The Martian

The Martian surprised me by not being about atmosphere and philosophizing, but about people and the joy of telling a positive story. It also offers a pool of inspirational ideas for emerging film editors. Matt Damon is great and Jeff Daniels got a good role after a long time. It is a pity that the movie has a weaker climax, which in the long shadow of Gravity has no chance to impress. If you compare The Martian to Prometheus, however... Ridley is still a champ. He just needs a good script. (07/10/2015)

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to pause the movie and think about how I don’t want Matt Damon to stop colonizing Mars. I get that it’s mental to live there for some time, but apart from him doing well in the beginning, he had some really ironic and cynical remarks, which only made the movie better. Now I’m not even surprised that it won Best comedy at the Golden Globes. The award might be as cynical as Mark Watney, but who cares. The Martian is an absolutely amazing, realistic sci-fi movie and its story flows in a completely logical way. All while the story was written for a blog; that’s how far this sort of an enthusiastic expression can go. (29/02/2016)

The anti-Interstellar. Nolan’s sci-fi opus was a space colonisation western about the search for an alternative to our devastated blue planet. By contrast the “coloniser” in the delightful The Martian has to be rescued from a wilderness that somewhat resembles Monument Valley and returned to Earth. The celebration of the human ability to make maximum use of available resources is only one level of the narrative, which in the film is better interwoven with the parallel organisation of the rescue mission than it was in the book. The cutting between events on Earth and on Mars starts earlier than in the novel and the two storylines are better synchronised. As a result, the film has more momentum and, unlike Mark, it never loses its breath. Despite the individualistic title, Matt Damon’s lonely face on the poster, and its reputation as the ultimate professional drama for geeks, The Martian is, in my opinion, a particularly successful example of a story with a collective hero. Even in the interconnected world of high-speed internet, enabling media coverage of events in other countries, on other continents and even on another planet, it works best on the principle of mutual cooperation and coordination. Each of the many characters enjoys their own moment of glory. Thanks to their gradual introduction to the scene and the clear establishment of professional and personal relationships between them (there are no characters in the film who fight solely for themselves), we have no problem remembering them. Not only people of different races, ages and genders, but also of different nationalities join forces. The Martian creates the illusion that the individual comes first in a massive organisation like NASA, as well as in a totalitarian country like China. The creation of sound bridges between scenes and the precise editing, when a question directly or indirectly asked on Earth is answered in the following shot from Mars, reinforce the cohesiveness of the narrative and the impression of a global village, where even a distance of tens of millions of kilometres is not insurmountable. The Martian is outstanding feel-good entertainment that may not restore your faith in humanity, but it’s highly probable that your faith in Ridley Scott’s skill as a director will have been restored by the time the end credits roll. 80% (05/10/2015)

An adventure film, rather than sci-fi; a crowd pleaser, rather than survival; feel-good, rather than smart. But even with all these dichotomies, I would’ve rated with it with five stars as Ridley Scott garners all the strengths of his old age to put together a technically flawless film that treads from beginning to end, it’s not even for a moment boring and the most tense scenes are reliably gripping. But for me it’s just too safe and user-friendly. 85 % (18/10/2015)

Ridley Scott is back in the game, kicking ass not only with this uncompromisingly intelligent sci-fi survival ride, but also with science, math, physics and chemistry. Matt Damon delivers an Oscar-worthy performance, his ingenuity and skill is eerily precise to the point of slick, and he undergoes an incredible physical and psychological transformation (admittedly I was expecting a deeper psychological breakdown, with hallucinations and psychosis, after all, prolonged solitude messes with a person). I'm also not sure if all the heroic acts in the ending could have been done realistically, but fuck that, it's clever, funny, moving, suspenseful, and by the end the goosebumps are inevitable. What an experience! 9/10 (01/10/2015)