The Martian

    "I'm Mark Watney and I'm still alive...obviously"

The red sands of Mars have settled following a forceful storm, the sky is a healthy red, the Sun bearing down on the rocky mesa's of the Martian landscape. One certain mound of sand is disturbed by the twitching movements of a man laying prone, waking from unconsciousness. His orange-and-white space-suit is both punctured and sealed by a small piece of debris shallowly embedded in his stomach. The debris, leftover from a destroyed long-range communications satellite, is not the only problem the astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) now has to face as he scans the nearby arid landscape. Close by is the habitat Mark and his team have occupied on the planet for the eighteen days preceding the storm and the remains of the launch pad of the team's only rocket back home, which has long since departed with Mark's colleagues believing him dead. Alone on Mars with no communications and limited food, Watney resolves to sustain himself, to communicate, to survive, or as he puts it to "science the shit outta this."

The Martian, Ridley Scott's latest, distances itself from the last decade of epics from the prolific director (Robin Hood, Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings and Kingdom of Heaven) and also, perhaps especially so, from the recent survival dramas of Everest, All Is Lost, Interstellar and the powerhouse Gravity, most notably through the solid writing from Drew Goddard (Cabin in the Woods, World War Z, Cloverfield, Daredevil). Goddard's writing of the characters in the Martian is a blend of Aaron Sorkin's jargon-fuelled relentlessness and Joss Whedon's comical perfection and wit, which has a wonderful effect on the film's tone. Unlike Gravity's direct minimalism, Everest's biopic cliches and Interstellar's cold, Doctor-Who-eyness, The Martian thankfully manages to keep a keen sense of humour to balance out the drama and despair. And this is sold by an ensemble cast of both dramatic actors and practiced comedians including Damon and Jessica Chastain of Interstellar, Benedict Wong of Prometheus, and Kate Mara, Michael Pena, Sebastian Stan, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover, Kirsten Wiig and Sean Bean (who delivers a silly and charming Lord of the Rings gag).

                        "Every human being has a basic instinct: to help each other out."

Visually, The Martian is pretty, even with it's occasionally questionable computer effects and over-use of Go-Pro footage. The production design is obviously (and smartly) adapted from Prometheus and at times the score the soaring French horns of that score threaten to burst onto the soundscape here. The obligatory Chinese pandering scenes of The Martian are perhaps even more contrived than those in Trans4mers, and even the Chinese Space Agency exterior is the same as the Chinese corporate headquarters in Age of Extinction. But in summation, The Martian is a sci-fi survival story that is slightly more fun than it is tense, but with a strong ensemble, capable lead, balanced writing and solid production. It all comes together to make NASA's perfectl, pretty and impeccably fashioned geek army and the film's two-and-a-half-hour run-time downright fun.

Jupiter Ascending

Imagine if you will a crossover between Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Congratulations, you have just thought of a much more intriguing and exciting movie than Jupiter Ascending. The Wachowskis have attempted to craft an engaging sci-fi story and, while I must admit the world the movie inhabits is interesting, they lack the writing ability to make a story that is engaging or one that makes any sense.

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is an illegal Russian immigrant who lives in Chicago working for her uncle in his cleaning business. In an attempt to make some money by selling her eggs, she is almost killed by aliens (the most stereotypic aliens you can think of), but is saved by Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), a human-dog hybrid, who reveals to Jupiter that Earth was genetically seeded by a family run corporation billions of years ago. Jupiter finds out that she is actually space royalty (the highest royalty one can hope for) and is thrust into the politics of the Abrasax family, which includes Balem (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) and Titus (Douglas Booth), all of whom are fighting over the ownership of Earth.

This movie's plot is all over the place and that has to do with the amount of detail which is just brushed over. We have no idea about where the space people came from (they do identify as human) or how their civilisation works. It is mentioned that the Abrasax family is one of many that inhabit the universe, but we never get a glimpse at any of these. On the upside we do get an extended montage of "space bureaucracy" that is trying so hard to remind us of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. In the hands of a much better writer, this world would be an amazing setting for a series of sci-fi novels that would be able to go into the deep detail needed for all this plot.

There is also a glaring problem with Jupiter's backstory. In the prologue, we are told that Jupiter's father was the son of the British Ambassador to Russia and her mother and father live in quite a nice apartment. But in the scene that comes after her father's death, her mother is on a container ship, being smuggled into America. So many things wrong here. Why wouldn't the father-in-law take them in? Being an ambassador is quite a revered diplomatic position and he couldn't have ensured their safe passage anywhere in the world. Even if he disowned them, Jupiter's mother had enough money to be able to get to America. Sure the prologue takes place in Soviet Russia, but the way they were living exceeded the middle class of Russia at the time.

As for the acting of this film, I don't really know what to say. All the actors do an adequate job of portraying their one-dimensional characters. Jupiter had the potential to be a strong female protagonist, but just ends up being another damsel to be saved by Channing Tatum. Now his character is just as boring. We know nothing of the science behind the character, although they mention gene-splicing more times that I care to count. And Sean Bean. Don't even get me started on him. We all know he is good for one thing and one thing only; dying. And yet they don't let him live up to his potential. What a waste.

There is hope, however. Very recent Academy Award Winner Eddie Redmayne has made some incredible, if not strange, acting choices in his career. But none have been as genius as the choices made in this film. He looked at the poorly written Balem Abrasax and his minimal screen time and wondered how could he work his magic. Well, magic is the right word for it. In each scene, he mumbles through his lines, making you lean in to grasp the nuances of his delivery of each line, before shouting at all of us the crux of each scene, which nine out of ten times is "Bring her to me!" or a variant thereof.

I really wish this was a series of books because I would enjoyed it. Too late now. The only thing saving this from a zero score is Redmayne's strange, weird performance. The only character I want to see ever again is the elephant man Nesh. If you've seen it, you'll agree with me.