Movie: The Martian (8½/10)

I’d heard about the soundtrack, that is was worth seeing just for that. It is all disco and therefore brilliant. It sure takes the edge off when watching a film with just one character. OK, not quite just one like in Robert Redford’s All is Lost.The astronaut is left behind on Mars, presumed dead, when his colleagues have to make an emergency evacuation after a storm hits the planet and start their long journey back home. He then wakes up, barely able to breathe as his space suit that allows him to be exist on the planet has been pierced, and manages to get back inside their oxygen filled house. After performing emergency treatment on himself, the realisation that he is left for dead on a volatile planet kicks in.

'I'm going to have the since the suit out of this'

The first thing I’m thinking though is can some of be taught to fix gaping holes in our bodies? I mean, there isn’t even a robot for company like in Silent Running. We have the robot left behind in that film Dewey safely in our home, so I know first-hand how comforting it is to know that he is always there.I love that all the astronauts are something else too – they all have their expertise, a bit like on Star Trek. In this case he’s a botanist and so we observe how he tries to grow food on Mars while also figuring out how to communicate back home.

‘I don't want to come off as arrogant here, but I'm the greatest botanist on this planet.’

A plus is NASA is run by Teddy, played by Jeff Daniels who’s more watchable since he starred in one of the best dramas made, The Newsroom. The place is full of geeks of the best kind. He does have to make the decision on when to tell the surviving crew still on their journey home that they left their colleague behind alive.Ultimately it is a feel-good film as we watch with the rest of the world if he is going to survive long enough to be rescued, with some sci-fi and disco thrown in.This year’s Interstellar which was the previous year’s Gravity.I loved it.8½/10Smile factor 8/10