Mike Goes To Movies

Everest (2015) I'm not going to lie, my expectations for Everest sat quite nicely at ground zero (around where I would imagine base camp to be) - I thought this was simply going to be yet another action-packed disaster-esque kind of film. And so, it was that I was pleasantly surprised by the quite-grounded nature of the film that built its action and suspense not through crazy special-effects action set-pieces but through character drama and the realistic threats that one would encounter summiting the highest peak on this planet. It may be that part of my enjoyment of this film stemmed from my own recent experience as a few years ago I hiked up a mountain and got a small taste of the dismantling effect that cold and oxygen deprivation has on a body. No, what I climbed is nowhere close to the feat of Everest, but a lot of what is depicted in this film regarding preparation (both mental and physical) were things that our guides talked to us about on our own climb. As mentioned,...

Free Solo (2018) So, I'm not going to lie here... at no point last night was I comfortable watching this year's Best Documentary winner, Free Solo . Yes, it is an incredible documentary, but I personally do not do great with heights and so this documentary was a bit of an endeavour for me to get through. Throughout the entirety of my watching experience my hands were doused in a perpetual layer of sweat and my stomach wrenched tightly in my chest. Unlike Alex, my amygdala was very much being stimulated, perhaps to a dangerous degree, as I watched him free climb a number of mammoth and unrelenting sheer rock faces including the plat du jour, El Capitan. Free Solo really is an utterly remarkable documentary though. It is an adrenaline-pumping, majestic and fascinating look at one man, Alex Honnold, an interesting character himself, and the limits he must push himself to in order to conquer El Capitan, a mountain that has never before been free soloed. The training, both m...