Help is only 140 million miles away. For Mark Watney, stranded on Mars.

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2016)

We viewed this on DVD from our public library. Picture and sound are first-rate.
The premise is somewhere in the 2030s we have advanced our space exploration to successful missions to Mars. While one is underway a large, unforecast storm comes up on Mars requiring the crew of 6 to cut the mission short and use the escape rocket to blast off and rendezvous with the main space ship orbiting Mars. But one of the crew, Mark Watney, is hit by a large object and carried away, injured and out of communications. Reluctantly they have to blast off without him after a short search was futile. Mark was presumed dead.
But Matt Damon as Mark Watney didn't give up so easily, he managed to get himself to a base station and using medical tools and staples repaired his wounds and set about trying to figure out how to survive with limited resources. Fortunately with rations for 6 he was able to make food stretch, and as a Botanist even came up with a method to make water and, using his own waste as fertilizer, used a Thanksgiving package of potatoes to grow potatoes in a chamber converted to a greenhouse of sorts.
So much of the movie is about Mark's survival, plus his figuring out a way, using old abandoned Mars exploration robots, to communicate with NASA. The real hard part becomes how to plan and carry out a rescue mission. Mars is far away, it takes a long time, he has limited time to survive.
The cast is varied and good, with Jessica Chastain as Melissa Lewis, the commander of the mission. Kristen Wiig in a serious role as a NASA communications officer, Jeff Daniels as Teddy Sanders, the NASA chief, Michael Peña as Rick Martinez, the pilot for the mission, Kate Mara as one of the crew, a computer expert, Beth Johanssen, among others.
This is a really good and entertaining movie. It is a serious subject but is treated with appropriate humor.
EDIT: I re-watched it 8 days later and enjoyed it as much the second time!
SPOILERS: When the first rescue approach failed in a faulty rocket launch, a young data nerd calculated, using NASA's super computer, that the crew on their way back to Earth could accelerate and using the Earth slingshot return to Mars, but it would require a risky capture of a re-supply module and a never-rehearsed module take-off from Mars to try to capture Watney in a Mars fly-by. NASA said no to the risk but the crew decided on their own to try the rescue. That whole last scene was very tense and of course it was a success.