Monty Python The Meaning Of Life

RogerEbert

Halfway through "Monty Python's Meaning of Life," the thought struck me that One-Upmanship was a British discovery. You remember, of course, the book and movie ("School for Scoundrels") inspired by Stephen Potter's theory of One-Upmanship, in which the goal of the practitioner was to One-Up his daily associates and, if possible, the world. A modern example:

Victim: "I've just been reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold,' in Vanity Fair magazine."

One-Upman: "Really? I'm afraid I missed it."

Victim: "But Garcia Marquez is brilliant."

One-Upman: "No doubt, dear fellow, but my subscription ran out in 1939."

I use this illustration as an approach to "Monty Python's Meaning of Life," which is a movie that seems consumed with a desire to push us too far. This movie is so far beyond good taste, and so cheerfully beyond, that we almost feel we're being One-Upped if we allow ourselves to be offended. Take, for example, the scene featuring projectile vomiting. We don't get just a little vomit in the scene, like we saw in "The Exorcist." No, sir, we get gallons of vomit, streams of it, all a vile yellow color, sprayed all over everybody and everything in a formal dining room.

The first reaction of the non-Upman is "Yech!" But I think the Python gang is working at another level. And, given the weakness of movie critics for discussing what "level" a movie "works" on, I find myself almost compelled to ask myself, "At what 'level' does the projectile vomiting 'work'?" And I think the Python One-Up reply would be, dear fellow, that it rises above vulgarity and stakes out territory in the surrealistic. Anyone who takes the vomiting literally has missed the joke; the scene isn't about vomiting, but about the lengths to which Python will go for a laugh.

There are other scenes in equally poor taste in this movie, which has a little something to offend everybody. And I mean really offend them: This isn't a Mel Brooks movie, with friendly little ethnic in-jokes. It's a barbed, uncompromising attack on generally observed community standards.

Does the attack work? Only occasionally. The opening sequence of the film is one of its best, showing the overworked old clerks in an insurance company staging a mutiny. After they've gained control of their shabby old stone building, the movie does a brilliant turn into surrealism, the building becomes a ship, and the clerks weigh anchor and set sail against the fleets of modern high-rises, firing their filing cabinets like cannons. It's a wonderful sequence.

I also liked a scene set on a military parade ground, and a joke involving a tank full of fish, and a cheerfully unfair rugby match between two teams, one made up of 12 small schoolboys, the other with 18 schoolmasters, all huge. Balanced against these bright moments is the goriest scene in Python history, showing a liver being removed from a transplant "volunteer" by brute force. There are also a lot of religious jokes, some straightforward sexism and the above mentioned vomiting sequence.

By admitting to being offended by some of the stuff in this movie, I've been One-Upped. By liking the funny stuff, I've been One-Upped again. ("But you liked the jokes that were in good taste? Jolly good!") But I'm a good loser, and I don't mind being One-Upped. In fact, let's say this is a tennis match, and the Pythons are the winners. Here, I'll hold down the net while they jump over to shake hands with me. Whoops!

Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

The Meaning of Life is without a doubt the most tasteless of the Monty Python feature films; it also happens to be one of the funniest. Life's questions are "answered" in a series of outrageous vignettes, beginning with a pre-credits sequence at a staid London insurance company which transforms before our eyes into a pirate ship. One of our favorite bits involve the National Health doctors who try to claim a healthy liver from a still-living donor, pointing out that there's nothing in his contract preventing this. And of course, there's the scene with the world's most voracious glutton, who brings the art of vomiting to new heights before his spectacular demise. Be warned: though hilarious, this may be the grossest bit of comedy filmmaking ever conceived (there aren't enough words in the world to describe it in detail!). Loyal Pythonites Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin star in The Meaning of Life and share writing responsibilities, while Jones is in the director's chair this time out. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Full Movie on Xmovie8

Ten

IMDb
Ten women find themselves in a vacant mansion on Spektor Island in December, 1972. Each believes she's traveled to the house on business, but they all agree that something seems strange. For one thing, the entire house is full of pictures and statues of pigs. The women all come from drastically different walks of life. None of them would have chosen to spend the night together in such an eerie place, but the last ferry for the mainland has just left, and a terrible storm is rolling in. Trying to make the best of an unpleasant situation, they raid the mansion's wine cellar and throw a party. As the night creeps on, however, it becomes clear that someone--or something--has lied to get them in the house. It's not long before someone mentions that Spektor Island is supposed to be haunted. Of course, no one in the house believes in ghosts. At least, not until the first murder. What do an actress, a religious zealot, a renegade, a coed, a model, a singer, a medium, a real-estate investor, a historian, and a doctor have in common? None of them is who they seem. Yet, the fate of the entire world may rest in their hands.



