I Am Legend (2007) Review
I Am Legend (2007) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The first hour is one of the best depictions of solitude ever filmed. Then the ending inverts the meaning of the book it is named after, and…
Tag: Survival Against the Odds (Page 2)
2010sGravity (2013) Review
Gravity (2013) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Cuaron opens on a thirteen minute unbroken shot and then destroys everything in it. The technical achievement is genuine and permanent. The dialogue keeps explaining a film that was…
2010sWorld War Z (2013) Review
World War Z (2013) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A great book turned into a competent chase film with the structure removed first. The Jerusalem sequence is worth the ticket and nothing else is.
1970sBeyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) Review
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A sequel that kept the upturned hull and threw away the reason it worked. Michael Caine, Sally Field, Telly Savalas, and no idea what to do…
2010sMad Max: Fury Road (2015) Review
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A two-hour chase that explains an entire world without a line of exposition. The fourth film in a series, the best one by a distance, and…
FictionIslands on the Water
On the most beautiful morning he can remember, a young fisherman sees three great vessels with white wings that were not there the night before, and little boats putting out from them toward his shore. He watches the strangers come…
FictionWhere We Live
The first six humans who will never return from the Moon land on a gray plain with no return vehicle on the manifest. The geologist is sent down the ladder first, and what she says when her boot touches the…
FictionThe Hole
Two soldiers, one American and one German, fall into the same shell crater in the Ardennes when the temperature hits minus thirty-two. The cold doesn't care which side they're on, and neither can survive the night alone.
2010sStake Land (2010)
Jim Mickle's Stake Land uses vampires as backdrop for a melancholy survival drama. Sometimes the vampires are not the point.
2000s30 Days of Night (2007)
Vampires descend on an Alaskan town facing a month without sunrise. The idea is so good it feels stolen from someone smarter.
2020sThe Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
The Last Voyage of the Demeter earns its 6.5 by taking a few haunting pages from Dracula and building an entire film from them, with mixed but genuinely entertaining results. The film's great strength is its vision of Dracula as…
1960sNight of the Living Dead (1968)
George Romero's 1968 zombie template. The genre's foundational document.