Ain't no mountain high enough to keep Chris O'Donnell's Peter Garrett away from his sister, Annie (Robin Tunney). Annie is trapped in a crevasse on K2, the second-highest peak after Mt. Everest. At 26,000 feet — for you couch potatoes, that's the vertical limit of human endurance — it's only a matter of hours before Annie freezes over, along with her companions, guide Tom McLaren (Nicholas Lea) and asshole billionaire Elliot Vaughn (Bill Paxton in full smarm mode). Peter must find a crew to join him on this suicide mission. He's lucky to get weirdo Montgomery Wick (Scott Glenn in the flick's top performance) — a hermit whose wife's been an ice sculpture on K2 for years.

But enough of the plot. Shot at 10,000 feet around New Zealand's Mt. Cook, this clock-ticker raises the bar on climbing suspense, and that includes Cliffhanger. Director Martin Campbell (Golden Eye) pulls off thrilling stunts — notably a high-altitude helicopter drop-off and an avalanche precipitated by the nitro the rescuers lug in their backpacks — that will leave you a sweaty-palmed mess. It's top-tier movie escapism.

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."