Wikipedia

EN is a 2014 thriller/horror film directed by Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein. The film had its world premiere on March 30, 2014 at the Boston Underground Film Festival and features an all-female ensemble cast. Michael Gingold of Fangoria described TEN as, "up to something a little different, looking to subvert audience expectations...and while TEN contains the scenario’s requisite blood and nudity, it veers off in directions you likely won’t see coming, both in narrative terms and in the way it explores questions of female identity.” ^[1] Lauren Shiro of Curve (magazine) wrote, “deeper still, the movie takes on a political and sociological stance, examining stereotypes, identity, and also the subtext and themes behind story lines.” ^[2] Jed Gottlieb of the Boston Herald described TEN, “imagine Scream crossed with The Usual Suspects...The art comes with meticulously framed shots full of color, the enjoyment with puzzling out the crazy plot twists.”^[3]

Funding for the movie was partially raised through a successful Kickstarter campaign.^[4] The film will be distributed in North America by BrinkVision in April 2015.^[5]

Synopsis[edit]

Ten women find themselves in a vacant mansion on Spektor Island in December, 1972. Each believes she's traveled to the house on business, but they all agree that something seems strange. For one thing, the entire house is full of pictures and statues of pigs.

The women all come from drastically different walks of life. None of them would have chosen to spend the night together in such an eerie place, but the last ferry for the mainland has just left, and a terrible storm is rolling in. Trying to make the best of an unpleasant situation, they raid the mansion's wine cellar and throw a party. As the night creeps on, however, it becomes clear that someone—or something—has arranged to get them in the house. It's not long before someone mentions that Spektor Island is supposed to be haunted. Of course, no one in the house believes in ghosts. At least, not until the first murder.

What do an actress, a religious zealot, a renegade, a coed, a model, a singer, a medium, a real-estate investor, a historian, and a doctor have in common? None of them is who they seem. Yet, the fate of the entire world may rest in their hands.

Full Movie on Xmovie8

A Dark Reflection

IMDb
A journalist digs deep into the world of aviation and discovers some uncomfortable truths. And a conspiracy trail dating back to 1954. But why is no one saying anything?


HollyWood Reporter

British pilot-turned-director Tristan Loraine wrote and directed this aviation-themed conspiracy thriller, which stars Georgina Sutcliffe as an intrepid investigative reporter.

CANNES -- After a disastrous mission in the Arab world, a top British journalist hopes she’ll just have to report on cats stuck in trees in Sussex in A Dark Reflection, from pilot-turned-filmmaker Tristan Loraine.

This handsomely mounted fiction feature is a logical extension of Loraine’s filmography, which notably includes the 2007 documentary Welcome Aboard Toxic Airlines, about contaminated cabin air on planes. The dangerous problem, which affected Loraine’s own health when he was a commercial airline pilot, is clearly still at the forefront of his mind, as a fictionalized but very similar story is uncovered by the intrepid protagonist of his latest film.

PHOTOS: Nicole Kidman, Blake Lively, Zoe Saldana Hit the Red Carpet

Though clearly both passionate and knowledgeable about the subject, the narrative proper feels more often like a low-rent, TV-movie Erin Brockovich, which means the film will have to try and sell itself on the merits of its still under-reported subject, rather than its execution. Following its Cannes market premiere (reviewed here), the film was substantially recut with new scenes added and the running time shortened.

The early going drops audiences right into a dangerous -- mainly because Moritz Schmittat’s score tell us so -- reporting job that the apparently fearless Helen (Georgina Sutcliffe) is doing somewhere in the Middle East (and shot in Jordan). It’s not really clear what she’s investigating, also because her quick interactions with the locals, in Arabic, aren’t subtitled, though the sequence is clearly more about the emotional shock of Helen seeing her cameraman (Luke White) being killed in front of her eyes, which leads her to a job interview for a small local newspaper in Sussex where she hopes she can take it easy for a while.

