It’s hard to think of a movie in recent years with a bigger marketing problem than Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours. If you know anything at all about this film, you know it depicts the true story of an adventurer named Aron Ralston who finds himself pinned by a rock in a Utah canyon and has to cut off his own arm to escape.

So here’s a film that spends most of its running time with a single character at the bottom of a dimly lit canyon and builds to a horrific scene of self-amputation.

Good times!

But somehow 127 Hours is neither boring nor grueling — on the contrary, it’s one of the most exhilarating and life-affirming films I’ve seen in years.

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