Just so we're clear, I have never cared for man-against-the-wilderness type films ( “Dersu Uzala,” Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey,” and “The Revenant” being exceptions) and I dislike kidnap films, as well.

No matter how well-made, this type of film falls prey to unavoidable cliché. In film after film we witness the long fall off an unexpected cliff into the icy water or the tree branch

Early in “Stalker,” Andrei Tarkovsky’s newly re-released 1979 futurescape, a character [...]