Films that take the human spirit and attempt to break it or at least find its limits, the perilous journey is an unrelenting endurance test that spans the globe. Whether it be an epic hero's journey based on myth, the revolutionary spirit of rebellion, or finding a way to rescue love from death's grip. This is a collection of films that have danger around every corner. Stories that use the world as an allegory for the individual. They attempt to find hope in despair and offer some resolution for the human condition. These films will test the patience and will of the audience as well as the people in them.
10 Logan
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James Mangold is a director who adjusts to the times, often hi-jacking what film trends are popular and finding a way to subvert the genre to his liking. Teaming with veteran screenwriter Scott Frank, Mangold did just that with Logan. Taking the all-powerful Wolverine and making him a dying, dour old man, he turned the superhero film into a classic Western. As a withered and grizzled Wolverine teams with an even older Professor X, the two discover a young mutant and embark on an epic journey that tests their limits. It's one of the best superhero films of the last ten years, proving the heart and grit a comic book movie can possess.
9 Aguirre The Wrath of God
Per IndieWire, Werner Herzog is a director known for taking himself and others to the depths of hell to get the authenticity and truth he desires to tell his story. A renegade by nature, Herzog was the perfect artist to make Aguirre, The Wrath of God. By sticking to his documentary-like style, Herzog creates a hellscape that plunges the Klaus Kinski character (Don Lope de Aquirre) into violence worse than man. It's an epic look at the destruction of the Inca Empire, while focusing on the aftermath of a near-sighted and disaster-laced expedition.
8 Interstellar
“Love transcends time and space.”, Christopher Nolan’s epic travail across the entirety of the galaxy using the possibility of wormholes to travel to save the planet boils down to the human capacity to love. Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway; the two are tasked with spanning the cosmos to save planet earth, only to realize that maybe they’re not meant to stay there. Nolan uses his grandiose visual style and mechanical diligence to create realistic practical effects to take his audience to the next dimension.
7 Saving Private Ryan
The most realistic depiction of D-Day created for the big screen came from master craftsman Steven Spielberg. Using all of his technical prowess to portray war in all of its unsettling brutality made for one of the greatest war movies ever made. Centering the story around a single troop led by none other than Tom Hanks to rescue a Private (Matt Damon) deep in enemy territory to prevent his bloodline and future generation from being killed off, the soldiers go on an epic journey to save the life of one soldier. Saving Private Ryan is an adventure that speaks to the ultimate sacrifice but necessary brotherhood during war and bloodshed.
6 Finding Nemo
Pixar has its fair share of heartfelt journeys, but none go to the core of father-son relationships like Finding Nemo. The film shows what it means to be a parent who would go to the ends of the earth to rescue their flesh and blood. With the hilarious Albert Brooks voicing Marlin, the father who loses his child, Pixar makes perfect use of their animation technology to create a bright, beautiful, and terrifying world out of the ocean whose depths have as much uncertainty as the night sky. It’s also a touching buddy film with Ellen DeGeneres doing terrific voice work as Dory. Finding Nemo is as epic as it is intimate.
5 Children of Men
Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men is a bleak, post-apocalyptic world rife with domestic terrorism, economic disparity, and a society bent on tearing itself apart because women suddenly losing their ability to reproduce has unsettling but timely themes that resonate with every passing year. Putting Theo (Clive Owen) at the center as he traverses across the war-torn UK battling terrorist and guerrilla factions because his ex-wife Julian (Julianne Moore) convinces him to take the only woman known to be pregnant to safety. It’s an epic, harrowing but beautiful tale of the always endearing power of the human spirit to overcome adversity.
4 Lawrence of Arabia
One of the most celebrated epics in film history is a grand, sweeping, romantic, and brutal tale as it unravels the hero myth. David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia sweeps us in the revolutionary history of T.E. Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) as he leads the British expedition to assist the Arab tribes in their rebellion against the Ottoman Empire. As the film takes us through the coarse vision of endlessness, sand, and gorgeous vistas, the film is also an excellent character study. As we watch over the film's long length, O’Toole slowly erodes, succumbing to the cruel nature of war.
3 Lord of the Rings Trilogy
One of the great spectacles of the early century was made possible by faithfully and successfully adapting a mammoth undertaking. J.R.R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings. It could've been a disaster in the wrong hands, but Peter Jackson created a tangible script connecting the three films seamlessly for an epic, mythical tale of sweeping beauty and darkness. Not only living to the lengths of a long, perilous journey traced across three films, but shooting in succession as there was no time wasted to test the endurance while engaging in one of the great hero's journeys of our time. Jackson’s trilogy is the embodiment of the epic walk.
2 Mad Max: Fury Road
One of the greatest feats in modern filmmaking, George Miller’s reclamation project of his past work, Mad Max: Fury Road is a relentless, oil-fused journey through the blood-soaked sands as a bunch of crazies attempt to see Valhalla. Starring Tom Hardy as the grunting Mad Max and Charlize Theron as the badass Furiosa, the two form an unlikely team as Miller sets both of their stories against a never-ending chase. Miller brilliantly uses the action to set up the expositing information of the story while also giving the characters a proper arc.
1 Apocalypse Now
One of the greatest war films ever made, Apocalypse Now saw Francis on the brink of collapse. Nearly bankrupting himself to get the film made while also plunging himself and the film's crew into the heart of the jungle, what emerged became a seminal piece of American cinema and history. The young Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a top-secret mission to assassinate the violent and murderous Walter E. Kurtz who went AWOL to the furthest stretches of the Vietnamese villages. Apocalypse is a war film like no other, a hallucinatory nightmare right into the heart of darkness.