Of course she won’t, as otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a movie, and this is telegraphed from the very start, when she’s introduced to the chatty Natasha (Rita Ramnani), a fawning cub reporter at the paper who follows Helen on Twitter -- which the film seems to think proves Helen must’ve been a really big deal when she was reporting on whatever it was she was reporting on before -- and who becomes the veteran’s loyal sidekick and guide to local sources. Also livening up the scenes at the Sussex Standard offices, though of little narrative value, is the paper’s seen-it-all editor, played with scenery-chewing gusto by Paul Antony-Barber (V for Vendetta).

The big story Helen and Natasha have to uncover is handed to them on a silver platter by Joe (TJ Herbert), a middle-aged air traffic controller who suspects that the almost-accident that got him suspended is really due to something inside the plane that made the pilots drowsy. Oh, and apparently Joe is also Helen’s boyfriend, though the film doesn’t really have time for the characters’ private lives, even though one assumes that between having witness the killing of a colleague and being suspended for something they probably didn’t do, these two would have a lot to talk about.

CANNES REVIEW: 'Red Army'

In a parallel strand, the top brass of the fictional company Jasp Air are introduced, so they can twirl their mustaches and menacingly say things in the vein of “I want to know if she books a ticket on one of our flights and I want to know it immediately!” It’s a shame the film paints its villains so clearly and so early on, as it robs the films of suspense as well as nuance since they are so clearly the bad guys, though their bad behavior apparently doesn’t extend to harming people who aren’t on their flights, which leads to the quick deflation of several supposedly nail-biting sequences in which nothing happens to Helen, even if, again, the score might like to make us think otherwise.

The film, which was supported by various airline crews and unions, is  certainly didactic about the problems associated with contaminated air but as a thriller about an investigative reporter, it has neither a character audiences can relate to emotionally -- since Helen has no private life to speak of -- nor a savoir-faire in terms of mise-en-scene that would allow the film to become something of a white-knuckle ride.

That said, the acting is adequate and Nicholas Eriksson's cinematography crisp.

Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

The film, an investigative thriller, based on actual real events occurring globally today, tells the story of two British journalists that by chance, discover aviation's biggest cover-up. A serious in flight incident not disclosed by JASP Airlines reveals a hidden truth. Their investigation soon seeks to prove passengers have been knowingly put at risk since the 1950s. When new airline CEO discovers the darker side of the airline industry and its secret campaign of denial being withheld by airline owner, he is faced with the nightmare scenario. Corporate profit or the public's safety? The film reveals facts that every airline passenger should watch before they next fly.

Full Movie on Xmovie8

Survivor

IMDb
A Foreign Service Officer in London tries to prevent a terrorist attack set to hit New York, but is forced to go on the run when she is framed for crimes she did not commit.


Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

After being mysteriously framed for a terrorist bombing, a Foreign Service Officer (Milla Jovovich) must evade government capture and death by a ruthless assassin (Pierce Brosnan) in order to stop the real perpetrators' master-and much deadlier-plan. SURVIVOR is directed by James McTeigue and also stars Dylan McDermott, Angela Bassett and Robert Forster. (C) Official SIte

RogerEbert

At a time when every action-oriented film that comes along tries to pummel audiences into submission with frantically-told narratives and elaborate action sequences that begin by skirting the edge of plausibility before diving headlong into complete lunacy, there is something innately appealing about a film like "Survivor," a smaller-scale international thriller that is not trying to blow viewers away with over-the-top pyrotechnics every five minutes. The problem is that while it never lapses into complete cartoonishness, it never does much of anything else either, and pretty much plays like a film made for basic cable that is buoyed for a while by a couple of relatively strong central performances before eventually succumbing to terminal mediocrity in its silly final scenes.

