The Martian (2015)

THE MARTIAN  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Ridley Scott
    Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig,
    Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Michael Peña,
    Kate Mara, Sebastian Stan, Chiwetel Ejiofor,
    Aksel Hennie, Benedict Wong, Donald Glover
Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, an astronaut who's stranded on Mars when a storm comes up and the rest of his research team, believing he's dead, leaves for Earth without him. Now his job is to survive on a desolate planet, while waiting for a rescue mission that could be years away, if it comes at all. As luck would have it, Watney's a botanist, and before long, he's growing (and self-fertilizing) a healthy crop of potatoes. He's also apparently a crack mechanical engineer who can improvise whatever he needs out of whatever's available. (One thing that's available in large quantities is duct tape.) Finally, he's a wise guy and a little bit crazy, and those things don't hurt, either, in a situation like this. There's a ton of exposition here, but Damon lays it out with such cocky self-assurance that the script never feels weighed down by it. The science is fairly accurate - at least that's what I've heard - and in an escapist, mass-market package like this one, it's nice to see thinking being celebrated. This is where "Apollo 13" meets "Gravity". It becomes a little less gripping when the story expands beyond the Matt-on-Mars stuff, but as a human-scale survival adventure - "Robinson Crusoe" on the red planet - "The Martian" delivers the goods.