Movie Review: The Martian

On the flight home, Dingo and I watched The Martian. We were supposed to go see it back in November when it first came out, but we for whatever reason didn't.

The Martian is so good. It's funny, heartfelt, scary, anxiety-triggering, and so rewarding. Matt Damon is brilliant as Mark Watney, a astronaut who is tragically left behind on Mars after a storm hits and the crew has to abort the mission. Commander Melissa Lewis (Crimson Peak's Jessica Chastain) was wonderful and the whole crew was perfect. Sebastian Stan (Captain America, The Covenant), Kate Mara (Zoom), Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Donald Glover (Sid of Galavant), Jeff Daniels, Michael Pena, Mackenzie Park, Aksel Hennie, and the incomparable Sean Bean were all wonderful and all worked perfectly together.

Damon was amazing alone, but then you had this stellar ensemble in the scenes where he's not debating whether to just give up and that's... not found in the horror movies on my list. The scenes with Watney were great and then the scenes away from Watney were on par.

The visuals were gorgeous as well and there was a lot of technical speak, but it didn't go over my head and that's a very fine ice to tread on. As soon as you go over someone's head, it's extremely difficult to get back to levelheadedness. The Martian doesn't speak to you like you're an idiot or a child, but it also doesn't cut corners when speaking about things that not a lot of people know about.

If you haven't seen The Martian, please, please, rent it, watch it, love it. I am definitely putting it on my list of to-buy movies.

Moral of this movie: I'd never survive in space.