Kate Abbott (Milla Jovovich) is a highly-rated Foreign Service Officer who has just been appointed to the U.S. Embassy in London to help troubleshoot visa applicants for suspected terrorists trying to get into the U.S. When one guy comes in all but waving red flags, her immediate supervisor (Robert Forster) pooh-poohs her suspicions and when she tries to investigate further, she runs afoul of both an officious British inspector (James D'Arcy) and the U.S. Ambassador (Angela Bassett). Of course, she is on to something after all and a top-notch assassin known only as The Watchmaker (Pierce Brosnan) is brought in to take her out. Although he misses her, his efforts take out nearly all of Karen's colleagues and, through a ridiculous chain of circumstances, leave her looking responsible for their deaths. With the British cops, U.S. agents and the relentless Watchmaker on her trail, Karen tries, with the limited assistance of the only two colleagues she still trusts (Dylan McDermott and Frances de la Tour), to evade capture while trying to figure out the terrorists are trying to accomplish and stopping it in the presumed nick of time.

As you can probably surmise from just that brief plot recap, originality is not exactly one of the strong points of survivor—screenwriter Phillip Shelby has essentially given viewers a mash-up of any number of movies ranging from "Saboteur" to "The Fugitive" to "Salt," to name just a few potential inspirations, without throwing anything new into the mix. At first, there is the suggestion that the story might point up the irony of the security expert being stymied and her actions misinterpreted by the very same devices (such as the omnipresent CCTV systems) and organizations that were supposed to make everyone feel safer in the first place but that notion is quickly and decisively abandoned. (There is, however, a final title card praising U.S. security agencies for the number of potential terrorist attacks they have prevented—an odd thing to mention considering the bumbling and easily duped manner in which they are depicted in the story proper.) Beyond that, exposition is doled out in raw and barely digestible chunks, the few plot twists on hand are tipped way too early to have any real effect and the final scenes, in which the target and the true nature of the attack are revealed, are silly instead of gripping.

"Survivor" was directed by James McTeigue, a filmmaker who can make stylish and enormously effective works when he is given strong material (as he showed with "V for Vendetta") and giant loads of gibberish when he isn't (as he proved with the beyond-dire "The Raven"). Here, he lands somewhere in the middle because while this film lacks the wild spectacle that a flashier filmmaker with a bigger budget might have given it, the lack of such eye candy is a better fit with the lower-key material on display. And when he does turn things up a notch (as in a multi-level staircase shootout between Jovovich and Brosnan), the results are effective. However, he never quite manages to maintain the necessary levels of suspense, and, by the time the excitement should be peaking in the final act, the film feels like it is treading water. (Part of this is undoubtedly the result of the number of stock shots and second-unit footage deployed to try to convince viewers that they are in a particular place and time and not in Bulgaria.)

The best thing about "Survivor" are the performances from Jovovich and Brosnan in the lead roles. Although a top action star through her appearances in the "Resident Evil" films, Jovovich correctly plays her role here not as some omnipotent super-babe but as a realistic person caught in an insane situation and trying to use her brains to figure things out instead of simply kicking all available ass. (That said, she does get ample opportunities to show that she can defend herself--perhaps a little too well for the average government analyst.) As the man alternately targeting and targeted by her, Pierce Brosnan is cooly effective as a ruthlessly efficient killer and the sight of the former James Bond deploying his own license to kill, this time for money rather than for Queen and country, adds a certain frisson to the proceedings that simply would not have been there had the role been filled by an actor without that background. There are other good actors here but they have not been treated quite as well by the screenplay--Forster, D'Arcy and McDermott are more or less wasted and it is at times painful to watch the great Angela Bassett play a role that asks here to do the exact wrong thing in every single scene.

Neither particularly good nor particularly bad, "Survivor" is the kind of film that one can safely put on the television while other stuff is going on without worry that important plot points will be missed along the way. The ingredients are there for a reasonably gripping good time but the excitement is stymied by a screenplay that clearly needed another pass or two in the hopes of jazzing things up. The end result is a film as bland and uninspiring as its title. Unless you happen to be a Jovovich or Brosnan completist, there is no particularly compelling reason to seek this one out   

Full Movie on Xmovie8

All Hallows Eve: October 30th

IMDb
A schizophrenic filmmaker, traumatized since childhood by the murder of his mother, writes and plots a retelling of his past staring a naive teenage girl and her friends while a creepy old man haunts them in the woods.


