansen, and very game Yasuko Namba (Naoko Mori) a petite powerhouse who’s topped six of the so-called Seven Summits and now wants Nepal’s Everest, the highest of the bunch. The conditions at base camp are hectic and slightly tense. A star journalist, Jon Krakauer, is part of Hall’s expedition, which has aroused the envy of a Hall's pal Scott who’s now a rival climb organizer (played Jake Gyllenhaal, portraying the more hippie-ish side of the climbing gestalt). There are scheduling issues and various manifestations of pissiness between the teams that go up the mountains and prep climbing tools for their clients. Clearly, there’s a lot that can go wrong. Particularly if the weather turns bad.

There’s a resemblance here to both the story and the movie adaptation of the story told in “The Perfect Storm.” The characters involved are making a good faith effort—but good faith efforts by humans can only go so far. “Nature always has the last word,” one character observes early on. As the movie expertly depicts freezing conditions, approaching and full-blown storms, mini-avalanches hitting at just the wrong place and just the wrong time, and more, the movie provides an object lesson with respect to that adage.

As much as "Everest" trades in a kind of authenticity, it also trucks in the most banal of disaster movie clichés; for instance, one of the principal characters in the trek is leaving behind a pregnant wife. While this part of the story is as true as any other, the dialogue between the characters at the outset: “You better be back for the birth, [Full Character Name];” “You try and stop me,” practically screeches to the audience, “Start worrying about this guy NOW.”

What it all amounts to, finally, is an excruciating and dispiriting simulated recreation of excruciating and dispiriting real life events. While leaving the theater, I overheard several sets of people discussing the various actions some of the characters took and what they, the viewers, might have done in their stead. This occasioned some slight despair on my part. "You can’t stop what’s coming," as someone once said in another movie starring Josh Brolin, and I rather doubt that the filmmakers’ aim in making this picture was to excite the vanity of its audience. The point, as far as I understand it, isn’t “You could live if you did things differently than X” but rather that even the best-prepared are not really prepared.

Not that I’ve ever been a “What’s the point?” kind of person in my aesthetic enthusiasms. But in spite of the excellent technical work and the efforts of a first-rate cast, “Everest” did not exhilarate or scare me as much as leave me flatly sad. A real-life footage coda to the movie suggests that the participants signed off on this portrayal, and in a sense it’s an apt and sensitive tribute. A good many accounts of the 1996 events have been told in book and movie form—Krakauer’s own highly-regarded book “Into Thin Air,” Beck Weathers’ memoir, and more. I myself worked on a piece for Premiere magazine focusing on the event from the perspective of David Breashears, who made the IMAX film “Everest” (1998) and who appears as a minor character here. I’ve not read Krakauer’s book, but perhaps I should. Coming out of this movie, the story remained upsettingly senseless to me, and an inapt one for a movie that. Despite its attempts at empathy, "Everest" often plays the cinematic thrill ride card. 

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