Epic battles with the elements
Survival films pit man against nature.
Did icicles form on your eyebrows during this winter’s polar-vortex-level snowstorms? Was your coffee run akin, at least in the moment, to climbing Everest? ❚ Sit back and let Hollywood fight the elements for you. Here are eight epic survival movies – both old and new – that pit man against nature. 1. ‘Arctic’
The latest drop-a-guy-intothe-freezing-mountains flick is “Arctic,” a nail-biter of a wintry tale starring Mads Mikkelsen, who plays a pilot stranded in the Arctic after a plane crash. His survival skills are impressive. He ice-fishes! He turns his crashed plane into a cabin! He duels it out with a polar bear! But when a rescue chopper crashes instead, forcing him to care for its half-dead co-pilot, his will to survive is tested. (In theaters now.)
2. ‘Free Solo’ (2018)
No rope? No problem. “Free Solo” is the Oscar-winning documentary everyone’s talking about this year. In the film, a 15person crew follows free climber Alex Honnold as he takes on a daring climb up the face of El Capitan – without any safety gear. Gulp. (“Free Solo” makes its broadcast debut Sunday on National Geographic.)
3. ‘The Mountain Between Us’ (2017)
Bring on the streaming picks! In the film adaptation of the 2011 novel by Charles Martin, Idris Elba plays an in-demand surgeon whose flight is canceled, opposite Kate Winslet, playing a bride-to-be photojournalist afraid of missing her wedding. Despite rampant weather warnings, the two strangers decide to charter a jet from Idaho – and are left with only each other when the plane goes down. This adventure film is also kind of a love story, and (bonus!) it has an adorable dog.
4. ‘The Martian’ (2015)
Enter the space survival movie! Only Matt Damon could make a man trapped alone on Mars entertaining for two hours straight. From planting his own spuds on a lifeless planet to producing water and
breathable air, Damon makes for an intergalactic MacGyver. (P.S. Did you know the film shot partially in Jordan’s red desert?)
5. ‘The Revenant’ (2015)
OK, so “The Revenant” isn’t
technically a survival movie. But a heavily bearded Leonardo DiCaprio crawls, swims and limps through the brutal winter in Canada as he plays 19th-century frontiersman Hugh Glass. Plus, he fights a bear!
6. ‘127 Hours’ (2010)
James Franco entered the Oscar race after portraying the true story of Aron Ralston, a man who went hiking solo in Utah and got stuck under a boulder in an isolated canyon. Trapped with only a limited supply of food and water, Franco makes it all too real as his hiker debates when and how to cut off an arm to escape.
7. ‘All Is Lost’ (2013)
Looking for peril at sea? Robert Redford is the man of the hour in “All Is Lost,” a ship disaster flick in which he plays an unnamed sailor facing a series of worsening crises on the Indian Ocean. Alone in the elements for eight days, Redford’s character, while barely uttering a word, fights to survive alone in a 39-foot sailboat in this captivating, nail-biting thriller.
8. ‘Cast Away’ (2000)
And finally, we end with Tom Hanks’ harrowing “Cast Away,” a now-touchstone survival film about a FedEx engineer stranded on a tropical island. Hanks gives a tour de force performance playing Chuck, a man determined to survive – and stay sane – as he spends four years alone in the tropics. All hail Wilson, his trusty volleyball and best friend.