Great acting, but not so good cinematography

Rating: 5/10 (6 February 2016)

Reaction from someone who is both nutty about photography and survival techniques: (Or - Things I didn't like and which broke the movie for me) - Use of a fish eye lens in certain places. The distortions in the visuals broke the illusion.

Repeatedly letting the lens get dirty or foggy, or wet, or snowy. Broke the illusion.

Lens glare, lens flare and star flares, broke the illusion.

Those things were put in I guess to make the movie feel more artsy but it backfired for me.
Also, I know that the main character was a pretty tough guy, but I can't help but notice that many of the survival techniques were portrayed cheaply. At one point when a fire was made, you could see clearly that the fire wasn't sparked by the flint and steel (as hardly anything was coming off it), but smoke and ember came from outside the camera's viewpoint, and created that first flame. If you insist on showing survival in such detail, then at least get it right, or pretend you get it right and cut to where there is already a fire. But don't base what you show on something you've seen on Discovery in 3 episodes of Bear Grylls' survival fairytale and assume you know how to do it. There were a few such instances where survival scenes were shown in great detail. The scenes would have been awesome, if the director would have gone that extra little step to make it full out real-looking, not just mimicry of something on TV and then not actually getting the mechanics of it right. It would not really have been hard to make it good, if the director had really understood what he was doing, or what he was asking for. They would have spent maybe a few more hours on recording the movie in total, but made a big difference in how the survival stuff was portrayed.
Besides, since he would have died of hypothermia 5-7 times in the movie already the scene reminiscent of "The Empire Strikes Back", was unnecessary and too much. He could have just as well just curled up under that tree and been fine (since he had been so many times before already).
Lastly, when you have an axe and supposedly know how to use it... (or did he not? He missed the first hit when trying to cut that branch, I never miss like that myself and use an axe maybe twice a year.) ... then how can you be so silly as to not use the reach of it against a knife fighter? That broke it for me further.
All that gave the movie its 5 points for me was the acting of the main actors, actually all actors. The acting was superb and saved what was left for me in the movie, kept me watching. So all applause goes to the actors who did an awesome job, but I'm not impressed of the storytelling by the director, neither the cinematography.