The Climb

Mike (Michael Angelo Covino) is a better cyclist than Kyle (Kyle Marvin). So, it figures that a steep French mountain is the best place to ruefully confess that he's slept with Kyle's fiancee, where his best friend can process this betrayal in relative solitude but can't quite match Mike's pedal power to take revenge. Co-writers Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin expand their 2018 short into a comedy-drama marathon. Their time-skipping vignettes, frequently realized in ambitious single takes, reveal an often toxic and occasionally balm-like co-dependency. Imbuing traditional comic set-pieces - family Christmas, disastrous bachelor party, interrupted wedding - with genuine cinematic flair, [link=tt8637440) expertly shifts gears between full-blooded slapstick and wince-inducing studies of romantic and fraternal relationships, which sometimes crash but always seem to find the friends getting back in the saddle.