Vertical Limit

Starring: Scott Glenn, Chris O'Donnell, Bill Paxton, Robin Tunney

The movie starts out with a bunch of people climbing the face of some mountain. It's one of those quick opening scenes that introduces the characters and attempts to get right into the action. In this particular scene, there's a father, a sister, a brother, and two other nameless unknown characters that seem to have no real impact on the plot. You'll never guess who dies!

If you haven't figured it out, then sorry, but I'm about to spoil it for you. Nameless guy A and nameless guy B lose their grip and fall, but they're saved by the safety rope. Not content with being alive, these two suicidals decide to throw themselves into wild convulsions as if being attacked by African killer bees. The rope finally snaps, sending them to a well deserved death on the unforgiving rocks below. Ultimately, the father falls too, creating a nice psychological battle for the brother and sister to face before the movie ends.

A few years later, Peter and Annie (the brother and sister) cross paths after having lived out separate lives. Just one day after their reunion, Annie leaves on a trek to the top of K2 just as a massive storm comes over them. Needless to say, an avalanche beats the shit out of everyone, and Annie finds herself trapped under tons of snow with two others. For some reason I didn't catch, the survivors will die in a day and a half unless they get off the mountain. Something about rabid mountain goats that crave the taste of human blood.

This is where the plot building stops and the real heart of the movie begins. Peter gathers up a group of wacky mountain climbers to die in varied and creative ways while trying to save his sister (and maybe the other two survivors if they feel like it). There's a nice cast of characters that go along for the trip, ranging from some crazy dude with no toes to two pot smoking nudist British guys. It was more fun than an episode of Perfect Strangers!

So the rest of the movie is all about the climb up the mountain. As if scaling a mountain that seems to kill everyone off isn't crazy enough, everyone decides to carry some sort of doomsday nitrogen bomb on their backs. The potency of the bomb is revealed during another scene I didn't quite understand, where someone stands in a puddle of green stuff leaking from one of the bombs (oddly similar to the ooze from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze) and then his shoe explodes a few seconds later. I don't know how the hell something like that happens, but we should just accept it and NEVER question the validity of Hollywood produced movies, for Hollywood producers know more than us movie-going mortals. The green stuff makes tennis shoes explode, and that's all that matters.

Vertical Limit has enough thrills and exploding bodies to keep the pace going. My favorite explosion involved a warm bag of human blood, but I won't tell you how that got worked into the movie; you'll have to find out for yourself. Overall, Vertical Limit was able to keep my attention once they started ascending K2, which is a good thing. I didn't care much for the ending, but I can't really say why without risking giving it away.

Vertical Limit doesn't beat Cliffhanger, but it's still fun to watch.

Castaway

In the movie 'Castaway' Tom Hanks roughs it out in style after his company plane goes down in the South Pacific sea. The experience later teaches him one of life's toughest, yet richest, lessons in love and life.

Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is a manager for a courier company who lives his life by the same deadlines imposed on the packages he delivers. He's dedicated to his job, which calls for extensive traveling around the world to train company workers, how to be as time efficient as he is. But his life takes a dramatic turn when en route to South East Asia. His plane plunges into the ocean, leaving him to fend for himself on a deserted island. His love for his girlfriend, Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt), keeps him alive and the courier packages that wash ashore keep him busy. But when he finally makes it off the island, he quickly realizes how things have changed back home.

Hanks once again delivers a character that's easy to warm up to. He's not exactly Forrest Gump, but there's plenty of charm and depth to Chuck. As has been typical of her characters of late, Helen Hunt's Kelly is as bland as they come. The rest of the supporting cast mainly remains on the back burner. But "Castaway"is really somewhat of a one-man show for Hanks to shine, and he does.

The director Robert Zemeckis("Forrest Gump" "Contact") directs yet another film that goes way beyond what is shown on the big screen. There's depth to the main character in this film, as well as a story that takes us deep within a single man's pain, misery and enlightenment after learning what's really important to him in life. The crash scene is especially of note, since it brings a nice touch of excitement to a film that mostly deals with a slow-paced journey into Chuck's deepest most inner thoughts.

Hannibal

Everybody's favorite man-eater, Hannibal Lecter, is back.

HANNIBAL is set in Florence, Italy, a decade after the events of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, in which psychopath Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) was interviewed by FBI agent Clarice Starling (originally played by Jodie Foster) while in the custody of a maximum-security prison. Then he escaped. HANNIBAL picks up where that film left off--with the deranged Lecter now free as a bird in Italy, and Starling still on his trail. A terrifyingly horrific story based on the novel by Thomas Harris, the film takes viewers on a sickening journey through Lecter's violent, cannibalistic mind.

Fresh from the triumph of Gladiator, director Ridley Scott has minted a pretentious parable instead of a character-driven thriller.

Wisely, Hannibal creator Thomas Harris and A-list screenwriters David Mamet and Steven Zallian have ditched the more unfilmable elements of the relationship posited between Lecter and Starling in Harris' novel. Every frame of Scott's film is gorgeously lurid and baroque, but it just hangs there like bad art, even during the gore-spilling, Grand Guignol climax.

Oldman has a high time as Verger, but his character is a dead weight that continually bogs things down. Julianne Moore makes a valiant effort, but Starling has been so thinly written this time around that we can't help but be reminded of the intelligence and vulnerability that Foster brought to the role. Only Hopkins, salivating with gleeful malevolence, delivers on Hannibal's hype. Alas, his performance alone can't turn this problematic hors d'oeuvre into a full-course meal.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

You may know your Hong Kong style martial arts flick conventions, you may not, it doesn't matter: There's a moment in the first fight sequence of Ang Lee's thrilling romantic saga Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon when you realize that the filmmaker has led you to a land of epic storytelling very much his own, one fantastically independent of the laws of physics.

Based on a novel by Wang Du Lu, CROUCHING TIGER starts with the revenge plot common in the wuxia stories that Lee loved as a child, then adds a feminist twist. Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat) is a legendary martial artist who has decided to pass on his sword, the Green Destiny, to a friend. Soon afterwards, the sword is stolen by a masked female, setting in motion events that test the bonds of family, love, duty, and sisterhood. Chow appears with three generations of female stars: Cheng Pei Pei, a 1960s action heroine; Michelle Yeoh, the beauty queen turned 1980s action goddess; and newcomer Zhang Ziyi, who smolders as the princess who wants more than domestic tranquility. Famed action choreographer Yuen Wo Ping (THE MATRIX) stages jaw-dropping zero-G fights across rooftops, rivers, and bamboo trees, while Yo Yo Ma punctuates the fisticuffs with dramatic cello solos. Described by Lee as "SENSE AND SENSIBILITY with martial arts," CROUCHING TIGER recalls the best wuxia films of the 1960s and pushes the genre in new direction.

The fights in ''Crouching Tiger'' are breathtaking, matched by Lee's ability to create psychological depth. As in so many of his projects, this is a story about the gaps between imperfect human beings and their ideals of behavior and social intercourse. Also characteristic are the exquisitely small gestures But in this story, especially, Lee also advances a revolutionary agenda of female equality, in a country that traditionally -- officially -- undervalues females.