I like this list, by Scott Tobias (at New York Magazine). This is one of my favorite types of movies, I've seen 12 of them, and 4 of my all-time favorite movies are on the list: "Touching the Void" (#17),"Aguirre the Wrath of God" (#9), "Grizzly Man" (#8), and "The Gold Rush" (#1).
Of the ones I have not seen, I added 4 to my Amazon Prime watchlist. (And I'm not saying that to get you to use Amazon, but if you do decide to use Amazon, I'd appreciate your going in through The Althouse Portal.)
October 5, 2017
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Is Aguirre really man v. nature? I thought it was more man v. himself, or man v. crazy.
I loved "touching the Void". Haven't seen the Grizzly movie. I'm not a big Chaplin fan except for "City Lights" and "Limelight"
"Castaway" is good too.
"Squeal like a pig." Nature red in tooth and hillbilly.
My favorite movie: Never Cry Wolf adapted from a Farley Mowat account.
"Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such nature films as Earwigs: Eww! and Man vs. Nature: The Road to Victory."
Scott of the Antarctic (1948) is an old time British movie that was very good. Too bad its forgotten.
Jaws? Is Tobias another one of those insufferables who can only acknowledge the obscure and/or esoteric?
Pretty good list. The man knows his movies.
Life of Pi doesn't belong, though. The tiger may or may not be real. Too speculative, which is against his rules.
Instead I would include Woman In The Dunes.
Does Apollo 13 count? What they were struggling to overcome was not the product of human agency.
Does Apollo 13 count?
His rules say 'on planet Earth', so I guess no space movies...
If you're going to add "Apollo 13" you'd have to add:
The Martian
Robinson Caruso on Mars.
And what about "Flight of the Phoenix" ?
The dates of the movies suggest to me that he couldn't see many Man v. Nature movies made before, say, 1990.
Alive...White Squall...I Shouldn't Be Alive...The Flight of the Phoenix (original version)...Eight Below...The Snow Walker...Against the Sun...A Man Escaped...The Deep (Iceland, 2012)...Gravity...Shackleton...Pressure (2015)...The Hunter...Deep Water...Abandon Ship/Seven Waves Away...A Cry in the Wild...The Perfect Storm
Of these, two of the best are "The Deep" (about the sole survivor of an Icelandic fishing boat) and Abandon Ship (about an ensign who must decide of lives or dies in a lifeboat).
I saw Walkabout when it came out. Made a huge impact on me as a young teen. Wanted to be stuck in the outback with Jenny Agutter.
Man against nature movies tend to be intensely boring. Two hours of bad acting.
The standard was set by some 60s Sea Hunt or Mission Impossible type show, where 20 minutes of the half hour was a wounded guy struggling up successive flights of stairs, apparently the same flight every time too. I don't see them moving the camera upstairs if they don't have to.
Gravity had the additional problem of bad physics in every crisis, but only guys would notice. Sandra Bullock is a cutie, though.
BTW, the most beautiful man versus nature movie was Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven."
Core (2003) is not mentioned. It has all the action and is commanded by a woman. It's surely a cult classic.
"The Earth's core has stopped spinning. Disasters are appearing all over the world: Birds acting crazy, powerful thunderstorms, 32 people die within seconds of each other when their pacemakers quit working. Dr. Josh Keyes and his crew of five (total members: 6) go down to the center of the Earth to set off a nuclear device to make the Earth's core start spinning again or Mankind will perish."
"Meru" is a documentary, but you can't get any more Man vs Nature than mountain climbers attempting the almost suicidal Shark's Fin route up a Himalayan peak.
Volcano (1997)
Something unspeakably chilling is ultimately starting to heat up at The City of Los Angeles! Beneath the famed La Brea Tar Pits, a raging volcano has formed, raining a storm of deadly fire bombs and an endless tide of white-hot lava upon the stunned city!
Armageddon (1998)
It is just another day at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a few astronauts were repairing a satellite until, out of nowhere, a series of asteroids came crashing into the shuttle, destroying it. These asteroids also decimated New York soon thereafter. Then, NASA discovered that there is an asteroid roughly the size of Texas heading towards the Earth, and when it does hit the Earth, the planet itself and all of its inhabitants will be obliterated, worse, the asteroid will hit the Earth in 18 days. Unfortunately, NASA's plans to destroy the asteroid are irrelevant. That is when the U.S. military decides to use a nuclear warhead to blow the asteroid to pieces. Then, scientists decide to blow the asteroid with the warhead inside the asteroid itself. The only man to do it, is an oil driller named Harry Stamper and his group of misfit drillers and geologists. As he and his drill team prepare for space excavation, the asteroid is still heading towards the Earth. When...
Disappointed the list didn't have "Weiner" - man vs his own nature.
The Shallows (2016)
Woman in bathing suit vs nature.
Dante's Peak (1997)
Volcanologist Harry Dalton and mayor Rachel Wando of Dante's Peak try to convince the city council and the other volcanologists that the volcano right above Dante's peak is indeed dangerous.
Shackleton was a great movie, entirely man vs. nature.