Xmovie8
Storyline: 20 years after a tyrannical maniac terrorized his family near Pearl Lake on October 30th 1988, the so-called events of "missing people" begin again. Oldest son, Ethan Pearl and brother Jacob intricately select a cast of stars (Jade, Heather, Gene, Milton, & Crew) in an attempt to produce a Pearl Lake horror film based on their traumatic childhood. While location scouting and rehearsing, the group encounters several unexpected turns and a crazy man who terrorizes them. Ethan leads Jade down a perceived path to safety, but when she continues to search for answers, she realizes this isn't an ordinary film, or an ordinary director.



Full Movie on Xmovie8

Mad Max Fury Road

IMDb
In a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, two rebels just might be able to restore order: Max, a man of action and of few words, and Furiosa, a woman of action who is looking to make it back to her childhood homeland.



Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

Filmmaker George Miller gears up for another post-apocalyptic action adventure with Fury Road, the fourth outing in the Mad Max film series. Charlize Theron stars alongside Tom Hardy (Bronson), with Zoe Kravitz, Adelaide Clemens, and Rosie Huntington Whiteley heading up the supporting cast. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

The New Yorker

There is a moment, in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” when Max (Tom Hardy) washes blood off his face. This is unsurprising, since he has just engaged in one of many fights, but two points are worthy of note. First, the blood is not his. Second, he washes it off not with water but with mother’s milk, siphoned from a gas tanker. And there, in one image, you have George Miller’s film—wild and unrelenting, but also possessed of the outlandish poetry, laced with hints of humor, that rises to the surface when the world is all churned up.

The movie is set in the near future. There are no cities or civilizations left. The landscape is dying of thirst; water—known as Aqua Cola—is severely rationed; and other resources, notably gasoline, are hoarded and tussled over like scraps of food. Max is a survivor, like 

The good news is that “Mad Max: Fury Road” exists in a different league. It lies way, way beyond Thunderdome, and marks one of the few occasions on which a late sequel outdoes what came before. Is it a sequel, though? There are flashbacks to Max’s past, but they are over in seconds, and you can certainly relish the new film, in all its lunatic majesty, without being versed in Maxist dialectics. Indeed, it exults in a proud indifference to backstory. Furiosa mentions her origins, explaining that she was snatched away from “a green place,” but that’s it. As for Max, Hardy is more earthed than Gibson, and less wired—indeed, less mad, propelled not by the engine of wrath but by a solid response to the madness that engulfs the characters like a sandstorm. Max’s deeds rarely strike us as gratuitous. Instead, they seem resignedly brutal, as if there were no other way to live. Whether his deepest desire is for liberty, or simply for a dour solitude, I can’t decide, but I loved the coolness with which, having taken command in battle, he melts away, once it’s over, into the shifting throng.

The good news is that “Mad Max: Fury Road” exists in a different league. It lies way, way beyond Thunderdome, and marks one of the few occasions on which a late sequel outdoes what came before. Is it a sequel, though? There are flashbacks to Max’s past, but they are over in seconds, and you can certainly relish the new film, in all its lunatic majesty, without being versed in Maxist dialectics. Indeed, it exults in a proud indifference to backstory. Furiosa mentions her origins, explaining that she was snatched away from “a green place,” but that’s it. As for Max, Hardy is more earthed than Gibson, and less wired—indeed, less mad, propelled not by the engine of wrath but by a solid response to the madness that engulfs the characters like a sandstorm. Max’s deeds rarely strike us as gratuitous. Instead, they seem resignedly brutal, as if there were no other way to live. Whether his deepest desire is for liberty, or simply for a dour solitude, I can’t decide, but I loved the coolness with which, having taken 

command in battle, he melts away, once it’s over, into the shifting throng.

That wonderful image allows Miller to draw back and survey the scene from on high. Such is the root of his near-mystical prestige as a creator of action films: a bright, instinctive sense of when and where to cut from the telling detail to the wider view, and back again. Those instincts were there in the first “Mad Max,” which, for all its cheapness, picked up rhythm whenever it hit the highway, and they are resurgent here. They connect Miller not so much to the panicky despots of the modern blockbuster, like Michael Bay, as to directors of Hollywood musicals, and to the early choreographers of the chase, in the wordless days when pictures lived by motion alone. In “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the Polecats—aggressors who arc from one vehicle to another, in mid-race, on the end of long stakes—are the descendants of Buster Keaton, who, in “Three Ages,” fell from a roof through three awnings and clutched at a drainpipe, which swung him out into the void and back through an open window.

