The Martian

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. (02/28/2016)

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. (10/14/2015)

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)

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)

Best Ridley since 1982. The master finally left behind his megalomania and unique sense of over combining anything potentially impressive and filmed a technically brilliant, moderate yet emotionally nourishing celebration of humanity as a tenacious community that overcomes all problems with cynical humor and potato growing. Damon is the heart and soul of the film, which falls into model sentiment in a terrestrial storyline, but thanks to an unquenchable storehouse of optimism and catchphrases on Mars, keeps the viewer in an uncompromising bind, which it will use in the last quarter of the weightless finale. Ridley Scott quotes himself nonchalantly when he lets the freezing echoes of Alien be heard at the beginning, then turns the man battling the inhospitable cosmos into something completely opposite - in a feel good movie that triumphs over all its mistakes and loss of concentration with the immeasurable enthusiasm and intelligence that is still quite rare with pure "entertainment". Humanity will rise from shit. Je suis Martian. P.S. I suggest that it be voted that the Master has already found the Lost Paradise and can retire. (09/25/2015)