Tonight was another night heavily laden with films, on telly.. and there were a couple, back to back, that I was interested in. So I watched them.
First up was It's Complicated - a romcom. I never usually get to see these, as they're not very highly rated - the rating for this one isn't too bad, mind, and since I was still living in Ireland when it was released, I have to wonder what else I was doing at the time. Anyway, it's written and directed by Nancy Meyers, known for this kind of film.
Meryl Streep is a lady of a certain age, long-divorced, who meets her ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) for the first time in ages when the family gets together for their son's graduation. Well, she's feeling more confident in herself, finally, and lo, the two end up starting an affair. This would be complicated enough - if only in explaining it to their grown-up kids! - without the fact that he's remarried by now, to Lake Bell, with a son, Emjay Anthony, and Meryl has started seeing her architect (Steve Martin, whose business partner is Robert Curtis Brown); she's finally found the strength to move on and remodel the house.
To add to the fun, her and her ex's daughter (Zoe Kazan)'s fiancé, John Krasinski, happens to see her and her ex together and is the first to realise something is going on! Caitlin Fitzgerald is their younger daughter. Rita Wilson, Mary Kay Place, and Alexandra Wentworth show up as Meryl's gal-pals, and Bruce Altman and Nora Dunn have one scene as a couple who are longtime friends of the family. Lots of people, then, that I vaguely recognise from one thing or another..
Recommended! Not as complicated as the title suggests, it's quite simply fun to watch, frequently hilarious, quite believable, and excellently acted by the principals. My only quibble was what a small part Steve Martin has - I'm a big fan.
And so to something completely different. Vertical Limit has Chris O' Donnell and Robin Tunney as siblings who are keen on mountain climbing, egged on by their mountaineering father, Stuart Wilson. And they all go climbing together, in a picturesque desert, at the start of the film. It's not too much of a spoiler to say that something traumatic occurs, which estranges the siblings for a few years.
Fast-forward a few years then, and she's a mountain guide on K2. Chris bumps into her for what appears to be the first time in ages, when he's in the area as part of his job as a photographer for National Geographic. He hangs around base camp for a while - she's got an exciting gig coming up, leading a billionaire (Bill Paxton) to the top. All ascents are made on the Pakistani side, where they have cooperation from the army - the local colonel is Roshan Seth. Scott Glen is base camp's resident weirdo - long-haired and bearded, he also has no toes (obviously lost them climbing on the mountain). Ben Mendelsohn plays one of a pair of wisecracking brothers, also excellent climbers. Izabella Scorupco is a cute nurse that works at base camp, and is the focus of much male attention.
So, all is good - until Scott appears as a Cassandra figure, predicting bad weather on the mountain, in direct contradiction of the scientific analysis. Nah, says the billionaire, of course I wouldn't put people in danger, but really, we're good. Well, we all know what's going to happen here, don't we? K2 is, in fact, known for its bad weather - apparently, it's the main reason it's so difficult to climb. That, and that all approaches are so exposed. And sure enough, the team gets into trouble - in the death zone. And sure enough, Chris is the only one willing to take a rescue team up there - and all the aforementioned climbers tag along.
It's a very fast-moving film - high on adrenaline, it hardly lets you process what's already happened, as it moves to the next thing. Which is fine. And apart from iffy SFX on the first incident, in the desert, I found the various accidents absolutely terrifying, without exception. Lordy, you wouldn't get me up there.. Scott's backstory is surprisingly moving, and the billionaire turns out to be as sneaky as you'd expect. Grr. Anyway, highly recommended, if you have the stomach for the (literal) cliffhangers.. As I watched, I realised I had seen this before, but what the hey, I couldn't remember what happened, so that was fine.
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