All Is Lost

Even Redford bailing water for 106 minutes can be a bit much.

This is an uncommonly absorbing movie.

We get the predictable plot points - storms, sharks, close calls with passing ships - but it feels like a uniquely handmade artifact.

All is Lost is a testament to a great actor, an experimental piece of cinema and a bit of a bore.

All Is Lost is very much Redford's triumph. His turn isn't pure disappearance so much as a brilliantly human example of cresting and plummeting, cresting and plummeting.

The movie is rigorous, serious and well-crafted, with Redford holding the screen using only his economical emotional reactions and physical presence.

As grim and hopeless as things could possibly get in a movie called All Is Lost, the movie is essentially about perseverance: playing it smart, staying safe and not giving up until -- well, see the title.

A vital, exciting piece of work from Mr. Redford, an actor whom you'd have been forgiven for counting out by now.

The success of All Is Lost is to be a physical film that ends up with emotional reverberation, right down to the last shot that engulfs us and Our Man in the depths of the ocean, with only a faint light shining from above.

Like Gravity, this actually offers the greatest story of them all: one person's fight to stay alive.

All is Lost is outstanding and so the collaboration between Redford and writer/director J.C Chandor.

Frank G. DeMarco and Peter Zuccarini, dual cinematographers, gather gorgeous imagery especially those captured from beneath the ocean's surface.