Don’t Diss On Matt Damon And Miss THE MARTIAN

Now playing at multiplexes from here to Acidalia Planitia:

THE MARTIAN (Dir. Ridley Scott, 2015)

Two years ago around this time we had Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY, last year there was Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR, and now there’s this year’s cerebral sci-fi fall release about astronauts struggling for survival in space, Ridley Scott’s THE MARTIAN, an adaptation of the 2011 bestseller by Andrew Weir that I never got around to reading. And with the news that they just found water on Mars, it couldn't be more timely.

Set in the near future, the film stars Matt Damon as Mark Watney, a NASA Astronaut who is left behind by mistake on Mars when the crew of the Ares 3 mission are forced to evacuate during a dangerous dust storm. In the chaos, Damon’s Watney is impaled by flying debris and sent flying off into the distance, leaving his team members to believe that he’s dead.

After Watney regains consciousness and gets back to his house base module in the middle of a large northern basin on Mars called Acidalia Planitia (a real area on the planet) he sizes up the situation via a direct-to-camera video log: “I have no way to contact NASA or my crewmates, but even if I could, it would take four years for another manned mission to reach me, and I’m in a hab designed to last 31 days.”

Our hero figures in order to make water (I guess this aspect is now retro-dated) and grow food on a planet where nothing grows, re-establish contact with NASA, and make the months long journey on the Mars rover cross-planet to the landing site of the next mission he’s “going to have to science the shit out of this!”

Meanwhile back on earth, NASA scientists and officials, including Chiwetel Ejiofor as Director of Mars Mission, Jeff Daniels as the head of NASA, Kristen Wiig as NASA’s head of public relations, and Sean Bean as the flight director, find out that Watney is still alive and they attempt to do the math, with the help of Donald Glover as a awkward scruffy astrodynamicist, and unravel the red tape needed to get him back.

Oh, and the NASA brain trust struggles with whether or not to tell the returning crew headed by Jessica Chastain, who, guilt-stricken at leaving behind her fellow colleague, would surely go against orders to turn her ship around to go back and try to save him if she knew. Also on board with Chastain are Kate Mara, Michael Peña, Sebastian Stan, and Aksel Hennie, who each have their moments and add to the film’s driving force of humanity.

Damon’s performance as the can-do optimist Watney is so solid that you’ll forget about the controversial crap he’s said that’s had him raked over the coals by the press lately. Here he’s a guy you are really rooting for as he successfully grows a crop of potatoes and laughing with as he bitches about the only music he has to listen to – Commander Chastain’s disco collection on her computer: “I will not turn the beat around!”

Despite the stakes, which do carry considerable weight, this is one of Scott’s sunniest and most fun films. Especially when compared to his last space epic, the ALIEN prequel PROMETHEUS, which I found more grueling than a good time.

Sure, there shades of many movies in play here from APOLLO 13 to CASTAWAY; from the aforementioned GRAVITY to 127 HOURS and so on, but THE MARTIAN never feels derivative. Drew Goddard’s tightly scripted structure smoothes out the tropes into a thoroughly engaging, and consistently gripping narrative. It’s also the second film I’ve seen this week that well utilized the 3D format – THE WALK was the other.

THE MARTIAN and THE WALK, which both open this week, are also alike in that they are inspirational epics that were immaculately shot by the same cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski. I’ll be shocked if Wolski doesn’t take home an Oscar next year for one of these visual feasts.

It’s so nice to be back in the ‘movies are getting good again’ season, with such a marvelously gripping movie as THE MARTIAN heading the herd. Just don’t be dissing on Damon so hard that you miss it.

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INTERSTELLAR: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening Friday, November 7th, at multiplexes from here to beyond the stars...

INTERSTELLAR (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014)

Despite some spectacular set-pieces, Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated outer space epic INTERSTELLAR is a massive misfire. 

It so wants to be for our times the profound experience that 2001: A SPACE ODDYSEY was to the late ‘60s, but with its problematic plotting, pretentious dialogue, and cringe-worthy convolutions of the cosmic variety, it’s more M. Night Shyamalan than Stanley Kubrick.

Set in the near future on a dying, dust stormed-out Earth, an intense Matthew McConaughey, acting like he rehearsed his lofty line readings while being filmed driving his Lincoln to the set every day, stars as a former NASA test pilot, a widowed farmer raising two kids (Mackenzie Foy and Timothée Chalamet).

With some cajoling by a ghost who apparently lives in the bookcase in Foy’s bedroom, McConaughey leaves his kids behind to travel on a spacecraft with a small crew (including a short-haired Anne Hathaway as a head strong scientist) to another galaxy to find a new habitable planet for the human race.

Michael Caine, who must really get along with the filmmaker as it’s his sixth role in a Nolan film, again brings his fading yet still stirring gravitas to his part as Professor Brand, the physicist who’s in charge of the secret mission, and is also Hathaway’s father.

By way of a wormhole near Saturn, which is pretty cool if you can rid your mind of the extremely similar scene in STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, McConaughey, Hathaway, and fellow explorers David Gyasi and Wes Bentley (and a robot named TARS voiced by Bill Irwin) find a possible candidate planet but there’s a mighty catch in order to check it out. You see, because of it’s a proximity to a black hole, every hour on the planet’s surface will equate to seven years back on Earth.

So while McConaughey and crew battle the ginormous tidal waves of that inhospitable world, his daughter and grow up to be Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck, both bitter at their departed dad in different albeit not very impactful ways.

To go any farther plot-wise would be Spoiler City, and the exposition-filled (and fueled) turns of Nolan’s screenplay (co-written with brother, Jonathan, a frequent collaborator) are too messy and strained to describe. This is especially true pertaining to what I guess is a surprise cameo that McConaughey and Hathaway encounter on a bleak, ice planet in the film’s second half (Nolan really must liked shooting in the snow, see INCEPTION).

Dutch-Swedish cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema captures Nolan’s imagery sweepingly - a large portion of the film was shot with IMAX cameras - and there are moments in which the movie’s ambitious vision comes close to exhilaration, but what should’ve been a spiritual successor to CONTACT unfortunately brings to mind the title of another McConaughey movie: FAILURE TO LAUNCH.

Movie fans can expect to be reminded of many, many other movies while watching INTERSTELLAR, from the aforementioned 2001 to Phillip Kaufman’s THE RIGHT STUFF (a 1983 historical drama about pioneering astronauts, for you young folks) to such sci-fi staples as ALIEN, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, FORBIDDEN PLANET, and everything that’s ever had the word “Star” in its name. However, Nolan’s overwrought opus amore often recalls scores of sci-fi failures such as THE BLACK HOLE, MISSION TO MARS, SIGNS, and, uh, lots of movies that have had “Star” in their titles.

Also, GRAVITY did the ‘let’s see A-list actors struggling for survival in outer space’ scenario way better. On top of that, its colossal lack of emotional pull really hinders its climax which never comes close to making anything near satisfying sense.

I take no pleasure in saying that while INTERSTELLAR is Nolan’s most audacious and certainly his most personal film, it’s easily his worst work, and the biggest cinematic letdown of 2014. Because it’s not without visual power, and some invested acting, many critics will praise it, and it will definitely get some award season action, but me, I’ll be over there, on the side, standing behind BIRDMAN.

More later...