Everest (2015)

1996, and Mother Nature's big mama is playing her hand again.
Based on a true story, Everest tells about a climbing expedition on the world's highest mountain that would become devastated by a severe snow storm.
She stands and watches over us all, she is Mount Everest, and climbing her is seen as one of the pinnacles of mountaineering. No matter how many lives are lost over the years, there will always be another group of adventurers ready to take on the mountain and the elements that come with her.
The ill fated 1996 trek up Everest gets a worthy cinematic treatment here. Sure it suffers from some of the pitfalls of the disaster movie genre, such as weak characterisations and fake sequences, but emotional investment is high and ready to be grasped by those so inclined. The drama on the mountain is gripping, and thankfully this is matched by the frantic concurrent story strands involving the family and friends waiting at base camp and the family homes. Cinematography is often breathtaking, the acting performances as solid as one of Everest' rock faces, but it's the story that sells itself. A tale well worth reading about, and the cynical among us should do well to remember this fact. 8/10

Based on true events, this rather beautifully shot film tells the story of Kiwi Rob Hall (an adequate Jason Clarke) who ran an exclusive adventure agency that took well-heeled climbers up Mount Everest. In 1996 he decided to team up with accomplished but rather enigmatic mountaineer Scott Fischer (Jake Gyllenhaal). What now ensues are a rather join-the-dot series of predicable escapades as the mountain decides that it's had enough of these messy and polluting human gadflies on it's slopes, and so it fights back - impressively and decisively. That leads us to the problem with this - the characterisations are seriously undercooked. I didn't really feel that I knew any of them, nor did I actually find - especially with Gyllenhaal - that I cared whether they survived or not. That might be a testament to their acting skills - some creating an aura of complacency and arrogance that well deserved their just desserts, but for the most part the script and the story were just all a bit flat. The cinematography is astonishing though, with actuality of the Nepalese base camps and of the rather benign looking mountain itself. It features quite a notable supporting cast, but again they offer little to beef up the sense of personality here or give us any real sense of the danger, teamwork and camaraderie that must have prevailed in real life. It is watchable for the imagery, and it also serves to remind up that mankind is pretty insignificant when the planet decides to stir itself against us, but as a piece of drama it's all just too lacklustre.