Some things have changed. Miller’s debt to silent cinema is slightly quelled, in the new film, by the Doof Warrior, who hangs from the front of a truck and thrashes out power chords on his twin-necked guitar, which also acts as a flamethrower. Also, Keaton meant nobody harm, whereas the Polecats are bent on little else, as are the War Boys, the Bullet Farmer, Rictus Erectus, and Slit—unfriendly types, released from the strange laboratory of Miller’s brain. One of the Wives is called Toast the Knowing, and Nicholas Hoult has a blast as a renegade named Nux, who spray-paints his lips silver to supercharge the mood. His dream is to die with honor, “shiny and chrome,” like an exploding machine. All this is such fun, and it teeters so close to insanity, with a hundred and fifty vehicles at Miller’s disposal, and with a pack of cameras sent into the fracas like baying hounds on a scent, that you come out asking, Why is this movie not an unholy mess?

Partly, I think, because Miller treats his story line as Max would treat his car—stripping out superfluity and softness, in the interest of pure speed. Throw charges of implausibility at the film, and they bounce off the hood. Credit must go, too, to John Seale, the director of photography, who was cajoled out of retirement for this project, and who somehow fills every frame to the brim without spilling. As the War Rig growls through a gully, edged with crags of stone, Seale unveils the beauty within the peril, harking back not just to his own work on “The English Patient” but to that of Freddie Young on “Lawrence of Arabia,” in which a camel bore Peter O’Toole through a similar pass. Matched against the golden dirt of the desert is the sad nocturnal blue of a swamp, where scavengers prowl on stilts and where, in an extraordinary spectacle, Max wrestles with a lonely tree, just as Max von Sydow did in Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring.” No one knows if Miller’s film will endure, as David Lean’s and Bergman’s have done, but it must be said that, for better or worse, “Mad Max: Fury Road” gathers up all that we seem to crave, right now, from our movies, and yanks it to the limit. For anyone who denied that “Titus Andronicus” could ever be mashed up with “The Cannonball Run,” here is your answer, and we are only too happy to follow Nux as he cries, “What a lovely day!,” and accelerates into a whirlwind of fire. Enjoy the movie, but for God’s sake don’t drive home. ♦

Full Movie on Xmovie8

All is Lost

My Grandma Likes Robert Redford



IMDb
After a collision with a shipping container at sea, a resourceful sailor finds himself, despite all efforts to the contrary, staring his mortality in the face.



Rotten Tomatoes

MOVIE INFO

Academy Award-nominated writer/director J.C. Chandor (Margin Call) takes the helm for this tense adventure drama about a man (Robert Redford) who must fight for survival after being lost at sea. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

NYTimes

True solitude is a rarity at the movies, for those of us in the audience contending with yakkers and texters, and for the people on screen as well. The lonesome strangers of the old westerns almost always had a town to ride into or out of, a buzz of social life to contrast with their individualistic ways. Even movies that emphasize the isolation of their main characters tend to provide them with companions, human or otherwise. Piscine Patel in “Life of Pi” had his tiger, Richard Parker; Chuck Noland in “Cast Away” had Wilson the volleyball. Those guys did a lot of talking, even when nobody else was around.

Continue reading the main sto

The guy in J. C. Chandor’s amazing “All Is Lost” — identified only as “Our Man” in the credits and instantly recognizable as Robert Redford, giving the performance of his life — says almost nothing at all. For the duration of the film, he is the only person in sight. In the opening scene, we hear his voice as he composes a letter of apology and farewell, presumably to unspecified loved ones back home. Later — or rather earlier, since most of the story flashes back from that moment of fatalism, eight days into his ordeal — he tries to send a distress call over the radio and tosses a few epithets at his fate. Otherwise, he is silent. And though this man’s radical aloneness is terrifying, to him and to us, it is also a condition he has chosen, one we might even envy, just as his taciturn competence is something we are inclined to admire.

