“Well, the rewards are greater than the risks,” says mountaineer Conrad Anker about returning to the mountains that nearly claimed his life and killed his climbing partner on Shishapangma. “I just think that there are certain people who are hard-wired in their DNA to go out and take on more risk than their fellows. Look at Homer’s Odyssey: these great tales of leaving behind the family and going off into the unknown—and great risk of death or disfigurement. And then they come home and are heralded as heroes. It goes back into when we were hunter-gatherers. The men would have to go out and do this, and it is sort of the basis of how we have created society.”

Letters to God does have a lot a going for it. It lovingly tells the story of a young boy who bounces back from brain-tumor surgery for a time and inspires friends and family with his titular prayer-letters to God; it thankfully doesn’t drag us through tragedy-of-the-week territory, instead jumping right into Tyler’s attempts to reintroduce himself to life; it features a strong and appealing central performance from Robyn Lively as Tyler’s mom, Maddy; and nowhere do you feel like the producers are trying to sneak by with second-best. Even for its target audience, though, Letters might feel a little too much like a fantasy—as if the filmmakers themselves live on film sets rather than in the real world, and can no longer tell the difference.

Never mind that the film wasn’t actually shot in IMAX, or that it’s not, properly speaking, an actual documentary. It’s kind of Himalayan reality TV, with high-def camera crews on hand to capture Conrad Anker’s staged recreations of George Mallory’s final assault on Everest in 1924, and his attempt to free-climb the legendary “Second Step” of Everest’s north ridge, the obstacle which most likely—most likely—turned Mallory and climbing partner Sandy Irvine back before summiting. So my biases aside… Is this worth your ten or twenty bucks for a ticket? I’d say probably yes. I know way more about Everest than is likely good for me, but I still know an entertaining film when I see one.

This is a film that lets no one off the hook. We live in a screwed-up world, and we all contribute to the mess in some fashion, despite our best intentions. To Save A Life doesn’t hold out empty promises of a false but wide and comfy road to salvation. Instead, it demonstrates quite clearly that the path to God is narrow and treacherous—and that we travel it one life at a time. I’m encouraged that the Christian publishing industry, a necessary evil of sorts here in the West, has finally seen fit to acknowledge that “family friendly” isn’t the only viable form that products for the Christian niche market may take.

What do you get when you cross the best parts of Footloose with your favorite Australian popcorn flick, a slightly startling aural aesthetic, and several engaging performances? Well, I don’t know what you’d get, or what I’d get, but second-generation writer/director Dagen Merrill gets Broken Hill, one of the most engaging teen melodramas I’ve seen in a long, long time. In a wondrous treat for the audience, Merrill’s script brings us into Tommy McAlpine’s conductor-wannabe mind through creative orchestration and unexpected visuals. I won’t say more than that… but sometimes cinematic magic is just about connecting certain familiar dots in ways that are engagingly fresh and off-beat—leveraging and exploiting expectations, rather than defeating them outright.

I enjoyed Rain not so much for its creativity, “freshness,” or daring (of which you may find plenty), but simply because it took me—in a convincing and non-distracting fashion—into a different and interesting world. Better, Govan opts for subtlety in many of the plot details (such as the backstory behind Coach Adams’ rift with her own father, or putting the story in the proper sub-tourist context) rather than a sledgehammer. The information you’re after, in just about every case, is there if you care to pay attention, but Govan isn’t going to lead you by your nose. If Hustle & Flow, as just one example, left you feeling like you’d been conned a little bit—like the “hard life” didn’t seem as hard as it should have—here’s the slice of life you might be looking for… sans the hype.

Thematically, the subject is survivor’s guilt. Both Marie and Maurice really can’t get over the fact that one boy had to die—in much the same way the whole town can’t get over the fact that most of the male populace won’t be coming home from some unspecified war. The moral seems to be: if you can’t find a way to reconcile yourself with your past, and insist on reclaiming it, it’s like living with the dead… and it will kill you. What’s done is done, and trying to answer the question “Why?” is most often futile. Stylistically, The Shadow Within is unlike just about anything else out there that you’re likely to see.

For the most part, the script makes all the right moves, and the direction strikes the proper tone in emulation of The Princess Bride. The visuals are also appealing. But The Princess Bride also succeeded because it was refreshingly original—and because it was directed by Rob Reiner. Instead, clever as it is, Jack and Beanstalk often feels like a retread. Ten minutes in, I was thinking Jack might be turn out to be a minor low-budget classic—and my wife and I enjoyed it well enough. But the film simply doesn’t sustain that level of ingenuity. As Jack and Jillian, however, Colin Ford and Chloe Moretz turn in very solid performances. (The latter will soon be a household name, I expect.)

Dave fancies himself a “player” whose sure-fire gift with the gals is guaranteed to, uh, jump-start a new love life for his two-years-gone widower grand-dad Joe. As Dave is putting his plans through their, though, he’s learning lessons about companionship from Joe. Joe, meanwhile, is learning from Dave about the more physical side of romance—that companionship is deep and satisfying, yes; but that an active sex life is pretty sweet, too. But writer/director/producer Marc Fienberg is not just after an SNL wink-wink, nudge-nudge sensibility. No, watch closely, stick things through to the end, and you might be thinking you just watched the rom-com equivalent of an M. Night Shyamalan film. Fienberg knows what he’s doing behind both pen and camera.

In an industrialized area of China, a girl infant is born deformed—and abandoned in a field. A young married worker finds the child, and against his wife’s wishes, adopts it. The girl grows up completely sequestered, hiding behind a veil even in her own home. In Malibu, meanwhile, Katie grows up as the spoiled only daughter of a squabbling twosome, lawyer Steven and his too-idle wife Bridgette. Katie naturally acquires the chronic American “whatever” attitude. When she’s challenged by a teacher to participate in an overseas relief effort and runs across the story of Mr. Matthews’ abortive encounter with Lin and Daniel the previous year, she’s hooked. By that time, most likely you will be, too.