Top of His Game: A Review of The Martian (Mild Spoilers)

directed by Ridley Scott
written by Drew Goddard

While Ridley Scott has been a bit of a geek icon since 1979, when he rocked the world with Alien, I confessed I had not "discovered" him until I watched the multiple-Oscar-winning epic Gladiator, a film that basically blew me away. I enjoyed a couple of his movies after that, like 2001's gritty Black Hawk Down, and 2007's American Gangster, but by and large I did not really consider myself a fan, especially after I watched the underwhelming, yet much ballyhooed Prometheus.

With The Martian, however, he's pretty much won me over all over again.

Mark Watney (Matt Damon), a botanist, is part of Aries III, a manned mission to Mars led by Commander Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain). When a storm threatens the safety of their mission, the team which includes astronauts Beck (Sebastian Stan), Martinez (Michael Pena), Vogel (Askell Hennie) and Johannson retreat to their shuttle, but Watney is struck by flying equipment and lost in the storm, forcing Lewis and the rest of the team to leave him for dead. Watney does survive, and sets about the process of staying alive by maximizing his resources, particularly food and water at the Mars "Hab" or habitat, even growing his own food using existing potatoes and his own feces in order to buy him as much time as possible while he figures out his next move, the most sensible of which, of course, is to try and contact NASA. As it turns out, NASA, after a very public ceremony declaring Watney dead and burying him, is in the process of planning the next mission, when one of their technicians in mission control Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis), looks at satellite photos directly above the Hab, and calls her boss, mission director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to have a look. Kapoor concludes that Watney is alive, and he and several other high-level NASA officers, including fellow mission director Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean), Jet Propulsion Labs director Bruce Ng (Benedict Wong), NASA spokesperson Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig) and NASA director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels), who broke the erroneous news of Watney's death to the world, start putting their heads together as to what can be done to save him. Meanwhile, the crew of Aries III continue their forlorn trip home, unaware of their teammate's survival and unaware that they may yet be able to save his life. Watney's ingenuity and skills as a botanist count for quite a lot in helping keep him alive, but the clock is ticking.

This movie is the third astronauts-in-peril movie churned out by Hollywood in as many years, and while I missed last year's Interstellar, I can quite happily say that this film holds up quite well against the first film in this bunch, the very popular, award-winning Gravity. There isn't quite the sense of urgency about this film that characterized Gravity considering that Watney isn't plummeting to earth as Sandra Bullock's character was, but there is a genuine sense of the peril Watney faces, and because there he isn't plunging down to earth a large part of that is down to Scott's direction and his actors' ability to build tension. Compared to Gravity, a substantial portion of this film is basically a bunch of talking heads, or in the case of Watney, one guy talking to a camera, and it is therefore the actors' job to sell to the audience the notion that this man is in mortal peril, and to the full credit of Scott, his cast and his crew, they do a bang-up job, especially Damon.

Now, Mark Watney isn't the Fed Ex guy that Tom Hanks played in Cast Away, and Damon smartly steers clear of a performance that could really spill into schmaltz, and it was really a pleasant surprise to see how much humor both Damon and screenwriter Drew Goddard (a bit of a burgeoning geek god himself) were able to inject into the role. Anyone who's seen Matt Damon on talk shows would know he's a pretty funny guy, so he's no stranger to humor onscreen, but for him to convince the audience of Watney's dire straits while at the same time elicit some genuine laughs is a considerable challenge,and kudos to Mr. Damon for hurdling it. Speaking of Goddard and his geek credentials, geeks should flip at one particular metafictional (I hope I'm using the term correctly) reference in the film. Also, the fact that Sebastian Stan and Michael Pena are veterans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes it particularly amusing when a Marvel character is explicitly mentioned.

The Martian certainly isn't the technical tour de force that Gravity was, but perhaps that's a good thing as the minimalist visual effects really give the performers the opportunity to shine here. I would also consider it high praise for the VFX technicians that the effects shots that do feature in the film are quite unobtrusive and propel the story forward rather than call any attention to themselves. That, after all, is what effects shots are supposed to do. On a technical level, this film was, for me, beyond reproach.

This movie is one of those life-affirming affairs that feels like such a rare thing in a pop-culture environment in which a seemingly increasing number of people insist that movies cannot be good unless they're "dark." It feels somewhat ironic that this movie was given to audiences by a man who kicked off his career with some unrelentingly dark films like Alien and Blade Runner, but I think it's a pretty welcome change of pace for Scott and I quite honestly wouldn't mind seeing more movies like this from him.

9/10

Sandler Reinvented (Sort of): A Review of Hotel Transylvania 2

directed by Genndy Tartakovsky
written by Adam Sandler and Robert Smigel

While I would have loved to have spent last weekend watching the resurgent historical epic Heneral Luna, I found myself in a mall with three little girls too young to watch the R-13 rated movie and a lot of time to kill. In any event, I had been wanting to take my kids to see the film since the initial trailers, so this was as good an opportunity as any to go see it.

The Transylvania gang, including Dracula (Adam Sandler), Frankenstein (Kevin James), the Werewolf (Steve Buscemi), the Invisible Man (David Spade), and the Mummy (Keegan-Michael Key) are back, and Hotel Transylvania remains very much in business. Drac's daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and her boyfriend since the end of the last movie Johnny (Andy Samberg) finally get married and make Drac a grandfather. Drac's joy soon turns to anxiety, however, as it becomes unclear whether or not little Dennis (Asher Blinkoff) has actually inherited any of his mother's and grandfather's vampiric powers. It also becomes an object of concern when Mavis, worried about her "non-monster" son, begins to think that living in a monster-free California, where Johnny is from, might be better for Dennis than living in Transylvania. Thus begins Drac's quest to coax his grandson's vampirism out of him as Mavis and Johnny leave for the U.S. to visit Johnny's parents, leaving Dennis with Drac and his friends, who have their work cut out for them.

I found the first movie reasonably entertaining with its combination of fun, if not particularly innovative designs on classic movie monsters and to anyone who enjoyed the first movie I am pleased to report that this is pretty much more of the same unpretentious silliness. It's pretty much trademark Sandler, but with less rude jokes (though the word "boobies" actually makes it into the script) and with a broader canvas, considering the things that cartoons can do which real people cannot, even when abetted by computer graphics. Sandler used to play a man-child who refused to grow up, here he plays (through voice acting) an old man trying to relive his youth vicariously through his grandson. In any case, the broad humor connected with me. I also liked little touches in the film like the vampire summer camp and the extensive use of youtube, though I found it kind of idiotic that the filmmakers could not decide whether or not vampires could be captured on camera, as they were in some instances and were not in others.

The sequel does have a kind of by-the-numbers feel to it, as can be expected from most sequels, but most importantly, they kept the fun, even if the movie really dipped into the nonsensical time and again. I'd be a complete hypocrite if I didn't admit I had a good laugh time and again. It's some pretty decent, if altogether silly fun.


6.5/10