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According to most Yosemite Valley guides, it should take the average rock climber anywhere from three to five days to scale the 3,000-foot-high "Nose" of the El Capitan formation. Pepe Danquart's To The Limit watches as brothers Thomas and Alexander Huber attempt to complete the ascent in two and a half hours, setting a new world record. Much of climbing is about preparation, precision, and caution, but in order to make good time, the Hubers have to skimp a little on the elements that make rock climbing safe. They're in line with one of their American climbing colleagues, who says, "To make it rich, you have to put in an element of risk." To The Limit is full of a lot of talk about "risk" and "dreams" and "making the impossible possible," and Danquart's stabs at making this an inspirational tale can be a little exhausting. (The less said.

By Neil Pedley

On offer this week is a veritable gallery of the eclectic and the eccentric as M. Night Shyamalan goes R-rated, Edward Norton goes green, Werner Herzog goes to the Antarctic, and two of Herzog's fellow countrymen go to California to climb a big rock very, very quickly.

"Beauty in Trouble"

Czech director Jan Hrebejk and writer Petr Jarchovský continue their longtime collaborative partnership with this dense ensemble drama loosely inspired by Robert Graves's poem of the same name. This time, the duo who balanced humor with drama in the Oscar-nominated Holocaust-set "Divided We Fall," turn to the devastating series of floods that swept Prague in 2002, and tell the story of Marcela (Anna Geislerová), an overworked mother of two living in squalor. When her ne'er do well husband is taken in by the police, she's courted by a well-to-do businessman (Josef Abrhám) and Marcela is forced to...