I liked his list overall. He didn't give into the temptation to show off pseudo-sophistication by only highlighting obscure art flicks.
Happy to see Joe vs. the Volcano on it. That's my movie litmus test, as people either like it or hate it, and if they like it I'm pretty sure I can trust the rest of their movie opinions.
I'm not sure The Gold Rush really is the best of the bunch objectively. But it was ground-breaking, and it's a safe #1 because it is such a different era and expectation than the rest, it's really not competing with a shared aesthetic.
I was getting ready to complain about "the Edge" being excluded, and it made the list! An under-appreciated movie (and I had forgotten that it was Mamet)!
Good list. Yes, the shelter building on tundra scene in Dersu Uzala is pretty fantastic.
Good list. Yes, the shelter building on tundra scene in Dersu Uzala is pretty fantastic.
As a huge Kurosawa fan I'm surprised I haven't yet seen this. Hope I can find it.
I would like to see this list written as by a character who cannot discern reality from fantasy. It could include Them, Fantastic Voyage, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and Journey to the Center of the Earth among others.
For man versus nature in a literal war: Princess Mononoke. Also, Nausicaa. Both made for kids!
Missing from the list - 2011 Liam Neeson film "The Grey." A fantastic film.
Mockturtle, what is your favorite Kurosawa film?
Science Fiction does Man vs. Nature too:
The Martian is almost a pure Man vs. Nature scenario -- both in Matt Damon's botanist character trying to survive and in his crewmates application of gravitational physics to reach the rendezvous point.
And fantasy:
Princess Mononoke is Samarai vs. nature, where nature is actively engaged in defending itself.
Ah, Freeman, you beat me to the fantasy movies.
About half of The African Queen is Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn vs. nature.
And speaking of Humphrey Bogart: Key Largo.
Mockturtle, what is your favorite Kurosawa film?
Tough one, Freeman. Possibly Yojimbo. You?
"Scott of the Antartic," which has the best soundtrack of any man versus nature movie. Ralph Vaughn Williams, who composed the soundtrack, reworked themes from the movie into his Symphony No. 7.
That should have been "Scott of the Antarctic." It seems I can't spell.
Some possible additions:
1. Track of the Cat
2. The Old Man and the Sea
3. Gored
4. Long Dick
Make that among, not long
i have a feeling God, when He sentences you to hell, sounds like Herzog. Herzog would be the wrong person to narrate and document Heidi's struggle to find peace and serenity in the Swiss Alps.
My favorite Orc vs. Nature movie is The Two Towers.
Dersu Uzala, the shelter scene! This actually popped into my mind too. I really don't remember anything else from this movie, having seen it 30 years ago. But that scene has stuck with me. It's on YouTube, I believe.
Tough one, Freeman. Possibly Yojimbo. You?
I especially like that one too. I'm not sure. Maybe Ran or Ikiru.
How about All Is Lost? I haven't seen it, but Robert Redford dies, so it must be good.
No accounting for .. but Way Back is the best of them.
Joe? really
Aguirre is Herzog’s unsympathetic look at the conquistadors who were hailed as great explorers.. but a Venezuelan Stalinist wrote a novel about him hailing Aguirre as hero. Not to mention that he killed mostly Spaniards, including his own daughter
Spoiler alert: Uh, no. Redford doesn't die.
Spoiler alert: Uh, no. Redford doesn't die.
I haz a 😔. At least he got it in the Avengers, right? I think I saw that one.
Day of the Triffids.
Mainly because all of Wyndham's books are so ridiculously great.
Agreed that The Grey is missing from the list. A pack of wolves (God) save Liam Neeson's soul by stopping him from committing suicide and giving him something to fight for instead (his own survival and that of his companions). Then they kill him - they were trying to save his soul, not his life.
Although not a great film, The Ghost and The Darkness is based on an incident (the Tsavo man-killers) that could be a great film. From the facts of the incident - two lions slaughter dozens of railway workers in the Belgian Congo, often not bothering to eat them - it is the story of two predators who weren't hungry, but genuinely evil. Nature as psychopathic serial killer.
Another movie that should be made would be based on John Valliant's non-fiction work The Tiger: A Tale of Revenge. In 1997 a Russian poacher wounds a tiger while hunting. The tiger survives, tracks him down, kills him, and kills a bunch of other people in the process. Why this isn't already in post-production is beyond me.
"My favorite movie: Never Cry Wolf adapted from a Farley Mowat account.""
Mine too. Also Eight Below.
rhh,
Thanks for mentioning Core! I never saw the film, but the trailer was pants-wettingly if unintentially hilarious.
I had to read the list, and sure enough the terrible, no-good, very bad film All Is Lost made it. Bleah, why take anything else the columnist writes seriously, after this mis-step?
By the end of the movie we were all rooting for him to do down with the ship, accompanied in some inexplicable deus ex machina by the director and screenwriters! Though the (conscious? who knows?) echo at the end of the ending of Into the West was kind of endearing.
Far from Home Adventures of Yellow Dog. A Teen and his Dog are shipwrecked in British Columbia. Wonderful survival movie.
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