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Why We Are Under the Spell of Survival Movies - The Daily Beast

The four most acclaimed films to arrive in theaters since the end of summer are all about the same thing, more or less: a solitary man or woman who must suffer (and attempt to survive) the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, whether natural, manmade, or both. A particularly dedicated (or masochistic) moviegoer could now park outside his local multiplex in the morning, spend his brunch hours rediscovering the horrors of America’s peculiar institution (12 Years a Slave), pass the early afternoon adrift in outer space (Gravity), hunker down with a band of hostage-taking Somali pirates around tea time (Captain Phillips), and have dinner, for one, on a life raft in the middle of the Indian Ocean (All Is Lost).