Photo

He finds himself in the Indian Ocean, in the empty waters between Indonesia and Madagascar, on a solo sailing voyage. We infer that he is someone who can afford a comfortable, well-appointed yacht and the leisure to pilot it in exotic places, something he also clearly has the skill to do. He’s rich, American and handsome. (He’s Robert Redford.)

What else do we know about Our Man? He wears a wedding ring and an air of poised, understated confidence. In the midst of a desperate crisis, he takes the time to shave, and we might wonder whether this act of grooming under duress is evidence of self-discipline or vanity. Even when he is absorbed in practical matters that have life-or-death consequences, our ancient mariner maintains a sense of style; there is a subtle self-consciousness in his efforts to embody the old Hemingway-esque ideal of grace under pressure. He is a model of masculine virtue and he knows it. (He’s Robert Redford.)

The ancient Greeks believed that character should be revealed through action. I can’t think of another film that has upheld this notion so thoroughly and thrillingly. There is certainly no other actor who can command our attention — our empathy, our loyalty, our love — with such efficiency. Mr. Redford has always been a magnificent underplayer, a master of small, clear gestures and soft-spoken intensity. This role brings him to the pinnacle of reticence but also allows him to open up in startling ways. Behind the leathery, pragmatic exterior is a reservoir of inexpressible emotion. An opera thunders in the silence.

“All Is Lost,” an action movie in the most profound and exalted sense of the term, has a simple plot that I hesitate to summarize, less for fear of spoiling anything than because a précis would either miss the point or recapitulate the whole film. A lot goes wrong. An errant shipping container punches a hole in the hull. The cabin floods, and the onboard electrical system is ruined. A ferocious storm spins, tosses and smashes the boat. Attempts to communicate are foiled by rotten luck and the metaphysical indifference of the universe.

Through it all, the man perseveres, in his patient, problem-solving way. He patches his beloved boat’s wound with epoxy and cloth, hauls out the storm jib, gathers provisions for the lifeboat and digs up a never-used, old-fashioned mariner’s sextant. Using this, a sheaf of maps and a copy of“Celestial Navigation for Yachtsmen,” he sets a course for commercial shipping lanes, hoping for rescue from the big boats that were, indirectly but with unmistakable metaphorical significance, the cause of his predicament.

Like other tales of survival at sea — a robust literary tradition that includes classic books by Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville — “All Is Lost” manifests a strong allegorical undercurrent. Nothing registers the fragility and contingency of the human presence in the universe quite as starkly as the sight of a small vessel adrift on an endless ocean, and few representations of heroism are as vivid as the spectacle of an individual fighting to master the caprices of wind and water.

But this is not — or not only — a parable of Man against Nature, ready-made for high school term paper analysis. The physical details that carry the story and make it suspenseful and absorbing are also vessels of specific meaning, and together they add up to a fable about the soul of man under global capitalism. Our man is a privileged consumer (just look at all the stuff he has on that boat) whose fate is set in motion by a box full of goods (children’s sneakers, as it happens) accidentally knocked out of circulation.

It is this catastrophe and the man’s desperate efforts to correct it that link “All Is Lost” with “Margin Call,” Mr. Chandor’s excellent first feature. That movie, about an office full of panicky investment bankers dealing with the unfolding financial crisis of 2008, is in many ways the opposite of “All Is Lost.” It takes place almost entirely indoors, and it’s pretty much all talk. But it is also very much concerned with how powerful men react when their sense of control is challenged, and with the vast, invisible system that sustains their illusions.

Our Man is a more complicated hero than he seems, and shades of ambiguity and implication filter in through the sharply defined, crisply composed images of his struggle. I’m reminded again of Conrad, and not only because “All Is Lost” is an appealing and exciting maritime adventure with one eye on the geopolitical state of the world.

Conrad once famously identified his goal as a writer as “to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.”

A good filmmaker will not take that for granted, even with the advantage of a visual medium, and Mr. Chandor more than fulfills Conrad’s criterion of artistic achievement: “If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand — and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”

“All Is Lost” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Our Man swears twice.

Full Movie on Xmovie8