The Martian

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 % (10/18/2015)

Ridley Scott is paradoxically considered a great auteur and a guarantee of quality (this cult is clearly connected with the overabundance of director’s cuts in his filmography), but at the same time he simply personifies what every director should be, i.e. a person who squeezes all of the potential out of every bit of material and ensures its effective transfer to the screen. After a number of futile screenplays and pointless projects, he finally got his hands on something proper and the result is outstanding. (12/27/2015)

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. (10/06/2015)

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 (10/01/2015)

This seemingly unfilmable collection of technical details and sarcastic monologues became surprisingly easy to adapt in Drew Goddard's hands. Albeit at the cost of simplifying or even completely omitting Mark's struggles with producing air, water, or stone inscriptions, meaning that his fate in the first half is not really something to worry about. However, in the end, where after all the disasters and crises the source material merely struggled, the effort to rescue the main protagonist turns into a strongly graduated symbiosis of all involved. The main triumphs are surprisingly not the great Matt Damon, but Sean Bean perfectly cast as Mitch and especially the entire crew of the Hermes, led by Jessica Chastain. (10/15/2015)